UK

“Have you noticed how we only win the World Cup under a Labour government?”

\ \

JUNE 5, 2026

Politicians seldom get it right when they talk about football, argues Mark Perryman.

In March 1966 Harold Wilson’s Labour Party won a landslide victory and just four months later Harold was there to celebrate when England for the first, and to date last, time lifted the World Cup at Wembley. 

Never mind the (disgraced) Peter Mandelson, England’s victory spurred Harold to the greatest piece of Labour spin-doctoring ever. Of course, Harold had been at the Final; infamously Harold sent one of his advisers to the BBC matchday studio to suggest he join commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme for some half-time punditry – an invitation that was promptly turned down. Perhaps they lacked the silky charm of (disgraced)  Peter Mandelson?!

Four years later, most unwisely Labour risked their 1970 General Election chances by choosing a date slap-bang in the middle of England’s defence of their World Cup at Mexico 1970.  The quarter-final defeat to West Germany  was widely blamed for Labour’s defeat just four days later.

Yes, really. Wilson’s Minister of Sport, and former League referee, Denis Howell, was better-placed than most to justify the impact: “The moment goalkeeper Bonetti made his third and final hash of it on the Sunday, everything simultaneously began to go wrong for Labour for the following Thursday.”

Labour and football, eh? Be careful what you wish for. Still at least 1970 General Election victor Ted Heath and his sundry Tory Prime Minister successors have proved incapable of robbing Harold’s sound-bite of it’s enduring truth.

But any kind of relationship between politics and international football in the particular context of England has a broader purpose than simply, win lose or draw supposedly being dependent on the party in government at the time. 

There is one crucial word that Harold gets spectacularly wrong: ‘we’. Great Britain is unique in international football, represented by four – and for the purposes of football at least – independent nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  It doesn’t require either pedantry or nationalism to recognise this. It’s a fact perhaps lost on Harold, or Keir, who every time a summer football tournament comes around will promptly, and very publicly, choose an England shirt for his go-to leisure wear. This tells us, or at least it should, everything we need to know about Labour Unionism.

Gordon Brown might have thought he was being helpful travelling out to  support England at World Cup 2006 as the British Prime Minister. Precious few England fans were won over while in his native Scotland it went down like a lead proverbial. Of course, not all Scotland fans are nationalists. But when in 1992 Jim Sillars lost his Govan seat that he’d won in an infamous 1988 SNP by-election defeat of Labour and angrily described the Tartan Army as “90-minute nationalists,” it was a very different era to now. The SNP are no longer a minor party, but, via the Scottish Parliament, a governing party with a formidable number of MPs at Westminster. If Harold could have got away with ‘we’ in 1966, in Scotland, Wales and the North of Ireland, he certainly couldn’t today; yet Keir wears his `England shirt regardless.

Such confusion is both muti-faceted and deep-rooted in Englishness. World Cup Quiz question: which is the only team at this summer’s tournament to line up before kick-off without a National Anthem of their own for them and their fans to belt out? England! God Save the King is the National Anthem of the United Kingdom, not England and just try asking the Scotland team to dop Flower of Scotland to join in too!

This isn’t pedantry, it gets to the core of Englishness, a contradictory mix of nationalism and unionism. The most vivid example of this is the spate of hanging flags, Union Jacks and St George Crosses, from lamp posts in a movement to ‘Unite the Kingdom’. Much of this is wrapped up in a version of English patriotism which does little to distinguish itself from bad old-fashioned racism.

Contrast this to what Harold’s ‘we’ has become. The Wembley 1966 final was full of Union Jacks, the St George scarcely present. The tournament mascot  ‘World Cup Willy’ wore a Union Jack. Yes, the only time England has not only won, but hosted too a World Cup and the FA got our flag wrong! 

Few England fans this summer will make this mistake: the St George Cross is Universal, home and away. And in sheer numbers it will absolutely dwarf those of the lamp post hangers too.  And the purpose dwarves them too. A St George Cross celebrating a multicultural team managed by a German on its own doesn’t make for an anti-racist, Europeanised nation, but given the popular-political will is a very welcome first step in both directions.

In July 2024 Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide victory and just two years later Keir was there to celebrate when England for the second time lifted the World Cup at the New York New Jersey stadium. 

Well, that’s one Labour pledge all of England can get behind. 

Mark Perryman is the co-founder of the self-styled ‘ sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction’ aka Philosophy Football.

Special Offer The Philosophy Football Harold Wilson T-shirt is available to Labour Hub readers at 25% off and postage free. Quote coupon code LHWC26 at checkout. From here. 

Borders, Ballgames and Global Players

Daniel Warner

 June 5, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Victor Wembenyama at 2025 NBA Cup. Photograph Source: Daiei Onoguchi – CC BY 4.0

The upcoming June 14 vote on limiting Switzerland’s population to 10 million is a daily reminder here in Geneva that nativist populism remains a powerful political force. In France, Marine Le Pen continues to build support on anti-immigration politics. Nigel Farage pushes similar anxieties in Britain. The AfD does the same in Germany. Donald Trump’s version is familiar: build walls, tighten borders, send ICE into cities. Across much of the West, hostility toward foreigners has become ordinary politics.

Which is why the recent announcement of the National Basketball Association’s All-NBA First Team was so striking. At the very moment politics is warning against outsiders, American sports is celebrating them. Four of the five players selected to the NBA’s top team were born outside the United States. The city game has gone global. (The phrase city game for basketball was popularized in Pete Axthelm’s The City Game, his classic account of New York basketball in the late 1960s.)

