Despite Election Defeat, Health Policy ‘Experts’ Still Push Marxism

The left often manages to act in such an absurd way as to parody itself. One of those instances recently came to light via a publication by Health Affairs, which purports to craft an agenda for the new administration. 

Spoiler alert to Health Affairs and its readers: Few if any of the people in these agenda-crafting efforts will get anywhere near the new administration. And they shouldn’t — if for no other reason than that the people involved with creating these policies appear to have absolutely no sense of politics or an understanding of the electorate.

Forthcoming (Marxist) Policy Proposals

The week of the inauguration, Health Affairs launched its 2025 “Vital Directions” agenda with an online introduction describing and summarizing six commissioned essays to be published in the journal’s next issue. But one doesn’t need to have a subscription to the journal, or to read the six essays when they are published, to recognize that these policies directly oppose not just President Trump’s agenda but what the American people voted for in November when they elected him.

For starters, the introductory article uses the word “equity” or some variation thereof (e.g., “equitable”) no fewer than 17 times in a roughly 3,300-word piece. Seventeen times.

Heck, “equity” is a subject of one of the essays — namely, “addressing the impact of climate change on health and equity.” Here’s how the online introduction describes the essay:

Climate change presents an unprecedented threat to human health and well-being in the United States and worldwide. … These effects are already disproportionately affecting socially and economically disadvantaged communities, exacerbating health disparities. … The authors call for a transition to clean energy sources by halting new fossil fuel infrastructure, repealing fossil fuel subsidies, and increasing funding for zero-carbon energy sources.

Translation: The American people — including those in “economically disadvantaged communities” — should pay higher prices at the pump, not to mention the grocery store, so the woke crowd can virtue-signal about how it’s promoting “equity.” So much for the electorate using their votes to affect the inflation crushing their families!

It goes on from there, generally promoting Green New Deal-type concepts couched in the language of health policy. About the only surprise comes from one of the authors of this paper: Bill Frist, former Senate Majority Leader, R-Tenn. I’ve lived in Washington long enough to remember when he was considered a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Thank God that didn’t happen.

Another essay comes from (among others) Donald Berwick, who proposes a “bold transformation of the US health care system,” one where “racial and ethnic health disparities are eliminated,” which will require “investing in health equity.” For those who don’t remember — and how could you forget? — Berwick is the technocrat who briefly headed the Medicare and Medicaid programs under Barack Obama but never got confirmed because the Democrats running the Senate at the time refused to bring him up for a vote. A supporter of socialized medicine with views so radical as to fail to advance in a Democratic-controlled Senate is not exactly the type of person Health Affairs should look to when crafting a politically feasible agenda.

Read the Room, People!

That pretty much sums up the whole Health Affairs endeavor in a nutshell: a group of academics proposing policies that have little chance of getting enacted. Granted, long lead times for a peer-reviewed publication may mean the articles in question were written well before the election.

But publishing these types of articles in the current environment looks politically tone deaf — because it is politically tone deaf. The American people just voted to end racial divisiveness and discrimination under the guise of “equity” and hold accountable the people responsible for years of Covid lockdowns and all that resulted from them. Yet this health care clerisy continues to act as if nothing changed on Nov. 5 and that lawmakers will readily double down on an agenda voters have rejected — the policy equivalent of “more cowbell!”

The old saying holds that there is no educational value in the second kick of a mule. But if the health policy “experts” keep acting like election results don’t matter, and that voters are mere pawns that elites may order around as they please, it may take more than one election “kick” for this group to craft policies and messaging that can win broad bipartisan support.