Article from Town Hall by Guy Benson.

Last time we checked in on Britain’s National Health Services — often hailed as the model of a functioning socialized healthcare regime — government bureaucrats were proposing a suspension of certain surgeries for smokers and obese patients.  Why?  To alleviate funding crises via an extreme government rationing scheme, under which “NHS will ban patients from surgery indefinitely unless they lose weight or quit smoking.”  This proposal was to build off of similar regional cuts that had been already been implemented: “A number of areas have introduced delays for such patients – with some told operations will be put back for months, during which time they are expected to try to lose weight or stop smoking,” the Telegraph reported.   That was in October. How are things going across the pond today?  New draconian measures:

Socialized medicine update: Britain cancels 50,000 surgeries as NHS hospitals face winter crisis https://t.co/KnDx3kQcPy

— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) January 3, 2018

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A blanket, nationwide ban on all “non-urgent” until at least next month, with overcrowded state hospitals leaving sick and elderly patients in hallways, and treatment in some areas deteriorating to “third world” levels.  Wait times for care have hit 12 hours, with ambulances forming long lines outside hospitals (hardly unprecedented over there) lasting hundreds of combined hours, forcing vulnerable citizens to travel to emergency in taxis and private vehicles, due to a chronic ambulance backlog.  This is single-payer healthcare, operating in an advanced Western nation that has had their system in place for decades.  A fundamentally flawed system, insufficient resources and an aging population are proving to be a recipe for disaster.

And that disaster is exactly what Bernie Sanders and a bevy of Democratic presidential hopefuls have in mind for the American people — this, despite the stunning fiscal realities that have blocked far-left states like Vermont and Californiafrom implementing “universal healthcare” fantasies.  Those stalled proposals would have roughly doubled the entire budgets of each state, offering absolutely no viable plan to make up those extraordinary funding gaps.  The Bernie/Warren wing of the Democratic Party looks at these cautionary tales and responds, “full speed ahead — let’s impose that upon the whole country.”  And how would they even start to partially fund their reckless experiment?  Massive across-the-board tax increases on the middle class and working Americans.  That’s according to the chairman of their own party.  Back to Britain, and this harrowing statistic, paired with a real-life example of the impact…

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