The fastest way to reduce a nation from free to unfree is for its government to take charge of its health.

It may also be a reliable way to shrink the nation. Countries with national health services also have low fertility rates.

It’s a pleasant enough state of affairs for some members of the medical profession in such countries in this twilight of the West. True, the underpaid general practitioners are worked half to death, but obstetricians and pediatricians take early retirement, and geriatricians take long vacations from their stints of duty on the death panels. Undertakers buy stately homes.

If central government takes over health care in America, nothing will be different. Just bigger. To treat the only large demographics, young adults and the able-bodied middle-aged – in other words, those who escaped the abortionist’s scissors and are not yet old enough to be denied all curative measures – the inflictors of medical care will need large accommodations.

Justin Haskins discusses the prospect of a US national health service at Townhall :

Until recently, only the far left of the Democratic Party openly called for … socialized medicine. Few remember that when the Democrats last had control of the House of Representatives, in 2010, most Democrats chose to reject pushing for a single-payer health care model, despite the fact they had control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Even then-President Barack Obama, a longtime supporter of enacting a single-payer scheme, told members of his party that it would be better, at least temporarily, to pursue a more moderate course.

Fast-forward to 2018. Emboldened by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s success in pushing his “Medicare for All” single-payer model while running for president in 2016, many congressional Democrats have radically changed their tune. Not only has single-payer health care become one of the defining issues for Democrats today, in many respects, it seems as though it’s the party’s only issue … other than calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, of course.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to federal elections. Many gubernatorial candidates are saying it’s time for government to take over the health care marketplace. For instance, in “purple” Florida, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, the Democrats’ choice to recapture Florida’s governorship, has been a vocal supporter of Sanders’s single-payer scheme, although he admits it would be difficult for Florida to enact single-payer on its own.

But while the cries for socialized medicine have grown louder in the United States, across the pond, England’s national health care program, the National Health Service, is facing huge difficulties liberals in America don’t want you to know about.

Earlier in October, reports emerged that the National Health Service’s forthcoming 10-year plan will include a policy change that will make group appointments with primary care doctors the “default” option for those with long-term health problems. Under the new model, patients will be expected to meet with doctors in groups of 15 to save money and time. …

During these group primary care visits, which will reportedly last about two hours each, patients will be expected to share their health care concerns as they would normally in more traditional one-on-one appointments.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Who would ever want to discuss sex, obesity, hemorrhoids, or any other deeply personal health care problem in front of a group of 14 other strangers—or, even worse, neighbors? But fear not! The government masterminds in England have a solution: Groups will be formed based on common health problems, such as diabetes and erectile dysfunction, because, you know, all people with diabetes and erectile dysfunction are basically the same. And to ensure no one in the group discusses the ailments of others when the group primary care session ends, each person will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement pledging not to share what they heard with people who weren’t present for the appointment.

It’s astonishing the faith politicians and bureaucrats have in pieces of paper! They believe a sheet or two can forestall every peril from gossip to war.

I can’t think of a more bizarre and insulting way to treat patients suffering from serious and sometimes embarrassing diseases than to force them to discuss their problems in front of a group of their peers, but this is the sort of thing that happens when the good of collective matters more than the rights of the individual.

This isn’t the only controversy facing the NHS, either. For several years, critics of the health care system have complained that it’s wildly underfunded and, as a result, suffering from long wait times for patients. …

No one denies the United States has plenty of health care problems of its own, and the Obamacare model imposed on Americans by the Democrats in 2010 has only made things significantly worse. But the solutions to those flaws in our current system can’t be found in the government-controlled systems of Canada or Europe because government almost always creates more problems than it solves …

This isn’t revolutionary thinking. Why would we put the same people who can’t operate the Postal Service, Amtrak, or the DMV in charge of the health care system?

The Dems’ proposal for an American national health service requires a wage decrease for doctors. Do the proposers understand that they may be launching a doctor shortage?

Will the American ill-paid doctors see people with similar conditions in batches of 15? As the population here is much bigger than in Britain, they may need to see them in batches of, say, 50. Row after row of examination tables in examination halls where the naked patients lie, hearing each other groan, seeing palsy shake each other’s few last grey hairs, or how youth has grown specter thin, and where but to think is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs. (Not original. Quoting John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale.)

There is a civil war raging in America – a “cold civil war”.

The always interesting political analyst David P. Goldman, aka Spengler, writes at the Asia Times:

The distinguished political scientist Angelo Codevilla coined the ominous term “cold civil war” to describe America’s precarious condition, adding, “Statesmanship’s first task is to prevent it from turning hot.”

The attempted massacre this week of Republican Congressmen and their staff by a deranged partisan of Sen. Bernie Sanders turned up the heat a notch, but it would be mistaken to attribute much importance to this dreadful outburst of left-wing rage. The augury of American fracture will not be street violence, but a constitutional crisis implicating virtually the whole of America’s governing caste. The shock troops in the cold civil war are not gunmen but lawyers.

Here we interrupt an argument that we very largely agree with, to cavil: Lawyers acting as shock troops in this cold civil war, and the politicians who employ them, are themselves making “a dreadful outburst of left-wing rage”, albeit with words and not guns.

