This is Part 3 of the series on Agenda 2030.
Goal 3 is universal healthcare for all. This is basically a call for global socialized medicine, including “universal health coverage”, and “access to reproductive healthcare, treatment for substance abuse, and fighting various communicable and treating non-communicable diseases”, as well as access to “affordable essential medicines and vaccines” for all. It proposes recruiting and training healthcare workers in developing and least-developed countries.
There is only one problem with this goal: countries that have embraced socialized medicine and universal health coverage have experienced numerous problems, such as long (think months or even years) waiting times to be seen by a physician; long waiting times for referrals to specialists, and the adoption of measures to reduce healthcare costs such as assisted euthanasia (such as has been implemented in Canada), with concern raised that starting in 2023, “mature” minors can be euthanized without parental consent.
Early in my nursing career (in the 1980s), I thought the idea of universal healthcare for all was wonderful and even considered going overseas to work in the UK, where this had been adopted. But then, I began talking to nurses from there and from Canada, who described the nightmare of trying to work within a large, bureaucratic system in which heart-breaking choices were being discussed, such as: at what age do we no longer provide dialysis for the elderly? How much care for premature infants can we subsidize? Who gets to have a kidney transplant? While nations that have private healthcare also face these issues, these nations faced them decades before we have.
They also mentioned burnt-out physicians who were working long hours for low pay under this system, which they felt compromised the quality of care provided. When I asked, “What do people do when they can’t wait for specialty care?” to my astonishment, I was told, “They pay for private care, either in-country or in other nations.”
Their statements are backed up by an article written in 2011 by Sally Pipes (former President of the Pacific Research Institute) in which she discusses serious problems that socialized medicine has brought to the UK and Canada. When a recession forced the UK’s National Health System (NHS) to trim its budget by reducing healthcare staff and shutting down some hospitals, the result was (drastically) lowered quality of patient care, lengthened wait times for elective surgeries and “raising the threshold at which patients qualify for treatment” (Pipes, S. “The ugly realities of socialized medicine are not going away.” Forbes, 12/19/2011).
The tragedy is that UK citizens continued to pay high taxes for this “free healthcare” from an overburdened, underfinanced, inefficient, and stressed system (ibid).
Pipes also notes that Canada, which also has universal health coverage (and also has high taxes to pay for it), has similar problems, with a survey by the Health Council of Canada showing that those with chronic illnesses were largely unhappy with their healthcare and that some Canadians, frustrated with the long waiting times for treatment, chose to travel to the U.S. to pay privately due to the long wait for healthcare (ibid).
So, if a country (or a world) chooses to adopt universal health coverage as the UN proposes, what kind of wait times can we come to expect as a result?
We can get an idea by looking at wait times that countries that already offer universal health coverage experience. In the UK, in 2016, 3.7 million people in this country were on waiting lists for non-urgent operations (Cruz, T. 2017. fact sheet: Socialized medicine is a failure everywhere it’s been tried. More than 360,000 of those on wait lists had been waiting for treatment for more than 18 weeks (the minimum waiting time), resulting in 1 in 14 people living in England being on an NHS waiting list (Telegraph, cited by Cruz, 2017).
So, if the globe adopts universal health coverage, your chance of being placed on a waitlist of months will increase dramatically.
The UK is not the only country with universal health coverage that experiences long wait times; patients in Denmark and Norway also experience long wait times to treat conditions such as cataracts or to have surgery for a knee replacement (ibid).
One of the cruelest results of universal health coverage is that the resulting overburdened health system must often deny or reduce care to some of its most vulnerable: the elderly. Under such a system, they are likely to be denied surgical treatment for diseases such as breast cancer.
Affordable healthcare for everyone in the world, as described in Goal 3 sounds good at first glance, but the question then becomes: who funds it? And how much will be funded? Who will not have coverage under it?
These are all serious questions because inevitably, universal healthcare requires significant taxation to pay for these services. And if global healthcare is adopted, less and least-developed nations will be unlikely to have the tax base for this funding. Where, then, will the tax burden be placed? I suspect it will be laid at the feet of the more developed (e.g. “wealthier”) nations and their citizens.
A recent literature review of issues regarding the implementation of Goal 3 highlights that others are concerned about the funding of this goal as well:
“A key implementation concern about the sustainable development agenda has been the inadequacy of available government funding and this has emerged as the most prominent challenge in our findings. Development partners and the private sector (e.g., corporate and philanthropic sectors) are being engaged to enhance funding, yet crucial gaps remain in domestic funding in many countries. As recommended in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on development financing, it is desirable to rely on domestic resources for increasing funding” (Wafa Aftab’; Fahad Javaid Siddiqui; Hana Tasic, et al. Implementation of health and health-related sustainable development goals: progress, challenges, and opportunities – a systematic literature review. BMJ Global Health. 2020; 5:e002273. doi:10.1136/ bmjgh-2019-002273).
This seems to imply that the funding, at least for now, will need to come from outside the countries that need healthcare the most. Again, this raises the concern: who will pay for this? And, is this payment voluntary?
Ultimately, the real question becomes: how many citizens of the United States, or of other member nations, are actually aware of Agenda 2030, and its current impact on the decisions within our own nation that our leaders are making? Because Obamacare and other universal care packages reflect the call to universal basic health coverage described in this agenda. Those who propose this kind of healthcare for our nation appear to be taking their agenda straight from this Agenda.
But how much input have citizens had into whether this agenda should have been adopted – an agenda that appears to drive decisions with the ongoing financial impact made by our executive branch even today?
In Part 4, I will address Goal 4 (Education), which is one factor in why graphic sexual education is part of the mandated curriculum for school systems that embrace Agenda 2030.
Missed Parts 1 and 2? You can read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE.
