Socialized Medicine in Practice

America’s young socialists, impervious to reality, want to offer us Medicare for all. Since the current Medicare is bankrupting the country-- meaning, we cannot afford it-- they postulate that we need more of it. It’s called free lunch-- with no sense whatever of where the money is coming from.

Were you to suggest that their dream is wildly unrealistic, they will trot out the example of the British National Health Service. You recall the 2012 London Olympics where Once-Great Britain offered up a song and dance routine with hospital beds and doctors.

Unaffordable health care will inevitably be rationed. People will go without it. This report sums up the problems in today’s Britain:

According to the BBC, there are 7.2 million British citizens awaiting medical care, or almost 11% of the entire British population. And Sky News reports that more than 400,000 people in England have been awaiting hospital treatment for more than a year.

Right now, the most salient problem is emergency care.

According to The Telegraph, December data show that people suffering a heart attack face an average wait of 90 minutes for an ambulance, with some waiting up to two and a half hours. For emergency care, The Telegraph further reports, 55,000 people were forced to wait on hospital gurneys for “at least” 12 hours following emergency department decisions to admit them.

Of course, patients suffering from a stroke or a heart attack are always in a race against time, as medical delays can result in permanent disability or death.

Surveying the carnage, Dr. Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, estimated that between 300 and 500 people are dying each week because of delays and related problems in the delivery of emergency medical care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a punishing stress test for Britain, as well as for the United States and other countries…. 

In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic simply deepened long-persisting problems underlying the British single-payer program. As the BBC reports, the current crisis in Britain’s single-payer system, though aggravated by a nasty flu season, has been building for “decades.”

Now, the American version, promoted by socialists and liberals looks like this:

The congressional single-payer bill (HR 1976) contains the key components driving the implosion of the British health care system, including government budgeting, bureaucratic central planning, and reduced pay for doctors and nurses.

Yet, last year, 120 House Democrats co-sponsored the legislation.

In sharp contrast to the congressional liberals’ top-down regime, which would restrict private coverage and care for Americans, British patients are still free to go outside of the British single-payer program and spend their own money on private health insurance coverage and care of their choice.

Of course, if you pay less you get less. You get disgruntled employees, people who feel exploited by the system, people who are happy to go out on strike.

The judgment crosses party lines. 

The Guardian, one of Britain’s top left-wing publications, says that the “crisis-ridden” NHS is “falling apart.” Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, acknowledges the gravity of the NHS crisis, is criticizing the system’s “bureaucracy,” and is calling for the private sector to help “clear” Britain’s enormous waiting lists.

Privatization-- shades of the Iron Lady.