When a Far Left screed like The New York Times publishes a first-page article that is harshly critical of some “free” or low-cost socialist program, you know that (1) it’s got to be really, really bad, and (2) what The New York Times is writing about it just has to be true.  There are simply no other explanations for such rare candor.

And so it came to pass that on July 17, 2023, The New York Times published on its front page (left-hand column) an article entitled “After 75 Years, Health Service in U.K. Teeters.”  The article is a devastating critique of the British health care system.  British health care is free, and it turns out that if you live in the U.K., you get what you pay for.

The article begins with a discussion of the experience of Marian Patten, age 78, who was taken by ambulance to Queen’s Hospital in Romford,  England with chest pains and pneumonia.  After 15 hours she was still waiting to be treated.  She had not yet been wheeled into the hallway, and that was actually a good sign, because apparently that was a place reserved for patients facing a wait longer than 15 hours.

Upon reading this, I could not help but contrast this with the healthcare my 90+ year old mother-in-law received at a private hospital in Colorado.  She had fallen while visiting a museum and had cut her scalp.  There was blood, but not as much as one might expect from a head wound.  Fortunately a hospital was close by, and I drove my wife and mother-in-law to the hospital and dropped them off at the front door.  I then went to park the car.  Parking the car and walking back to the hospital waiting room probably took no more than three or four minutes.  I expected to see them sitting in waiting room chairs.  But all the chairs there were empty.  The receptionist told me my mother in law, accompanied by my wife, had already been taken back for treatment.  When I went to the room where my mother in law was being treated, I was astonished to see four or five gowned hospital doctors, nurses and aides working on her — and it wasn’t a very serious cut!  All’s well that ends well, and she was discharged with a bandage about one hour later.

Getting back to the paradise of socialized medicine as practiced in Great Britain, The New York Time writes “ . . . the N.H.S. [National Health Service], a proud symbol of Britain’s welfare state, is in the deepest crisis of its history:  flooded by aging, enfeebled patients; starved of investment in equipment and facilities; and understaffed by doctors and nurses, many of whom are so burned out that they are either joining strikes or leaving for jobs abroad.”  It turns out that 7.4 million people in Britain are on waiting lists for medical procedures.  That’s up from 4.1 million before Covid.  The only saving grace, it turns out, is that the sick and feeble in Britain are dying like flies.  Since dead people don’t need medical care, this is a kind of escape valve reducing pressure in the system.  The current “excess death rate” is the highest in 50 years.

On top of all this, there is simmering labor unrest.  It turns out that junior doctors are paid at the same level as baristas in a coffee shop:  “ . . . doctors were picketing outside, protesting starting wages that are comparable to those earned by baristas working at Pret-a-Manger, a sandwich chain in the hospital’s lobby.”  (Again quoting The New York Times).  Like some high-level apparatchik in the former Soviet Union, British Prime Minister Rishi Sundak has a plan.  He announced a 15-year plan (much better than the Soviet Union’s paltry five year plans, don’t you think?) to recruit and train new doctors and nurses.  But here’s the catch:  nothing in Sundak’s plan would raise wages for doctors or nurses!  Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Here are a few other gems from the article.  At one London hospital, it was discovered that dirty water from a leaking pipe was dripping on a circuit board controlling sophisticated medical equipment.  Perhaps most disturbing of all, only 48 percent of patients with serious illnesses or injuries are treated within four hours of admission to a hospital.  So if you are dying of a massive heart attack or bleeding out from external and internal injuries, there is a 52 percent chance you will have to wait more than four hours to be treated.  Now isn’t that special?

In summary, N.H.S.’s health plan is much like Obama’s health plan:  Don’t get sick or injured.

One wonders whether Canada’s socialized health system in the Great White North is more like Great Britain’s system or the United States’s system.  I have yet to see a New York Times article on that.  However, on a recent cruise where there were many Canadian passengers, I had an opportunity to ask a Canadian what he thought of Canada’s health care system. Based upon his answer, it was apparent he was not a great fan of Canadian health care.  He told me that his daughter had to wait two years for a knee replacement.  Unfortunately, due to favoring the good knee during the two year wait, the good knee had deteriorated into a bad knee by the time she had her other bad knee replaced.

It’s said that a socialist scheme always fails in the end because the scheme eventually runs out of other people’s money.  British and Canadian socialized medicine seem to prove the point. Obamacare is probably not far behind.