{"id":4531,"date":"2026-07-15T10:38:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=4531"},"modified":"2026-07-15T10:38:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:38:55","slug":"health-care-socialism-is-transforming-americas-workforce-for-the-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=4531","title":{"rendered":"Health care socialism is transforming America’s workforce \u2014 for the worse"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

America has a socialism problem, and it\u2019s bigger than most citizens realize.<\/p>\n

When candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America win Democratic Party primaries, or New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani hails \u201cthe warmth of collectivism,\u201d socialism\u2019s advance is obvious.<\/p>\n

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But it\u2019s making gains in other ways, too, especially in the transformation of America\u2019s workforce \u2014 which is coming to be chiefly employed in a sector one step removed from outright government control: health care.<\/p>\n

In 1990, manufacturing was the top employment sector in most states, including New York and California.<\/p>\n

Today, health care is the nation\u2019s biggest employer, No. 1 in almost every individual state \u2014 New York, California, Texas, even Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

When Mary Talley Bowden, the founder of Americans for Health Freedom, posted a chart on X last weekend illustrating this revolution in American labor, it went viral, garnering more than 2.5 million views and eliciting hundreds of follow-up comments.<\/p>\n

Yet America hasn\u2019t changed from a nation of makers into a nation of caregivers.<\/p>\n

Health-care employment is growing mainly because we\u2019re adding far more administrators.<\/p>\n

True, there are rising numbers of in-home caregivers and other medical personnel devoted to the country\u2019s senior population.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But much of the health-care workforce consists of an army of bureaucrats whose jobs are based on keeping up with government regulation.<\/p>\n

This is the 21st-century twist on socialism: Instead of government owning industry outright, it forces industries to remodel themselves as Washington directs.<\/p>\n

Health care isn\u2019t the only victim of this \u2014 compliance bureaucracies and human-resources departments set up to address mountains of federal, state and local regulations have taken root everywhere.<\/p>\n

But health care is special: Not only is it more heavily regulated than other fields, it\u2019s tied to the massive entitlement systems of Medicare and Medicaid, and a host of lesser programs as well.<\/p>\n

And the socialists who are an increasingly powerful bloc in the Democratic Party aren\u2019t content with the slow conversion of American health care into a quasi-public sector.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re eager to expand Medicare into \u201cMedicare for All,\u201d and many still dream of outright nationalization of medicine, on the model of Britain\u2019s National Health Service.<\/p>\n

Whether the takeover occurs gradually through regulation or suddenly at a stroke, the consequences of merging health care and government are monumental for social values as well as for the economy.<\/p>\n

Progressives see gaining power over medicine as a shortcut to winning battles over abortion, euthanasia, biological sex and gender, and much else.<\/p>\n

And the more Americans are made dependent on government \u2014 for their health or for their jobs \u2014 the less free they are to vote against those running the system.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s effort to bring back manufacturing jobs is, among other things, an attempt to restore balance and freedom to our economy.<\/p>\n

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Tariffs that stop foreign producers from flooding the American market are just a first step, one that must be coupled with creating a competitive environment for domestic firms.<\/p>\n

A multiplicity of domestic producers keeps prices down \u2014 and gives workers more choices, as companies must compete to offer the best wages and benefits.<\/p>\n

Well-paid private-sector workers, whose jobs are helped by protection but not merely a byproduct of government regulation, are secure enough to exercise political choice, too.<\/p>\n

Yet too many Republicans and libertarians are so repulsed by tariffs that they fail to see how much worse the alternative is.<\/p>\n

\u201cHealth care pays more than manufacturing ($39.80 vs $36.70 per hour),\u201d and \u201cis harder to automate\/offshore,\u201d wrote Cato Institute scholar Jeremy Horpedahl in response to the news of health care\u2019s workforce dominance and manufacturing\u2019s decline.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s like saying it\u2019s better to have people employed by the federal bureaucracy than the private sector, as long as government jobs pay more.<\/p>\n

Manufacturing isn\u2019t free from regulation, but even when tariffs are involved, it\u2019s less government-dependent than health care.<\/p>\n

Horpedahl himself, like many libertarian economists, is, ironically, a government employee \u2014 a professor at the University of Central Arkansas, a public institution.<\/p>\n

Although libertarians and old-guard Republicans are sincere in their beliefs, they\u2019re not consistent.<\/p>\n

And it often seems that class consciousness is involved in their disdain for manufacturing.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

America isn\u2019t facing a choice between perfect, government-free capitalism and anything else.<\/p>\n

Instead, our choice is between a new form of socialism \u2014 in which government and private-sector bureaucracy blend together and employ increasing numbers of Americans \u2014 or a freer market, safeguarded by populist and nationalist politics.<\/p>\n

Yes, the new socialism is compatible with free trade and cheap foreign goods for just the reason Horpedahl cites: Those goods don\u2019t compete with domestic bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

But friends of freedom should make no mistake, tariffs are a small price to pay for less socialism \u2014 and a country is only as free as its workforce.<\/p>\n

Manufacturing jobs made America great and free once before, and medical bureaucracy is no substitute.<\/p>\n

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Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The consequences of merging health care and government are monumental for social values as well the economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daniel-mccarthy","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nHealth care socialism is transforming America's workforce \u2014 for the worse - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=4531\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Health care socialism is transforming America's workforce \u2014 for the worse - 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