Director, Commonwealth Policy Center

A headline of a major British newspaper said "One million patients a week cannot get a General Practitioner appointment, statistics show." Great Britain is touted as a model for state managed health care, but as the headline said, too many patients aren't able to get appointments with their doctor. A survey found that doctors were working under “unsustainable” pressure, leaving large numbers of patients without any help. Altogether, 15 per cent of patients failed to get any help. This report out of England shows the downside of big government's involvement with health care and it's relevant to our conversation. Obamacare made lofty promises. But it failed to deliver and now its up to Congress to fix the mess in order to avoid a similar crisis that's now happening in England.