A while back, progressive activists and politicians pushed for legislation to provide health insurance for a cohort of Americans who could not easily pay for their doctors’ visits and medications. Predictably, that effort was met with fierce resistance from conservatives, who didn’t seem concerned about those less-fortunate citizens who couldn’t afford medical care.

Conservatives denounced the plan as “socialized medicine” or a “communist takeover” of the American health care system. One notable conservative was especially alarmist, declaring that if the proposal passed Congress, “… you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

No, that hysterical tirade didn’t come in response to the Affordable Care Act. Those words were spoken in 1961 by Ronald Reagan, who was crisscrossing the country to campaign against the adoption of Medicare. Yes, Medicare, which Congress passed in 1965 and is widely considered a resounding success.

Fast-forward a few decades. The same alarms were sounded more recently, as progressive activists and politicians pushed for legislation to provide inexpensive health insurance for those who couldn’t afford it. Actually, the denunciations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, usually called “Obamacare,” may have been even more hysterical.

As the law neared passage, I watched angry crowds gather near the White House — many holding vicious, racially charged signs lambasting the president — to chant about “socialism” and “communism.” Strangely, the most vehement criticisms came from Americans 65 and older, the very cohort that benefits from Medicare.

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010, so it has been the law of the land for five years. Given that, it’s possible to make a reasoned assessment of its strengths and weaknesses.

First off, let’s note that there has been no “socialist takeover” of American medicine. Obamacare uses private health insurance providers; the law merely sets requirements for health insurance plans and issues subsidies to patients who cannot afford to purchase policies.

As you might expect, the number of Americans with health insurance — and, therefore, with access to preventive medical care — has increased in the last five years. Before the law went into effect, there were 48 million uninsured Americans. Now, with 16 million people having signed up for Obamacare, that number has been cut by a third.

Furthermore, health insurance companies are no longer allowed to deny coverage to patients who are already sick or to set a “lifetime cap” on the amount of money a company will pay for medical care. Adult children, who might be in college or working at low-paying jobs without benefits, can stay on their parents’ policies until they are 26.

The Affordable Care Act may also have decreased the rate at which health care costs were escalating. Five years ago, medical care costs were skyrocketing, well beyond the rate of general inflation. Now, those costs are still going up — but at the lowest rate in 50 years. While economists aren’t certain that Obamacare’s cost-containment measures are responsible, many of them give the law credit.

To be sure, the Affordable Care Act has been no panacea. There are still 32 million Americans without health insurance. And, despite the president’s early pledge that people already insured could retain their policies, a tiny but vocal group lost their insurance because Obamacare deemed those policies inadequate. Many in that group ended up paying more for insurance, hardly a happy outcome.

But the worst failings of the Affordable Care Act are beyond its supporters’ control. Because of persistent, irrational Republican opposition, more than 20 states have refused to expand Medicaid — even though the feds would pay the lion’s share of costs. That means that millions of working-class Americans are not getting the health care they need. Furthermore, Obamacare’s unrelenting antagonists have mounted yet another challenge to the law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s hard to fathom. The Affordable Care Act has failed to produce the apocalypse (remember “death panels”?) its fiercest critics predicted; instead, it has given millions of people access to decent health care. Its opponents are as wrong about Obamacare as Ronald Reagan was about Medicare.

Cynthia Tucker won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.

Photo: Michael Moore via Flickr