This administration inherited a Medicare/Medicaid system that covered physician services and hospitalization fees, but not prescription medication.
The uncovered status of prescription medication was the main argument the Left had in favor of a completely socialized, Canada-style health system. This was the issue that they could use to get the powerful senior citizen voting block to accept a National Health Service.
The prescription drug benefit eviscerated healthcare as a front burner issue for senior voters.
The Left will continue to push for a National Health Service, of course, but a key voting bloc they were counting on has now been largely neutralized.
It was a strategic move, not an ideological embrace of socialism.
If you want to fool yourself into believing that fairy tale, you are entitled. The sad truth is that despite Bush's "strategic" move (actually it was a lame attempt at Clintonesque triangulation) we are closer to full scale socilized medicine than ever before. The "left" has found plenty of new arguments and it is on a roll. Thus, even in pratical term this strategic ploy proved all too clever and those who supported it now have egg on their "pragmatic" faces.