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
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<\/a>, 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 \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDaniel McCarthy<\/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<\/a>, 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<\/a> are monumental for social values as well as for the economy.<\/p>\n