Chosen by a panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters covering the league, the All-NBA First Team included: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, from Canada; Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets, from Serbia; Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs, from France; Luka Dončić of the Los Angeles Lakers, from Slovenia. Only Cade Cunningham of the Detroit Pistons was American. Four of the league’s five best players were born abroad, representing four countries and starring in four different American cities.

That is not symbolic. It reflects a broader reality. As of the 2025–26 season, 135 NBA players were born outside the United States, the highest number in league history. They come from 43 countries across six continents. Roughly one in four players in the NBA is now international.

Now, for those who are not basketball fans, allow me to briefly explain the importance of basketball in the United States. It is one of America’s defining sports: invented in Springfield, Massachusetts, and perfected on playground courts like Rucker Park in Harlem. As Vinson Cunningham observed, “Basketball is one of New York’s great public spectacles: you can’t walk far without passing a hoop.” It is American in origin and mythology, embedded in the streets of New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Yet the league’s brightest stars increasingly arrive with accents, translators, and passports from elsewhere.

My beloved New York Knicks reflect the same global pattern: OG Anunoby was born in London, Pacôme Dadiet in France, Ariel Hukporti in Germany, and Karl-Anthony Towns represents the Dominican Republic in international competition.

Although New York’s Madison Square Garden (MSG) is considered the sport’s Mecca, the sport reaches far beyond cities. Even in Midwestern rural states like Indiana, basketball courts are woven into everyday life in countless driveways. “Mr. Indiana Basketball” is a major statewide honor—closer to a civic title than a routine sports award. (For anyone curious about Indiana basketball culture, Gene Hackman’s Hoosiers remains the reference point.)

Basketball is not a simple sports niche—it is a major entertainment industry. The NBA Finals regularly draw between 10 and 20 million U.S. viewers per game. The NBA generates billions in annual revenue; franchise valuations are among the highest in global sports, with a huge merchandising market (jerseys, sneakers, etc.).

Basketball is not alone in this globalization. The pattern of more and more foreign stars repeats in what has long been considered the American sport, baseball. On Major League Baseball’s opening day in 2026, 249 players—26.3 percent of the league—were born outside the United States. The Dominican Republic led with 93 players, Venezuela had 60, Cuba 20, Canada 19, and Japan 14. Others came from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Panama, Curaçao, Colombia, South Korea, Australia, Aruba, the Bahamas, Honduras, Nicaragua, Taiwan, and South Africa.

The reigning king of American baseball is a non-American. Shohei Ohtani, born in Japan, is now arguably the most extraordinary player the sport has ever seen. Both an elite pitcher and an elite hitter, Ohtani rightly challenges Babe Ruth as the sport’s greatest player. He is already a four-time Most Valuable Player winner. More and more postgame interviews now happen through translators because many of the game’s biggest stars, like Ohtani, are not native English speakers.

Politicians increasingly tell voters to fear foreigners. In Switzerland, we are told non-Swiss workers cause traffic jams and drive up housing costs. But Switzerland’s own national soccer team offers a similar picture of globalization. Several of its most prominent players have dual citizenship or family roots abroad. Yet the same anti-immigration voters will root for the entire team during the upcoming World Cup.

Like Swiss soccer fans, Americans cheer foreign-born athletes not despite where they come from but because of what they bring: talent, discipline, style, and victory. Tens of thousands of fans in Oklahoma City rise for a Canadian. Denver adores a Serbian. San Antonio chants for a Frenchman. Los Angeles embraces a Slovenian. Baseball stadiums roar for a Japanese superstar.

Sports does not erase xenophobia. It does not resolve the asylum debate or settle border politics despite the Olympic ideal. There is an important paradox. The rhetoric of exclusion collides every day with a simpler reality: people admire excellence wherever it comes from when it helps their team win. The crowds see winners before they see nationality, even as many of them vote for politicians running on xenophobia. U.S. sports crowds—many of whom voted for Trump and admire his hard line on immigration—seem perfectly happy cheering non-Americans.

The NBA’s first team may say something larger about the country. Politicians may still campaign on borders and walls. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller may continue to denigrate foreigners, but America’s sports fans keep rooting for the world.

To understand the importance of the Knicks to New York, see The New Yorker editor David Remnick’s recent description of the first time the Knicks won the NBA crown: “May 8, 1970, was the night of all sporting New York nights,” he wrote. “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive! So proclaimed the voices of the Knicks: John F. X. Condon at the Garden, Marv Albert on the air.”

How I remember that night! “Bliss it was to be alive.” After decades of waiting to see the Knicks back in the Finals and more than half a century since we last won the title, I just want my team to win this year, no matter who hits the winning baskets, American or otherwise. Go Knicks!

Daniel Warner is the author of An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations. (Lynne Rienner). He lives in Geneva.

 

Jones Act Supporters Launch Campaign to End White House's Waiver

USN file image

Published May 28, 2026 10:33 PM by The Maritime Executive

The Trump administration has waived the Jones Act for petroleum and fertilizer cargoes from March through mid-August, covering all U.S. regions and all ports. The waiver is unprecedented in length and scope, and U.S. domestic shipping operators are pushing back hard. This week, the American Maritime Partnership - the voice of the domestic maritime industry - launched a national advertising campaign aimed at convincing the White House to bring the waiver to an end.

