The Washington Post shocked many of its Democratic readers this week by telling the truth about the growing disaster in the UK’s National Health Service — a cautionary tale as a few Republicans plan to join Democrats to extend the failed Obamacare subsidies rather than reform our own broken health care system.
Socialism is in vogue in America. Various socialists are assuming greater power in the Democratic Party and mayors such as Zohran Mamdani (New York) and Katie Wilson (Seattle) are taking over the leadership of major cities.
I discuss the rising class of American socialists in my new book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution. The young voters fueling this shift have never experienced life under socialism and have no memories of the meltdowns in prior such systems. As former socialist and communist countries move toward capitalism, many Americans are embracing socialism, according to polls.
The Washington Post editorial board exposed the myth of nationalized systems in its scathing column on the UK’s National Health Service, which is asking sick people to stay away from hospitals as the system struggles to offer basic care.
The NHS has existed for years in a perpetual state of emergency. This was the case before the pandemic hit, and it has only gotten worse. Hospital corridors overflow and routine procedures get canceled due to a catastrophic event commonly known as “winter.” It comes around every year, yet the system, despite annual funding increases, still somehow remains unable to cope.
A campaign to keep people away from hospitals during the holidays is underway, which includes begging the public to seek out other forms of treatment for “less serious” injuries and ailments. The British press compares the messaging to “Covid-era stay-at-home pleas,” which included asking patients who needed care to avoid medical facilities in order to “protect the NHS.”
In November, some 50,468 people waited 12 hours or more in emergency departments, often on trolleys in corridors. This is the highest on record for that time of year. Some 2.35 million people went to A&E in November, the highest on record for that month.
What is troubling in the debate over Obamacare is that some Democrats admit that it has failed. Democrats touted the law with an enabling class of academic experts as promising lower health care costs in a system that would pay for itself. Obama himself spread the false claim that you could keep your doctor under Obamacare. (later called the “lie of the year.”)
It proved to be a disaster. Health care costs soared under Obamacare and Democrats stepped in to pass massive subsidies that pay a fortune to insurance companies without doing anything to correct the underlying problems.
The shocking increase in costs under Obamacare should galvanize a nation in seeking a major overhaul without delay. Health care is now unaffordable for many. Yet, that desperation is political gold for many in dangling subsidies before voters as an inducement to return them to power.
With the midterm elections approaching, Congress is about to repeat the same pay-now-worry-later approach. For some, the directions may even be reassuring. As Obamacare craters, it will become increasingly difficult to return to a market-driven system. Instead, many Democratic members want a single national health care system or a Medicaid-like system for all.
It does not matter that the UK is struggling with its own system to provide basic care, and NBC is describing the UK system as “broken.”
With the threat of the Democrats taking over the House in the midterms and producing gridlock in Washington, it is unlikely that the GOP can remain firm and unified on creating an alternative. Some will join Democratic members admitting that Obamacare failed, but this is not the time to correct the problem. Instead, we will pour more money into a broken system and kick the can down the road.
In the near term, they will have to pass the subsidies for ACA or medical costs will soar, more so than they already have.
But let us address the real issue: Just like the teachers union, the government send the subsidies to the insurance companies, the insurance companies raise costs and in order to keep the grift going, the insurance companies give campaign donations to Democrats who vote to keep the grift going.
Give the subsidies directly to the people in the form of Health Savings Accounts, tax deductible, cuts off the insurance companies grift. Allow people to pick and choose their healthcare and the free market will work it out.
Bezos seized control of WaPo editorial board to make it less communist, so it does not represent the newsroom, only the new Bezos people. This is not the sea change that WaPo needs that can only come by breaking the Newspaper Guild’s control of the newsroom.
I suspect this comment will alienate several commenters here, but I just scanned thru the comments, and I do not see a single one mentioning OUR OWN PERSONAL ROLE and responsibility regarding our health AND health care.
I personally see two big drivers of health care insurance: One is the socialist “equal-healthcare-for-all” scheme, which de-incentivizes personal responsibility for keeping oneself healthy; and Two, (clearly related), is the nonchalant attitude toward our country’s HUGE problem with OBESITY.
“Obesity can lead to several serious health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, certain types of cancer, and sleep apnea. It can also contribute to joint problems and negatively impact mental health, such as increasing the risk of depression.” Mayo Clinic.
(You will note that the above diseases/conditions are the primary drivers of visits to clinics and hospitals, and HUGE drivers of pharmaceutical medications/panaceas.)
There was a time when insurers (for both life and health insurance) required a physical before proffering individual insurance rates.
