‘Don’t Europe our healthcare system’: Think tank urges rejection of big government healthcare

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(The Center Square) – Amid “healthcare for all” policies promoted by political candidates such as Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas James Talarico, free-market think tank Heartland Impact launched a campaign highlighting what it says is the harm government-controlled healthcare causes to patients, while urging America to reject such European-esque healthcare policies 

Heartland Impact executive director Cameron Sholty told The Center Square that “lawmakers should outright reject European-style healthcare mandates in our states.”

“Expanding government control of healthcare will inevitably lead to waitlists, drug rationing, and poor patient outcomes for Americans,” Sholty said. 

“State lawmakers should focus instead on helping President Trump tackle the waste, fraud, and abuse that run rampant in our current healthcare system, beginning with the woke 340B hospital program,” Sholty said.

As Heartland Impact’s new campaign notes, the 340B program was created in 1992 and was “meant to help safety-net providers stretch scarce resources and serve low-income patients.”

“Today, it is less a targeted lifeline for vulnerable patients than a loosely regulated revenue stream for large hospital systems,” Heartland said.

Heartland’s campaign stated that 340B “oversight is weak and largely dependent on self-policing.”

The campaign explained how “hospitals can purchase drugs at steep discounts and then charge insurers — and sometimes patients — full price, pocketing the difference,” with no requirement to pass savings on to patients.

340B has also been tied to “waste, fraud, and abuse concerns,” the campaign said, with the Government Accountability Office warning of “insufficient oversight and a heightened risk of improper use.”

Heartland’s campaign not only details big government healthcare failures touching America, but also European healthcare problems, the campaign stating: “Don’t Europe our Healthcare System.”

Heartland said that with a big government healthcare system, European cancer patients may wait nearly two years after a drug is approved before it is available to them, which often proves to be “the difference between life and death.”

Additionally, over seven million cases are on the National Health Service’s waiting lists, with patients suffering from critical illnesses such as cancer and heart disease forced to be “routinely delayed for months.”

79,130 names were removed from the National Health Service’s waiting list from September 2024 to August 2025 because patients died before their names reached the top, according to a study cited by Heartland.

“With proposals like Medicare for All, and Most Favored Nation drug rationing, we could bring those same bad outcomes to America,” Heartland Impact warned.

As an example, Talarico – a candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas – is running on a “Medicare for Y’all” campaign idea that would allow every American to join Medicare, regardless of age.

Heartland Impact released an ad in Texas on what it says are the dangers of “universal care,” or “Medicare for all,” type political ideas, encouraging Texans to tell their elected officials they are against "failed" European healthcare policies entering their state.

Talarico further wishes to “protect and improve the Affordable Care Act” and reverse Trump’s cuts to Obamacare’s enhanced tax credits, Medicare, and Medicaid, as a part of his healthcare plan.

Talarico also stands for codifying Roe v. Wade and is against efforts to privatize the VA.

Talarico’s campaign has not yet responded to The Center Square’s request for comment.