“Clearly, President Trump has been led to believe that waiving the Jones Act is an effective way to lower gas prices, when we all see that prices have not gone down with the waiver. What the waiver does is put America last by allowing foreign operators and mariners to take American business and jobs,” said Jennifer Carpenter, President of the American Maritime Partnership. 

Through May 21, about 60 waivers have been issued for foreign-flag vessels, according to RBN Energy. The largest share are for fuel deliveries from the Texas coast to California, a perennially expensive market for gasoline. California has lost substantial refinery capacity due to closures in recent years, and is heavily import-dependent; with the new access to foreign tanker tonnage, it has taken in more than three million barrels of petroleum products from Texas refiners since the start of the waiver period. Crude oil from the Gulf - including Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels out of Louisiana - has also been shipped to refineries in California, making up for lost deliveries from overseas. California isn't the only beneficiary: Smaller numbers of foreign-flag voyages have occurred from the Texas coast to customers in Florida, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico, RBN found, and a handful of cargoes have made it all the way north to Alaska.

But if the waiver has the power to bring down the pump price of gasoline, it has yet to demonstrate it in a visible way in California, where the largest share of waiver voyages have ended up. Average gas prices reached $6 per gallon in the state in early May, and have remained at that level ever since. Domestic crude oil prices have fallen by about 20 percent over the same period, from about $105 to about $87 per barrel. 

Commodity research firm Argus says that the savings from shipping on foreign-flag tonnage amount to about six cents per gallon, not enough to materially affect the price at the pump. The pro-Jones Act Center for Maritime Strategy puts the number even lower. Meanwhile, according to AMP, the waiver is having significant negative effects on the future of the Jones Act fleet: the group says that it has prompted one investment platform to put a halt to a planned $1 billion capital raise for American domestic shipping, putting at risk another $2.6 billion in shipyard contracts. 

"The waiver] directly undermines the very policies that President Trump campaigned on and has championed – buy American, hire American, and strengthen our national might. The President should trust his instincts, follow his outlined policies and put America and our national security first," said AMP's Jennifer Carpenter in a statement. 

The true test may be still to come. In the initial phase of the waiver period, international product tanker availability was tight, limiting domestic-voyage arbitrage opportunities due to chartering costs. Day rates on the U.S. Gulf MR index have since come down significantly, reducing the financial barrier to trading domestically with foreign-flag tonnage. 

 

USCG Catches Four Chinese Stowaways on Barge Arriving From Florida

Chinese and Dominican stowaways under guard on a patrol boat in San Juan Harbor (USCG)

Published May 28, 2026 7:47 PM by The Maritime Executive

Last weekend, the U.S. Coast Guard busted a group of eight stowaways on a barge in San Juan's harbor, the latest in a string of interdictions on tug-and-tow traffic to Puerto Rico. This time was different in the unusual composition of the would-be immigrant group and the last port of call: the group was on board a vessel that had departed from the continental United States, not a foreign country.  

On May 22, Sector San Juan received a report from CBP's Air and Marine Operations Center, which reported that possible stowaways had been spotted aboard the barge tow connected to the U.S.-flagged tug Southern Dawn. 

AIS data provided by Pole Star Global shows that Southern Dawn's port of departure was Jacksonville, Florida. She left on May 16 and got under way for Puerto Rico, maintaining a steady speed of 7-8 knots throughout the voyage and making no foreign port calls, stops or diversions. 

Though the tug had been on a domestic route, foreign nationals had managed to get on board the tow at some point before arrival in San Juan, according to the Coast Guard. Four Chinese nationals and four Dominican Republic nationals were apprehended by a Coast Guard boat crew, and were transferred to CBP for processing at the Puerto Nuevo Terminals in San Juan's harbor. 

“The coordination and swift response of the Coast Guard and our partner agencies to apprehend and process these stowaways demonstrates our collective commitment to securing and protecting the U.S. maritime border and navigable waterways in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” said Cmdr. Matthew Romano, Coast Guard Sector San Juan's chief of response.

Chinese nationals account for about 2-3 percent of all illegal immigrants in the United States, but apprehensions of unauthorized Chinese migrants have been on the rise on the southern border in recent years. About 25,000 arrests of Chinese nationals occurred at the border in 2024, according to the Border Patrol. 

It is unclear whether the stowaways boarded in Jacksonville or at sea, and why they attempted to reach Puerto Rico rather than Florida, Southern Dawn's port of origin and next port of call. 

Southern Dawn is a twin screw, EMD-powered line-haul tug originally built at Bollinger as the Hoku Ke'a, delivered to Young Brothers and used in the Hawaiian trades. She was resold in 2021 to a company based in Louisiana and given her current name, according to Tugboat Information. AIS data shows that she has since returned to Jacksonville. 

‘No War With Cuba’: As Pentagon Mobilizes US Forces, Dems Move to Block Illegal Trump Attack

“This administration is rushing toward another disastrous war, putting countless American and foreign lives at risk,” said Rep. Nydia Velázquez. “Congress must reassert its constitutional authority.”


Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) speaks during a February 10, 2026 press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
May 28, 2026
C0MMON DREAMS

With US military forces prepared to launch an unprovoked attack on Cuba, a group of congressional Democrats on Wednesday introduced a new war powers resolution in a bid to block President Donald Trump from launching yet another illegal war of choice.

Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Gregory Meeks, both of New York, introduced the resolution, which would bar US forces from hostilities within or against Cuba without congressional authorization, as required under the 1973 War Powers Act. The measure is cosponsored by Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Joaquin Castro of Texas.



‘Unlawful, Deeply Destabilizing, and Catastrophic’: Dems Warn Trump Against Cuba Attack

“Donald Trump’s belligerent foreign policy is creating new wars and conflicts across the world. As our country is already embroiled in a new war with Iran, the president has now set his sights on regime change in Cuba,” Velázquez said in a statement. “This administration is rushing toward another disastrous war, putting countless American and foreign lives at risk. Congress must reassert its constitutional authority if the president continues down this illegal path.”

Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are hellbent on starting another war, this time with Cuba, to distract from the president’s failure in Iran, weak economy, and mass deportation of 500,000 Cubans legally in the United States.”

It is the second Cuba war powers resolution introduced by lawmakers since Trump began threatening to attack and “take” the island earlier this year. Last month, senators voted 51-47—with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman joining all but two of his Republican colleagues, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky—to block a war powers resolution introduced in March by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).

The new resolution’s introduction follows months of escalating aggression against Cuba by the Trump administration, including preparation and threats to attack, an oil blockade that critics say is causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and last week’s Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment of former President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who has falsely claimed that his parents fled communism in Cuba when they actually emigrated during an earlier US-backed dictatorship—said that the island is “in a lot of trouble.”

“Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States,” Rubio added.

An article published Wednesday by Politico highlighted US military preparations for various war scenarios for Cuba, including bombing, an invasion, or a mission to enforce the DOJ indictmebnt by kidnapping Castro in a manner similar to January’s illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

According to Politico’s Paul McLeary:
The armada in the region is slightly smaller than it was in January when the US captured Maduro. But the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group entered the Caribbean in May, along with several guided missile destroyers and cruisers that can launch precision missiles at targets onshore. An array of advanced American drones and surveillance aircraft have also circled Cuba for months, according to flight tracking sites. The USS Kearsarge amphibious ships and escorts, which carry 2,500 Marines, are off the coast of Virginia preparing for a new deployment, and could replace some ships heading home.

The surge provides a variety of military options, although the Pentagon would need additional troops for a massive ground invasion.

The Politico piece drew fierce rebuke from Havana.

“There are politicians in the United States pushing the drumbeat of war against Cuba, trying to fabricate excuses, trying to portray Cuba as a threat, and trying to push the US president to take military action, even with the understanding that military action would lead to bloodshed, mostly of Cubans, but also of Americans,” Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío told The Los Angeles Times.

“The question is: How does a government convince American citizens that it is in their interest to cause death, cause destruction and suffering to a neighboring nation simply to satisfy the ambitions of a small cabal of wealthy, influential people who enjoy the ear of politicians and powerful people in Washington?” Fernández added.

Cuba has been shoring up international support amid the growing threat of US attack. On Tuesday, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez met with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who said earlier this month that “there is no military solution to be sought for Cuba.”

On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a meeting with Rodríguez at United Nations headquarters in New York that “China will continue to uphold justice and speak up for Cuba, support the Cuban people’s just cause, and contribute to Cuba’s economic development and people’s livelihood.”



Also on Wednesday, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Council for Foreign and Community Relations issued a statement affirming “Cuba’s sovereign right to import and receive fuel” and condemning “the obstruction of energy supplies to Cuba, which has precipitated a grave humanitarian crisis.”

“Cuba poses no threat to any nation... it stands as a peaceful and cooperative member of the international community... [and] the continued application of these unilateral coercive measures constitutes an unjustifiable violation of human rights, the principles of free trade, and the fundamental norms governing relations among sovereign states,” the council stated.

If the US launches military action against Cuba, it will be the 12th country attacked during Trump’s two terms in office. The president—who has repeatedly said that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize—has ordered attacks on Afghanistan, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, and has bombed dozens of boats accused without evidence of transporting drugs in international waters in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

Last week, tens of thousands of Cubans rallied in Havana to denounce the indictment of Castro and US aggression against their homeland, which dates back to the revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista, one in a series of dictators backed by the United States after it granted Cuba conditional independence after conquering the island along with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam during an 1898 war against Spain waged on a dubious pretext.

Since then, the United States has tried to assassinate former Cuban President Fidel Castro, backed the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, served as a base for perpetrators of some of the hemisphere’s worst terror attacks, and even hatched a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb high above the island to convince its people that the return of Jesus Christ was nigh and the only thing standing in the way of the long-awaited “Second Coming” was Castro.

Cuba has endured this aggression and more without retaliating against the United States. Despite this, the Trump administration has responded by inflicting more and more pain upon people it claims it is trying to liberate from oppression.

“If Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are serious about a new relationship with the Cuban people,” Meeks said Wednesday, “they would reverse 65 years of failed US policy toward Cuba, end the oil blockade and the humanitarian crisis it caused, and work with Congress to modify the draconian and outdated US sanctions that disproportionately harm the Cuban people.”

Report Highlights ‘Uniquely Poor Performance’ of US For-Profit Health System Compared to Other Nations

“We know what high-performing health systems look like—other countries have them and are building them. It’s high time the US did better.”


