Far-left Democrats are in the early stages of a push for a government-run healthcare system in the U.S. For example, during the confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last week, everybody’s favorite socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, said that during the testimony he “had not heard one word about the need [in America] for universal healthcare that exists in every country on earth.” The push began in the wake of the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In response to that, Sanders claimed that “what you have seen rising up is people’s anger at a health insurance industry which denies people the healthcare that they desperately need while they make billions and billions of dollars in profit.” Many of the usual suspects, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also chimed in. Rep. Ro Khana stated that the assassination shows the U.S. needs “Medicare for All.” What these Democrats want in the U.S. is a single-payer system, much like the one in Canada. Under a single-payer system, the government is the primary, if not only, payer for healthcare services. Hospitals and doctors must follow government edicts, or they don’t get paid. To counter this, Republicans and conservatives need to make the case against single-payer. A good place to start is with one of its foremost advocates, Wendell Potter. Potter was vice president of corporate communications for insurer CIGNA when, in 2008, he had a crisis of conscience and resigned. In an op-ed about the murder of Thompson, Potter claimed one reason he left CIGNA was “that shareholders, not patient outcomes, tend to drive decisions at for-profit health insurance companies.” For the mainstream media, he is the go-to critic of the U.S. health system. After all, what better spokesman for government-run healthcare than an insurance industry apostate? Potter now runs the Center for Health and Democracy from which he is peddling false hope. He praises Canada “where there are no co-pays, deductibles or coinsurance for covered benefits. Care is free at the point of service.” His organization’s “core belief is that healthcare should be driven not by industry profits and greed, but by the needs and rights of every American to get the quality care they need without concern for cost.” Anyone who thinks that humans can do something without concern for cost believes in fairy tales. Everything involves trade-offs, and healthcare is no exception. If individuals don’t pay for healthcare out-of-pocket or through insurance, they’ll pay for it in other ways, like taxes or, worse, long waits for care. Canada’s Healthcare is a Cautionary Tale — Not an Inspirational Model In Canada, health authorities recommend that patients who need a hip or knee replacement wait no more than six months and those who need cataract surgery wait no more than four months. In 2023, 34 percent of hip replacement patients, 41 percent of knee replacement patients, and 30 percent of cataract patients waited more than the recommended time. It even affects patients with hip fractures, with 18 percent waiting more than 48 hours for emergency surgery. The tragedy of wait times in Canada has been going on for years. About two decades ago, Diane Gorsuch died of a heart attack after waiting two years for cardiac surgery. More recently, 18-year-old leukemia patient Laura Hillier died while waiting for a bone marrow transplant. Yet to hear Potter tell it, it is a “myth” perpetuated by insurance companies that “Canadians and people in other single-payer countries have to endure long waits for needed care.” While Potter concedes that Canadians sometimes wait for procedures like knee replacements, the truth, he says, “is that they do not have to wait at all for the vast majority of medical services.” It’s not clear on what Potter bases that claim. The wait time problem isn’t limited to surgeries. Only 26 percent of adults in Canada report being able to get a same-day or next-day appointment with a primary care physician. (In the U.S., it’s 46 percent.) The Canadian Medical Association reports that nearly three in 10 Canadians are looking for a primary-care physician and most have been looking for years without success. After failing to debunk a myth, Potter takes a shot at creating one: “Over the past 13 years, tens of thousands of Americans have probably died prematurely because, unlike our neighbors to the north, they either had no coverage or were so inadequately insured that they couldn’t afford the care they needed.” [Emphasis added.] That implies that Canadians don’t die due to inadequate coverage. But since 2018, at least 74,677 Canadians have died while waiting for surgery or a diagnostic test according to data collected by the Canadian think tank Second Street. That statistic is an overcount because it doesn’t differentiate between procedures where a lengthy wait can kill, like heart surgery, and others in which waits can be painful but not likely fateful, such as knee replacement. However, it is also an undercount because nearly 40 percent of Canadians live in areas where the health authorities fail to collect such data. Where there is some precision, the data tell a harrowing story. In the province of Ontario, 1,046 patients have died while waiting for cardiac surgery over the last dozen years. Of those, 285 (27 percent) waited more than the recommended time. If one in four patients die because they wait too long for life-saving treatment, then Canada is not the model the U.S. should follow. But it is the model that far-left Democrats will push for. On paper, at least, rallying around government-run healthcare makes sense for Democrats. Democrats are reeling in the wake of the November election. The public is not on board with many of the policies they champion like DEI, the trans agenda, or open borders. Healthcare is an exception. Polls still show that by large margins the public trusts Democrats over Republicans when it comes to making healthcare affordable. With the party in disarray, a campaign for single-payer healthcare might be just what the Democrats need. It may seem like a pipedream with Republicans in control of all branches of the federal government. But in early 2005, a Republican held the presidency, and the GOP controlled the House and Senate. Barely five years later, Obamacare became law. There is no excuse for getting caught flat-footed this time. The time for Republicans and conservatives to start making the case to Americans that single-payer is a terrible idea is now. READ MORE from David Hogberg: Blaming the Middleman Won’t Lower Prescription Drug Prices Pharmacy Benefit Managers Are Politicians’ Next Health Care Scapegoat Martha’s Vineyard Freakout Exposes Sanctuary Cities as Frauds The post Democrats Are Pushing for Government-Run Healthcare. The Time to Begin Fighting It Is Now. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.