A considerable portion of America’s permanent bureaucracy, including elements of its intelligence community, is engaged in an illegal and unconstitutional mutiny against the elected commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump. Most of the Democratic Party and a fair sampling of the Republican Establishment want to force Trump out of office, and to this end undertook an entrapment scheme to entice the president and his staff into actions which might be construed after the fact as obstruction of justice.

By means yet undisclosed, the mutineers forced Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn from office and now seek to bring down the president for allegedly obstructing an investigation of Gen. Flynn that arose in the first place from the entrapment scheme. …

By no coincidence is Gen. Flynn the central character in this scenario. … The CIA really is out to get him:

Flynn’s Defense Intelligence Agency produced a now-notorious 2012 report warning that chaos in Syria’s civil war enabled the rise of a new Caliphate movement, namely ISIS. … Flynn humiliated the bungling CIA and exposed the incompetence and deception of the Obama administration, and got fired for it. …

The mainstream media makes no effort to disguise its hatred for Trump and insinuates in countless ways that the president fired former FBI director James Comey in order to protect Gen. Flynn from a legitimate investigation. I do not believe this to be the case; I think it more likely that Comey showed insufficient zeal in uncovering the pattern of press leaks and other sabotage which the mutineers employed against the president.

Faced with a mutiny fed by illegal actions (leaking classified information is a felony that carries a 10-year prison sentence), the president requires a Pitbull for a counterintelligence chief. Comey, who in 2005 earned $6 million as general counsel for the giant defense contractor Lockheed Martin, is more of a Pomeranian. …

If it is proven that Russian cyber-spies hacked the email account of Democratic National Committee Chairman John Podesta and handed embarrassing information to Wikileaks, we will know that Russia has done what all intelligence agencies have done for centuries: leak embarrassing political information to the press.

Western intelligence services leak information about Putin’s alleged personal fortune and personal life and skullduggery to the media, as well as information about the dodgy connections of Chinese officials and their offspring to business.

Podesta and his gang at the DNC used unethical and perhaps illegal means to sandbag the campaign of Sen. Sanders, leaks about which embarrassed Hillary Clinton. Sanders, knowing on which side his bread is buttered, declined to make an issue of the sandbagging, allowing Trump’s enemies to transform what should have been an investigation of corruption in the Democratic Party into a fairy-tale about Russian spies stealing an American election with implied collusion by the Trump campaign.

The Trump-Russia collusion story is nonsense, as its disseminators know better than anyone else. The object of the exercise is not to support the innuendo, but to launch an investigation which can provoke the White House into responses that might be construed as illegal.

The intelligence leaks involved in framing the story alone are probably sufficient grounds to put several dozen senior officials in federal prison for double-digit terms. That consideration gauges the scale of the problem: the mutineers have committed multiple felonies, and their downside should the mutiny go wrong is not ignominious retirement but hard time at Leavenworth.

Oh, may it be so! It is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

For the moment, the mutineers have the momentum. The Trump administration continues to run on a skeleton staff, with the vast majority of key positions still unoccupied. If my surmise is correct, it was unable to persuade the director of the FBI, the nation’s chief watchdog, to undertake vigorous countermeasures against the mutiny, for example, a comprehensive screening of electronic communications by the reporters who received leaks of classified materials. …

The White House and in particular the National Security Council … remain riddled with Obama Administration holdovers, forcing Trump to rely on a close circle of trusted advisers. That limits the president’s ability to reach out for allies against the mutineers.

The installation of former FBI director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel … also constrains the counterintelligence operations of the White House. If senior intelligence officials claim to be engaged in counterintelligence investigations against Russian interference in US elections, is it obstruction of justice to investigate their illegal contacts with the media?

The mutineers also can count on the support of Establishment worthies like Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), for whom Trump’s election was an intolerable humiliation. Trump ran against the Bush wing of the Republican Party as much as he ran against the Democrats. …

Trump’s one great advantage in all of this is that he has done nothing wrong. He did not obstruct justice because there is no crime. The mutineers’ only hope is to provoke him to take actions which might be construed as obstruction of justice in an investigation with no crime and no victim. Still, it is a moment of great danger for the American Republic.

The mutiny has burned its bridges on the beach, and its perpetrators will risk everything to make it succeed. Whatever the outcome, the legitimacy of a political system designed to be litigious and oppositional will be called into question, and the polarization of American opinion will become more rather than less extreme.

More physical violence cannot be ruled out. The mutineers must lose the cold civil war, if only after inflicting crippling damage on the country. Then they face long years in jail (with a bit of luck and impartial justice from Trump appointed judges). The chances they will then turn to – or at least encourage – violence, are surely high. The Left will not surrender easily. It worked too long, too hard for victory, got it, and thought it had secured power for ever. It cannot let go without a no-holds-barred fight. It is mostly screaming biting and scratching now, but will almost certainly use guns and knives and all the weapons of mutiny that it can before it is forcibly crushed.

(Hat-tip for the Spengler article to our contributing commenter, liz)