Members of National Nurses United rally with lawmakers to show their support for the Medicare For All Act in Upper Senate Park on Capitol Hill on April 29, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
May 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

An annual analysis that examines healthcare systems across nearly two dozen wealthy countries around the world once again highlighted the United States’ “uniquely poor performance relative to its peers,” with this year’s US Health Care from a Global Perspective report focusing on “insurance coverage and access to care, affordability of care, delivery of care, and equity of health outcomes.”

As advocates for expanding the US Medicare system to the entire population have long warned, the country’s for-profit healthcare system—which ties the ability to get care to one’s employment and allows insurance companies to boost profits by denying care to patients—“The US, on average, has the poorest health outcomes of any high-income country,” the Commonwealth Fund’s report reads.

The report examines the US system compared with other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand, Japan, and Mexico.

It finds that the US spent 18% of its gross domestic product on healthcare in 2024—nearly twice the OECD average.

Life expectancy in the US reached an all-time high in 2024, but was still among the shortest when compared to the 19 other countries, nearly five years shorter than Japan, Spain, and Switzerland, and longer than the average lifespan in Turkey and Mexico.

While the US and Mexico also both rank high on the list in terms of preventable deaths, the latter nation announced last month that it would soon be joining every other country included in the analysis by shifting to a universal, government-run healthcare system.

In the United States, the for-profit health sector—which spent a record $877.69 million on lobbying last year—contributes to the high number of avoidable deaths, which stands at 312 per 100,000 people. About 27 million Americans are still uninsured, more than 16 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the Republican Party’s refusal to continue ACA subsidies last year as well as its $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, according to Thursday’s report, are “projected to increase the number of uninsured Americans by an additional 17 million by 2034, potentially leading to more than 50,000 additional preventable deaths annually.”

“By contrast, Mexico’s recently established Universal Health Service will provide all residents with access to free care at any public health institute, starting in 2027,” the report states. “The US is one of the only countries to have enacted policies that reduce coverage.”

High out-of-pocket costs may also contribute to poor outcomes and the high number of preventable deaths in the US, the Commonwealth Fund suggests. Americans spend $400 per person, per year, on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, while people in France spend $100.

“The US is one of the only countries to have enacted policies that reduce coverage.”

“In the US, where approximately 8% of the population is uninsured and one-quarter has coverage that comes with high out-of-pocket costs or deductibles, people are far more likely to forgo needed care because of costs than people in peer countries,” reads the report. “This can mean not filling prescriptions, not obtaining diagnostic tests, treatment, or follow-up care, or being unable to adhere to clinician-recommended care plans.”

The report also identifies the US as a country that lags behind its peers in producing new doctors, contributing to a crisis in primary care, with the US having the fewest number of primary care providers per 1,000 people. The country also has the “highest medical tuition fees of any country in our analysis,” said the Commonwealth Fund.

The organization also found that in 2023, the US had nearly 19 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, representing a decline for the country that has long had “among the highest rates of maternal deaths related to complications of pregnancy and childbirth.”

“By contrast, in 11 of the 18 countries we studied there were less than five maternal deaths per 100,000 live births,” reads the report, which also notes that in the US, maternal mortality is “exceptionally high” among Black women, at 50 deaths per 100,000 live births.

“This far exceeds national maternal mortality in any of the other countries,” the report states. “Inequities in access to care and patients’ care experiences—often rooted in discrimination and clinician bias—may be prime contributing factors.”

Dr. Joseph Betancourt, president of the Commonwealth Fund, noted that “the US has long prided itself on having the best healthcare in the world, but the population benefits from this excellence unevenly, and it remains largely out of reach for many Americans.”

“We spend more than any other nation on healthcare, so our poorer health outcomes aren’t due to a lack of resources—it is about how we choose to use them,” said Betancourt. “We know what high-performing health systems look like—other countries have them and are building them. It’s high time the US did better.”

“Other countries have shown that alternatives work. What’s striking isn’t the absence of solutions; it’s our reluctance to implement them.”

The report does not explicitly call on the US to shift to a universal, government-funded healthcare system, but studies have shown that expanding Medicare to the entire US population, as lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have consistently demanded, would address many of the problems listed in the report.

Studies by the Congressional Budget Office and Yale University have shown that Medicare for All would save an estimated $650 billion and prevent 68,000 avoidable deaths each year.

The policy, which has been proposed in Congress numerous times, is also broadly popular; 65% of US voters—including 78% of Democrats, 71% of Independents, and 49% of Republicans—support creating a national, government-run healthcare program, according to a Data for Progress poll last year.

Despite this, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers continue to insist the proposal is unpopular and too expensive, with Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8), who is running against vehement Medicare for All advocate Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic US Senate primary, insisting recently that “the support for a true single-payer system isn’t there yet.”

Reginald Williams II, senior vice president at Commonwealth Fund, emphasized that it is “not inevitable” that “Americans pay more for healthcare and get less in return.”

“It’s the result of different choices,” he said. “Other countries have shown that alternatives work. What’s striking isn’t the absence of solutions; it’s our reluctance to implement them. The failure of the US health system is not a failure of ideas. It’s a failure of will to act on them.”

Universal Health Care Once Seemed on the Horizon in California. What Happened?

Among California’s top five gubernatorial candidates, only one unequivocally supports state-based single-payer.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

May 28, 2026

Source: TruthOut

Universal Health Care july 2018 by Mirarkitty is licensed under BY-SA 4.0 / wikimedia

Fighting for Our Lives: The Movement for Medicare for All

California voters are in the thick of a high-stakes governor’s race, in which single-payer health care, an issue that was once central to state politics, has been pushed to the sidelines. Of the top five candidates, only one unequivocally supports a health care model that would finally put California on par with the rest of the industrialized world.

