New Amsterdam: Where's the Money?

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

NBC has a new show called "New Amsterdam" coming in the Fall Season about a public hospital that puts the Democrat Party's socialist pipe dream of universalized medicine into a television series.  The program's advertisements talk about putting patients first, treating regardless of insurance coverage, getting rid of waiting rooms, and operating without seeking profit.

If NBC wants to truly do this right, they should also run the television show without profit.  No advertisers.  No paychecks above a "livable wage" for the actors and behind the scenes personnel.  Put it also online so we don't have to wait until the day of the week it comes on.

The show, like the hospital if it was launched in the real world, would be off the air in weeks, if it was able to get out the gate at all.

Without profit there is no incentive.  When government claims to offer something for free, the takers storm the gates and overrun the system.  In the case of a hospital of the kind the television show is about, the waiting room wouldn't be big enough for all of the people arriving wanting free care.  The doctors and nurses, overworked and underpaid, would abandon their posts and seek private practices where they can make a good living without the socialist B.S.  The costs would eventually exceed expectations, and to try to trim expenditures the facility would begin to ration health care, and offer end of life counseling and assemble death panels.

Remember, as Margaret Thatcher so reminded us, "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

Let's also remember (also a Thatcher quote), "There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money."

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary