Socialized medicine is a term used to describe and discuss systems of universal health care: medical and hospital care for all at a nominal cost by means of government regulation of health care and subsidies derived from taxation
Because of historically negative associations with socialism in American culture, the term is sometimes used pejoratively in American political discourse
The term was first widely used in the United States by advocates of the American Medical Association in opposition to President Harry S. Truman’s 1947 health-care initiative.