After numerous discrimination and disparate impact lawsuits, they switched to a one-size-fits-all approach, causing healthy persons’ rates to go up, and unhealthy persons’ rates to drop.
Accordingly, despite being one of the most wealthy and developed nations in the world, the United States ranks 48, repeat, in 48th place, for life expectancy. https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
As long as OTHERs pay for our food and cover our costs when our DIETS and LIFESTYLES are the cause of our health problems, -we have no real incentive to improve. this will continue.
As to the socialist “equal-healthcare-for-all” scheme, another driver of costs: illegal immigration.
Blame it on Trump, says left-wing WBUR/NPR affiliate:
“In Lawrence, a mill community of around 90,000 people on the Merrimack River, where more than 80% of the population is Hispanic or Latino, Kesia Moreta said she’s already seeing people slip out of the state’s health care network because of the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to crack down on illegal immigration. Moreta, who manages a program created under the ACA that helps people sign up for coverage, said clients have been missing meetings out of fear that being enrolled for health insurance will harm their effort to stay in the U.S. legally.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/07/03/massachusetts-health-connector-aca-romneycare-spending-bill
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C’mon everyone. we can do better than this.
Let’s make REAL New Year’s commitments to get ourselves looking and feeling the best we can!
I SINCERELY WISH THIS FOR ALL OF YOU IN THE COMING YEAR! yours truly, lin.
apologies for length of this post.
It’s doubtful the Repubs can even legislate on such a complex issue. They like to oversimplify, and cluster around accusatory-partisan slogans (“Obamacare failed”). The Dems sloganeering is framed positively “(health care is a right!”) — though equally meaningless and inactionable.
Who is going to muster the honesty and adult-responsibility-taking needed to admit the following
:
• borrowing for health care consumption now is unsustainable; borrowing from future taxpayers is off the table
• everyone dies; extending geriatric lives is a bottomless pit of wasted public funds; end-of-life expenses must not be shouldered by taxpayers; it is a family-centered, private economic decision
• too many Americans are living unhealthy lifestyles; the new design must contain strong incentives for healthy lifestyle choices (“I decided I couldn’t afford to be an overweight slug”)
• doctors, nurses and other HC professionals have free choice whether to be in that profession; there must never be any coercion to contribute to the profession, and there must remain strong incentives to serve in it
• health care insurers (i.e., those only involved in finance) have no guaranteed profit — and they must be effectively policed by commissioners to prevent and punish claim denial, non-payment or under-payment scams; if interstate sale of insurance is allowed, the first question is “Who will have unquestioned authority to police the insurance companies?”
• the best health care insurance is self-insurance (family savings, HSAs)
• illegal immigration should be deterred by limiting services to emergency stabilization
• NIH/CDC/FDA should invest heavily in PSAs that educate the public about taking responsibility for their health, and publicly criticize food and beverage companies who won’t align with the health interests of their clients; example: addictive food-designs, beverage-designs, inhalant-designs should be pulled from the market
pbinca accuses the Republicans of being just like her: It’s doubtful the Repubs can even legislate on such a complex issue. They like to oversimplify, and cluster around accusatory-partisan slogans…
pbinca has only the tactic and failings she describes here to justify her regular attacks on this blog on the Second Amendment rights of Americans. Rights which like, pbinca’s right to elective birth control abortions in Kalifornia, are actually covered in the Bill of Rights.
She spins lies and false equivalency to make HER versions of what little the Second Amendment should cover legitimate. All because of her grossly oversimplifed solution to violent crime. Complete with accusatory partisan slogans accusing those who don’t see it that way of “not caring about the children”.
This is the point where pbinca swiftly disappears back into the wormwood that is Kalifornia, until her next reappearance, hoping not to be noticed.
Every 20 years, I keep hearing the VA is finally fixed, and 20 years later, it’s always broken, again.
I remember 30 years ago, when a liberal pundit on PBS’s Frontline glibly prophesied that Canadian-style socialized medicine was a miracle that would solve all of America’s healthcare problems. All liberals are false prophets. Today, desperate Canadians cross the border and pay out of their life savings to get healthcare in the U.S. that is simply is no longer available in Canada.
Unfortunately, the false prophets will be back if the GOP doesn’t come up with a comprehensive program for our looming healthcare challenges. We still have a little time that the socialized systems lost a long time ago.
The NHS is one of the world’s largest employers, right up there with the Chinese army and US military.
NHS has been described as the third largest employer at times and sometimes fifth largest when you unreasonably include McDonald’s franchises and Walmart.
Impressive for what is basically a small country, closer to Lichtenstein than China.
