In Britain, both health insurance and the delivery of health care is socialized. But the NHS is no paradise. Open a random edition of a British daily newspaper and you will likely encounter an article about some egregious problem that the NHS has failed to solve. For example: NHS doctors routinely conceal from patients information about innovative new therapies that the NHS doesn’t pay for, so as not to “distress, upset or confuse” them; terminally ill patients are incorrectly classified as “close to death” so as to allow the withdrawal of expensive life support; NHS expert guidelines on the management of high cholesterol were intentionally not revised after becoming out of date, putting patients at serious risk in order to save money.
The latest liberal policy idea would effectively end all private health care for many Americans. The proposal, the Medicare for America Act, first appeared as a 2018 paper by the Center for American Progress. It’s been called “the Democratic establishment’s alternative” to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s single-payer scheme and has been framed as a moderate proposal. But the bill is anything but moderate. When Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) reintroduced Medicare for America legislation on May 1, she included a new, radical provision. The revised bill prohibits any medical provider “from entering into a private contract with an individual enrolled under Medicare for America for any item or service coverable under Medicare for America.” Essentially, this would bar program enrollees from paying for health care with their own money.
Even when the Supreme Court tells a government labor union that it can’t do something, there’s no guarantee that the union will comply. In its 2014 Harris v. Quinn decision, the Court ruled that an Illinois law forcing home health-care workers—paid with Medicaid funds—to shell out cash to labor unions was unconstitutional. That should have ended unions’ ability to collect fees from these workers—many of whom were not really professionals but were receiving a small subsidy from Medicaid to care for disabled family members at home—unless the workers agreed to join the union. The administration announced it will enforce the ruling.