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.
A point that a lot of people miss: ANY statement about the relative quality of various countries’ heath systems that uses life expectancy as a measure is inherently broken, because ALL such statements rely on the false idea that all things being equal life expectancy should be the same everywhere. That’s just not so.
The biggest difference is demographics. Race absolutely plays a huge part in health, and you cannot expect life expectancy, or any health outcomes, to be the same in two countries with very different racial mixes.
Then there’s climate, and general lifestyle. How tough life is. The age mix. Immigration and emigration. Even if every country in the world had the exact same health system, outcomes would still differ widely.
“some Democrats admit that it has failed. ”
Failed in what way? This article has failed to prove that the UK Healthcare is a disaster. Many claims, no proof. The reliance on the long dead history of the Washington Post and ignoring that the present ownership is Jeff Bezos, a decidedly non-liberal is fudging the truth.
“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. ”
That was the intention that was subverted in an effort to get Republican support. The Republicans demanded changes in exchange for their promise to vote in support. Of course, the Republicans lied and none of them followed through. This core belief in lying is what has produced a schism in American politics. Several Supreme Court Justices testified that Roe v. Wade was settled law; after they gained a majority they shopped for cases to overturn it.
“Obama himself spread the false claim that you could keep your doctor under Obamacare.”
Again, this became false because of Republican demanded changes to the PP-ACA, the actual name of the legislation that was passed into law, in particular the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act. A name the Republicans would like to bury. As a now decade long Republican supporter, Turley also refuses to write it out.
As it turns out, I have never been covered under the PP-ACA and have never been able to keep a doctor. They are all constantly shuffled due to insurance coverage changes and medical group investors demanding higher profits. Had the original core of the PP-ACA been kept and a Federal health insurance department created, then what President Obama said would have remained true.
What is also left out of the conversation is the number of sham insurance policies that were effectively outlawed by the PP-ACA.
The Republicans want a new disaster – a return to tens of millions of people without any insurance coverage at all or covered by sham policies.
The Republicans look enviously at Martin Shkreli and his raising the price of a sole-source, life-saving drug by 5000%. He went to prison, but not for that. They know that most health care is inelastic demand. This is obvious from the opioid epidemic as people, in chronic pain, cut off from pain killers, moved to the black market for relief.
Headline at NBC News in October: “UK’s Health Service is in Crisis Threatening an Institution at the Center of British Culture”. NYTimes: Sept. 2024 – “England’s Health Service is in Trouble, Report Finds”. From FT: ” England’s NHS is in a ‘critical and deteriorating condition’ – those are the words of Lord Darzi who investigated the state of the NHS for the new Labour government last year. ” Why would you want to copy a system like this like Obama did? This is what is wrong with socialists. They refuse to admit that their system doesn’t work despite the evidence, because “their” version will somehow be different. It would be better to blow up the healthcare and pharma monopolies and completely revamp Medicare, which is going broke
Just say it…obammy/govt subsidized healthcare is/was a swindle.
If Obamacare works, why do people have to receive subsidies to afford (Affordable Care Act) the premiums?
Keep trying. You might convince the six years olds.