Billionaire Tom Steyer, running as a Democrat, says single-payer is the only way to bring down spiraling health care costs. In 2020, Steyer ran for president on a platform touting a “public option,” and attacking Senator Bernie Sanders’s single-payer health care plan. Now, Steyer has reversed that position, earning the coveted endorsement of the California Nurses Association, one of the state’s most aggressive proponents of single-payer.

Sanders is widely credited with popularizing single-payer or “Medicare for All,” which would make health care a freely available and publicly funded resource much like public schools or libraries. In the face of federal intransigence, single-payer proponents have advocated for states to enact their own programs. Indeed, California has come close to enacting “CalCare,” its own version of single-payer, several times in recent years.

Steyer’s opponent and fellow Democrat Katie Porter has also said she supports single-payer but worries about its feasibility. In a public forum hosted by Politico last year, she said, “I don’t think it’s realistic in the next couple of years for the state to push forward on that,” adding that she believed it was more appropriate for the federal government to take it on instead.

Meanwhile, the current frontrunner, Xavier Becerra, has backed away from supporting single-payer. Becerra, who won the endorsement of a powerful, anti-single-payer lobby group called the California Medical Association, is running on a platform of preserving the status quo.

Meanwhile, the two Republicans polling well enough to potentially win a spot on the November ballot in California’s “free-for-all” primary are Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Bianco, who is Southern California’s Riverside County Sheriff, are both running on reducing access to state-funded health care, primarily for undocumented immigrants.

At a time when the cost of living in California continues to skyrocket, single-payer health care has been oddly low on the list of candidates’ talking points. Dr. Paul Song, a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and former co-chair of the Campaign for a Healthy California, said there’s good reason for that.

“The number of uninsured as a percent of our California population is at the lowest it’s been in a long time,” Song said in an interview on Rising Up With Sonali. That’s because Governor Gavin Newsom recently oversaw the expansion of insurance coverage to most Californians.

In 2018, then-candidate Newsom won the California Nurses Association’s endorsement for embracing single-payer. But his support for a system that would cover 100 percent of the population over time morphed into what he now calls “universal access to health care coverage.” While it might sound a lot like universal health care, this shift is a sleight of hand. Newsom’s chosen policy merely means almost everyone in the state has some form of private or public health insurance — but it doesn’t address the rising costs of premiums, co-pays, and high out-of-pocket charges.

“It’s easy to have become discouraged based on the false promises of Gavin Newsom when he ran and said he was going to run as a single-payer candidate,” said Song. Since 2018 there have been “numerous attempts where activists have tried to advance legislation only to see it just killed in Sacramento and not even be brought up for a vote,” he added.

Newsom has been accused of deliberately “slow-rolling” single-payer as governor. Song recalled a 2020 incident in which the governor caused a scandal by attending a dinner party at a high-end restaurant during the state’s strict COVID lockdown. “The person he was having dinner with was Dustin Corcoran from the CMA, the California Medical Association, who was one of the largest opponents of our single-payer system,” said Song. It’s the same organization that has backed Becerra for governor, a candidate who only recently surged in the polls after Congressional Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race.

Angered by Newsom’s backtracking, the California Nurses Association lambasted him in 2023 over his signing of SB 770, a bill that undercut single-payer efforts by expanding health coverage through private insurers. The union called it “a complete betrayal of nurses’ fight for a single-payer health care policy, a fight striving to achieve health justice for our patients and our communities.”

California Nurses Association President Michelle Gutierrez Vo, an adult family medicine nurse at Kaiser Fremont, explained why the union now supports Steyer in an emailed statement. “As a frontline nurse who cares for patients, I know Californians want a governor who supports CalCare.” According to Vo, her organization backs Steyer because he, “understands that we need to take on deep-rooted systematic failures in Sacramento, and that we cannot allow the next governor to repeat the political opportunism that has dominated this issue for too long.”

Song took a dim view of Becerra, saying, “There have been times where he said he was in favor of [single-payer], but you never saw him actively trying to propose anything to make that possible.” Becerra, who made history as the federal government’s first Latino Secretary of Health and Human Services during President Joe Biden’s administration, faced pressure from single-payer advocates to protect Medicare from privatization. According to Song, “What I saw under his watch was the even greater privatization of our health care system.”

Perhaps the largest reason why single-payer is no longer a key issue in the governor’s race is the supposed price tag of government funding for health care. Estimates range from more than $400 billion to $731 billion per year. Given that the state’s projected 2027 budget is on the order of $349 billion annually, single-payer opponents are quick to claim the state simply can’t afford it.

But Song says such estimates don’t account for the savings from switching to single-payer. “If you look at the total number of dollars that are spent on health care, and not to mention the amount of money that comes out of our pocket for co-pays or deductibles, or because we have an employee-sponsored plan, the number of dollars that we don’t get in our salary because the company has to deduct that to pay for health care, we are paying essentially for a universal health care system or a single-payer system, we just are not getting one,” he said.