But they frequently claim their treatment centers are understaffed and the NHS actually appears to be deficient in numbers of people actually treating patients. I suppose the rest are leeches of some sort, bureaucrats and regulators.
Recently the NHS was using “The Liverpool Protocol” which basically hastened death by studied neglect. It was a scandal when the secret neglect hit the news and it was abolished though one wonders if only the name was abolished and the bureaucratic murder was continued.
Canadian socialist healthcare is a nightmare as well. Though in one respect it is more efficient than the NHS. Instead of killing you with passive neglect they give you a lethal injection, sort of what the Germans used to do and what some American states do if you torture and murder someone.
Ironically, UK and Canada are too virtuous to execute a sadistic homicidal criminal in the way reserved for their peaceful, tax paying, but sick, citizens.
A few steps more in this direction and UK and Canadian doctors will be wearing SS uniforms, figuratively if not actually.
You shouldn’t be more afraid of your doctor than your disease.
Read “The Nazi Doctors” by Robert Jay Lifton. Medicine by bureaucrat is unhealthy.
WOW, what a hornet’s nest this article stirred up! Let’s keep the discourse civil folks.
What will it take to recognize that our health care system, ACA, is a total failure! And you’re worried about a civil discourse. Let’s just keep spending more money, I.e. subsidies. Oh by the way the Federal government is running $2 trillion annual deficits. We’re broke
. Who said DEI, CRT didn’t work! 😂
🎄
So-called Republicans like NY’s Rep Lawler will, it is hoped, read this and belatedly understand the health care idiocy they have been promoting.
One interesting fact, if you will. Much was talked about “bending the cost curve” in healthcare when the ACA was being talked up. In fact, the cost curve already was flattening for Medicare enrollees. In inflation-adjusted numbers, the annual per enrollee cost was $15,838. In 2024, the spend was $17,786, which is a 12% increase over 18 years.
No doubt there are details to argue within the numbers, but what stands out is a huge part of the spiral upward of spending is the aging of the population and the enormous increase in Medicare enrollees.
reminder if Democrats WIN again…they will import another 20 million illegals!
Where do you come up with such stupid garbage?
In what way is it garbage? While the 20 million number may not be exact (maybe it was closer to 10 or 15 million), the Dems admitted it was a strategic move for more voters. And there is little reason to believe the strategy has changed.
Where do you come up with such stupid garbage?
Where do you get such stunningly intellectual rebuttals to somebody pointing out 20+ million criminal Illegal Aliens is one part of the health care problem? Just like the rational that we need more foreign Illegal Alien criminals because we don’t have enough American criminals here – we need more foreign Illegal Aliens needing health care because we don’t have enough Americans needing health care?
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is the intended psychological manipulation by a low-IQ perpetrator of those they hope to victimize through intentionally misleading that person or group. This involves the perpetrator lying, denying events, and other methods used in the hope their intended victims doubt their perceptions of reality, memories, and feel overly emotional or irrational.
The main five methods of gaslighting that may be used alone or in conjunction with others are: lying, blame shifting, countering, trivializing and withholding.
The medical “system” (I hesitate to call patients and doctors” a system) worked better in the 1950s. People were expected to work and doctors adjusted their prices to account for differences in income. Insurance, government, and dependency were factors in upsetting this workable practice.
edwardmahl
What an astoundingly stupid comment !!!!
The medical system did not “work better” in the 1950’s.
There were no CT scanners, no MRI scanners, no sophisticated diagnostic testing as we have today, virtually no antibiotics or vaccines, very limited medications. None of the highly sophisticated cancer treatments or engineered biological medications that are advertised endlessly on television. Doctors simply relied on physical examinations and guessing at a diagnosis. Polio and other infectious diseases were rampant, with no available treatments. Back then if you got sick, you simply died. The role of doctors was to hold your hand and make you feel better as you died.
Anonymous low-IQ troll: what an astoundingly stupid comment!! Edward did not deny medical *technology* has improved since the 1950s, his critique was directed at the medical *system* – which, if you had any ability to read and comprehend English, you would have known. So GFY stupid Democrat commie low-IQ troll.
edwardmahl What an astoundingly stupid comment !!!!
Building a strawman indirectly related to the post in order to desperately project with an astoundingly stupid comment.
Projection:
Channeling one’s actions onto others typically refers to the psychological concept of projection, where an emotionally disturbed individual unconsciously or deliberately attributes their own thoughts, feelings, and anti-social or criminal behaviors onto someone else. This is an internal defense mechanism which allows that mentally ill person to avoid confronting their own behavior and guilt by seeing it instead as as the thoughts and actions of another person who they despise and hate.