Leftist efforts to impose greater government control over Americans’ healthcare despite public opposition is nothing new. What’s more novel today is that they’re willing to throw one of their most reliable constituencies – labor unions and their rank-and-file members – under the bus to achieve their ends.

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Michael Barone, the dean of American politics, has often observed that the omnipresent challenge facing the Democratic party throughout its long history has been the task of proverbially herding cats. 

That is, Democrats have always been a tenuous amalgam of disparate and sometimes conflicting splinter groups and special interests.  As Barone notes, that inherent tension often generates conflict: 

[T]he Republican Party is the party of people who are considered, by themselves and by others, as “normal Americans” – Northern white Protestants in the 19th century, married white Christians more recently – while the Democratic Party is the party of the “out groups” who are in some sense seen, by themselves and by others, as not “normal” – white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, blacks and white seculars more recently.  Thus, it’s natural for the Democrats to be more fissiparous. 

Today’s most conspicuous division centers upon the healthcare issue vis-à-vis one of the political left’s most important constituencies:  labor unions. 

That’s because at various times, and depending upon the audience they’re attempting to placate, the 2020 Democratic candidates have advocated varying methods of increasing government control of Americans’ healthcare, including a complete takeover and elimination of private forms of insurance.  As if government control of such things as public schools and the Post Office has proven so successful. 

Nevertheless, the reason those proposals run counter to labor unions’ interests is that unions sell themselves as effective bargainers for employee medical benefits from employers.  Remove that issue from the collective bargaining equation, and unions’ raison d’etre narrows, as expressed by International Association of Fire Fighters president Harold Schaitberger: 

We’ve spent a lot of time and effort developing plans that recognize the uniqueness of our members’ profession, the health consequences and exposures related to our work, including behavioral health issues like PTSD, drug addiction and alcohol abuse.  We question whether a government-wide, government-run plan for everyone would ever be able to recognize those unique circumstances. 

To his credit, former 2020 Democratic candidate and Congressman Tim Ryan (D – Ohio) attempted to introduce an element of reason during the Democratic candidates’ debate, before he realized he’s far too moderate to remain in contention and dropped out of the race: 

This plan being offered by Senator Warren and Senator Sanders will tell those union members who gave away wages in order to get good healthcare that they’re going to lose their healthcare because Washington’s going to come in and tell them they got a better plan. 

Tough luck, apparently. 

And not just for the working class and labor union members, either.  Approximately 80% of the American public regularly reports that they’re happy with their existing healthcare.  But that’s of little import against the political left’s insatiable hunger for more control over our lives and economy. 

Exacerbating matters this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D – California) own effort to deepen government control over Americans’ healthcare came to light. 

Bloomberg Law released a memorandum leaking central components of Speaker Pelosi’s proposed pharmaceutical bill, and the substance bends even further left than anticipated.  Following Bernie Sanders’ lead, the proposal would impose the most extreme price control laws ever imposed in the United States.  The bill would also import foreign nations’ price control schemes to America, which would in turn mean that we’d ultimately suffer the same deficit of new lifesaving drugs that other nations now suffer in comparison to the U.S. 

Leftist efforts to impose greater government control over Americans’ healthcare despite public opposition is nothing new.  What’s more novel today is that they’re willing to throw one of their most reliable constituencies – labor unions and their rank-and-file members – under the bus to achieve their ends. 

Margaret Thatcher famously observed that, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”  Well, labor unions and their members are beginning to realize that the “other people’s money” upon which today’s socialized medicine proposals rely may be their own.