Many studies have shown that single-payer would garner net savings for individuals. The trouble is that in order to enact it at the state level, state governments need permission from the federal government to divert Medicare and Medicaid funds toward a single-payer system — a request that is highly unlikely to be granted under the Trump administration. Newsom did not attempt to obtain a federal waiver under the Biden administration, although even if he had he would have been unlikely to succeed given that the Democratic president was also an opponent of single-payer.

Ironically, in 2017, Newsom declared on the social media platform X, “I’m tired of politicians saying they support single payer but that it’s too soon, too expensive or someone else’s problem.” Within a few years, he had become precisely such a politician.

Worse, Newsom’s touted substitute for single-payer — “universal access to healthcare coverage” — is about to come apart at the seams. In October 2025, his administration warned that health care costs were about to double thanks to congressional inaction, with insurance premiums for state insurance exchange plans potentially jumping by a whopping 97 percent. To make matters worse, Newsom just released a state budget that includes cuts to immigrants’ health care coverage — the same funding that helped achieve the near-universal health coverage of which he previously boasted.

---

This article was originally published by TruthOut; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email

Sonali Kolhatkar

Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her most recent book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

The VA Is a Model for Public Health Care. We Need to Protect It.

By Suzanne Gordon

May 26, 2026

Source: Barn Raiser

Image by Tony Webster/Wikimediacommons, licensed via CC BY 2.0

Bruce Carruthers is a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army and now lives in Waynesville, North Carolina. At age 81, Carruthers could be spending more of his time with his three sons and grandchildren, traveling or focusing on the woodworking projects that he enjoys. Instead, for the last six years, he’s devoted hours each week to stop efforts to privatize the nation’s largest and only publicly funded health care system, run by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Carruthers has a long and deep connection to the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). For 30 years, from 1974 to 2002, he worked first in VHA’s Human Resources department and then in hospital administration at hospitals like the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Denver, Colorado.

Several years after his retirement, he became a VHA patient. He now drives 36 miles from his home to the Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where, most recently, he’s received treatment for prostate cancer (most likely as result of his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam).

“I feel I’ve gotten not only excellent but incredibly responsive care at the VA,” he says. “One of the great things about it is if I have a question, I can email my primary care provider and get a response within hours. If I need one, they make an appointment for me.”

Several weeks ago, Carruthers noticed a bluish-purple mole on his neck and wrote his physician. The doctor responded immediately with a referral to a dermatologist, who quickly booked an appointment with Carruthers. “This would never happen in the private sector, at least not in rural America. I would have had to wait months to see a dermatologist in my area of the country.” 

Like so many other veterans, he values a health care system designed specifically to meet the needs of veterans. Carruthers serves as President of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute (VHPI), a think tank that focuses on stopping VA privatization. He’s also a steering committee member of the Veterans For Peace Save Our VA Campaign (SOVA), which has the same goal.

“At 81, my time on this planet is obviously limited,” he says. “But I’m dedicated to making sure veterans, especially younger vets, receive the same kind of excellent care I’ve received at the VA.”

Over the past decade, a right-wing attack on the VHA has jeopardized the continued availability of this kind of care. Today, efforts to privatize the VA now threaten the very existence of the nation’s largest health care system. (Read my previous coverage on this issue for Barn Raiser here and here.)

In this first article of a multi-part series with Barn Raiser, I want to explain just what the VHA is and what it does, not only for rural veterans but all Americans. Subsequent articles will then describe the forces who have launched this assault against the VA, how veterans and rural Americans are organizing to protect the VA, and what you can do to protect this one-of-a-kind system.

The VHA is in fact, become the nation’s only socialized medicine system—albeit one that serves a small slice of the American population. Like the United Kingdom or Scandinavian health care systems, the government owns and operates all VA health care facilities, and all VA employees are on salary. VA physicians are not paid on a fee-for-service basis but are salaried and thus have no incentive to overtreat patients because they benefit financially from delivering unnecessary treatments or procedures. For example, studies have shown that the VA is the only health care system that follows standard of care for patients with low-risk prostate cancer, which is watchful waiting. Outside of VA, men with low-risk prostate cancer are far more likely to receive unnecessary surgery or invasive radiation treatment.

Although the VA is not a classic single-payer system, it is a national health system that both pays for and provides care, which makes it far easier to innovate within the system. VA innovations are legion, including medication barcoding, the integration of mental health and primary care, and widespread use of geriatric care for VA’s many older patients. As health care reform advocates search for models of high quality, accessible and affordable health care, they don’t have to look to Canada or the U.K. or other European countries, they can find it in every state in the nation.

The nation’s only genuine health care system

Since 1811, when Congress directed the Navy to establish the Naval Home in Philadelphia, the United States has offered former service members health care services to deal with their military related injuries.

A month before the Civil War ended, on March 3, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln helped lay the foundation of what would become the Veteran’s Administration when he signed a law creating the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers to serve Union veterans. A day later, in his second Inaugural address, Lincoln famously pledged this care as both a literal and metaphorical means of healing the nation:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

By World War I, a variety of government agencies managed veterans’ health care and benefits. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover consolidated administration of veterans’ affairs into a single federal agency, the Veterans Administration. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan made that agency a cabinet level department, renaming it the Department of Veterans Affairs—still referred to as the VA. The Department includes the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), which run the nation’s largest health care and benefits systems.

