The Bush campaign asserts that John Kerry’s health care plan amounts to a “government takeover” of health care. Medpundit agrees.

Please. Kerry’s plan does increase the role of the federal government in health care. It is not unfair to describe it as “creeping socialism” in the market for health insurance. But as pointed out here, here, and here, Kerry certainly is not proposing that the feds take over the entire health care system. His plan is significantly less ambitious than that proposed by the Clintons in the early 1990s. Its key plank–a government-run reinsurance system–is supported (at least in concept) by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

On a related note, I heard a Bush campaign ad yesterday (while watching Michael Smerconish’s radio show on C-SPAN) accusing Kerry of saying terrorism is just a nuisance. That’s not what Kerry said, and the Bush campaign knows it.