Health care socialism is transforming Americas workforce for the worse

America has a socialism problem, and it’s bigger than most citizens realize.When candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America win Democratic Party primaries, or New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani hails “the warmth of collectivism,” socialism’s advance is obvious.But it’s making gains in other ways, too, especially in the transformation of America’s workforce — which is coming to be chiefly employed in a sector one step removed from outright government control: health care.In 1990, manufacturing was the top employment sector in most states, including New York and California.Today, health care is the nation’s biggest employer, No.1 in almost every individual state — New York, California, Texas, even Pennsylvania.When Mary Talley Bowden, the founder of Americans for Health Freedom, posted a chart on X last weekend illustrating this revolution in American labor, it went viral, garnering more than 2.5 million views and eliciting hundreds of follow-up comments.Yet America hasn’t changed from a nation of makers into a nation of caregivers.Health-care employment is growing mainly because we’re adding far more administrators.True, there are rising numbers of in-home caregivers and other medical personnel devoted to the country’s senior population. But much of the health-care workforce consists of an army of bureaucrats whose jobs are based on keeping up with government regulation.This is the 21st-century twist on socialism: Instead of government owning industry outright, it forces industries to remodel themselves as Washington directs.Health care isn’t the only victim of this — compliance bureaucracies and human-resources departments set up to address mountains of federal, state and local regulations have taken root everywhere.But health care is special: Not only is it more heavily regulated than other fields, it’s tied to the massive entitlement systems of Medicare and Medicaid, and a host of lesser programs as well.And the sociali...