A new commentary published by the Cato Institute on May 13, 2026, argues that television host Bill Maher committed a dangerous "category error" when he claimed America is already "quasi-socialist" because of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Economist Marian L. Tupy, the commentary's author, warns that conflating government assistance programs with actual socialism gives rhetorical ammunition to politicians who genuinely support government control of production and property. The piece responds to a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher in which Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman cautioned that socialism has shifted from slur to badge of honor among some Democrats, with candidates even speaking positively about communism—a system Fetterman noted was responsible for some 100 million deaths in the last century.
The commentary lays out specific data showing the fiscal strain on America's major entitlement programs. According to the 2025 trustees' report cited in the analysis, Social Security's Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund can pay full scheduled benefits only until 2033, after which continuing income would cover just 77 percent of scheduled benefits. The combined Social Security trust funds are projected to cover full benefits until 2034, then drop to 81 percent coverage. Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund faces similar pressure, projected to pay full benefits until 2033 before falling to 89 percent coverage. On healthcare spending, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports that national health expenditures reached $5.3 trillion in 2024—18 percent of GDP—with Medicare accounting for 21 percent of total national health spending, Medicaid for 18 percent, private insurance for 31 percent, and out-of-pocket spending for only 11 percent. Tax burden data from IRS-based summaries shows that in 2023, the top 1 percent of earners paid 38.4 percent of federal income taxes while earning 20.6 percent of adjusted gross income, and the top 10 percent paid 70.5 percent.
The report makes a sharp distinction between government programs and government control. "Socialism, properly understood, means public rather than private ownership or control of property, natural resources, and the means of production," Tupy writes, citing definitions from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster. He argues there's a fundamental difference between "government assistance and government control," warning that Maher's framing "gives socialists the rhetorical gift they most desire." According to the commentary, if Medicare is labeled socialism, the logical follow-up becomes: "Why not government medicine? If Social Security is socialism, then why not government pensions, housing, childcare, college, energy, and food?" The author contends that socialism is morally wrong because it treats "society"—which in practice means "politicians, regulators, committees, and favored constituencies"—as having a superior claim on an individual's labor and property.
The commentary explains why socialism fails on practical grounds by destroying the information systems that make economies function. Drawing on Friedrich Hayek's insight that knowledge is dispersed across society, Tupy argues that prices coordinate the separate plans of millions of people who don't know one another by signaling what's scarce, abundant, or worth producing. When the state abolishes private ownership in the means of production, it destroys the market prices needed for rational economic calculation, the author writes, citing Ludwig von Mises. Without prices for land, labor, capital, machinery, risk, and time, planners can't know whether they're creating value or destroying it. This leads to socialism's characteristic outcomes: shortages, queues, rationing, black markets, declining quality, and repression. The repression isn't accidental—when the plan fails, the planner blames "hoarders, wreckers, speculators, profiteers, foreigners, landlords, doctors, farmers, and shopkeepers," turning economic failure into a search for enemies.
The commentary concludes with a stark warning that Fetterman's concern matters because socialism has become fashionable among "historically ignorant people who would never tolerate its consequences." These advocates want Swedish benefits, American innovation, Silicon Valley capital, and Manhattan restaurants while sneering at the system that makes those things possible—they don't actually want socialism, but rather "capitalism with a guilty conscience and a bigger bill that's paid by someone else." Tupy urges that the right response to socialism's rising popularity isn't to claim "we are all quasi-socialists now," but to remember the line between assistance and control. A free society may choose limited public programs, but it must never forget that socialism crosses a fundamental boundary: it's immoral because it subordinates the person to the plan, and unworkable because the plan can't know what free people know through prices, property, profit, loss, and choice.