In 1994, the VA, still reeling from its failures to adequately care for veterans who suffered during the Vietnam War (as revealed in Ron Kovic’s 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July, later adapted as a movie in 1989 starring Tom Cruise) got a top to bottom makeover under the leadership of its new Under Secretary for Health Kenneth W. Kizer. Kizer, in what is known as the “Kizer revolution,” transformed a system that largely delivered hospital care of variable quality into the nation’s only comprehensive, fully integrated health care system.

While many largely market driven, increasingly corporate owned hospitals and clinics call themselves “health care systems,” they largely deliver fragmented medical treatment based on a fee-for-service, pay-as-you-go system. These “health care systems” are notorious for skimping on mental health care, and almost totally ignore social determinants of health like lack of housing, employment, occupational health and safety issues or legal problems. The VHA addresses all of these issues and more.

One common misconception about the VA is that anyone who has served in the military can access its health care system and benefits. That’s not true. Eligibility depends on a service member’s discharge status, their income, or their time in a combat zone, in our post-9/11 conflicts or whether they have a proven service-connected disability. More than half of America’s 17 million veterans probably qualify for VA health care; however, the system currently serves only nine million. An estimated 2.7 million, or about one third, of enrolled veterans live in rural areas.

The VA not only provides these veterans with a wide range of medical services—everything from primary care, to surgery, to geriatric care—it also has extensive mental and behavioral health programs. Major VA medical centers almost always include a full-service nursing home and residential rehabilitation treatment programs. The VA also has Blind Rehabilitation, Spinal Cord Injury and Polytrauma Treatment programs for veterans with serious vision loss, spinal cord injuries or who have suffered multiple traumatic injuries. The VA also addresses veteran homelessness, and employment and legal problems.

In 2014, the American Journal of Public Health lauded the VHA for its serious commitment, and action to achieve, health care equity, which it defines as providing timely, high quality, personalized, safe and effective health care regardless of geography, gender, race, age, culture or sexual orientation. This commitment to equity has supported rural veterans in particular, with the VA targeting programs and research initiatives focused on solving rural health disparities.

When it comes to serving rural veterans, who comprise about 25% of the total veteran population, the VA has made a serious and sustained commitment to meet their needs. VA has established almost 788 Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) throughout the country, which means that most are within driving distance of a VA facility. Although some veterans who live in remote rural areas have to drive farther, most rural veterans are within a 44.5 mile range of a VA clinic. 

Veterans benefit not only from a network of rural VHA clinics but also from well-established pathways to VHA facilities in metropolitan areas where they can receive more specialized care. In the cases of truly long travel, the VA often helps defray transportation and lodging costs and ensures coordination of care once veterans return to their local communities. A system of Fisher Houses also provides lodging for family members of veterans getting longer term treatment. In 2006, Congress also mandated that VHA create an an Office of Rural Health to study the needs and obstacles to access of rural veterans. The ORH also has developed regional Veterans Rural Health Resource Centers to delve more deeply into how to address the health care challenges of rural veterans.

VHA’s other missions include teaching, research and emergency preparedness. The VHA’s more than 12,000 hospitals and clinics are a key training ground for many of the nation’s future doctors, nurses and other clinicians. More than 1,800, or nearly 90%, of educational institutions partner with the VHA in this $900 million-a-year program. More than 70% of the nation’s physicians have received training in the VHA.

The VA also trains many other kinds of health care professionals. It’s the single largest employer of psychologists in the United States. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), “one in five doctoral interns in psychology is training at the VA. VA also hosts more than 50 percent of APA-accredited postdoctoral training programs in psychology.”  In 2022, the American Association of Medical Colleges told Congress that the VHA played a role in medical education, training and research that is “irreplaceable.”

The VHA is also the nation’s largest research institution. Only the National Institutes of Health funds more research than the VHA. The VHA developed barcoding for medication administration, the first implantable cardiac pacemaker, the nicotine patch and the first Shingles vaccine. It has assembled the largest collection of brain tissue in the world in its Biorepository Brain Bank, established the connection between concussions in football and later development of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, and its Million Veteran Program has assembled the largest genomic data bank in the world, allowing more than 600 researchers across VHA’s 80-plus projects to better understand and treat anxiety, heart disease, kidney disease, cancer, Parkinson’s Disease and other ailments.

The VHA is also mandated to address veteran homelessness. Its pioneering homeless programs, which include prevention services (Supportive Services for Veteran Families), outreach services (Health Care for Homeless Veterans and the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans), temporary housing and permanent housing services (Supportive Services for Veteran Families), have helped significantly reduce veteran homelessness as well as create models that have been emulated across the country to reduce a growing national epidemic. According to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, veteran homelessness hit a record low in January 2024 since measurement began in 2009.

Finally, the VHA serves as backup to the civilian health care system in times of war, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other emergencies—from pandemics and mass shootings to hurricanes, tornados and wildfires. The VHA’s medical center in Puerto Rico, for instance, was the only functioning hospital on the island during and after Hurricane Maria. And it was open to non-veterans. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, VHA facilities cared for non-veteran patients in hot spots like New York, New Jersey and Louisiana. The VHA also has a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Defense to serve as a backup in times of war or terrorist attack.

Study after study has confirmed that the care VHA delivers to veterans not only equal to but very often superior to the care delivered by the private sector. Surveys of veterans also document that veterans highly approve of their dedicated health care system and want to see it improved and even expanded.

Unfortunately, neither the messages veterans are sending or those published in prestigious scientific journals have convinced Republican—and even too many Democratic—lawmakers to fully fund and staff the VHA. Over the past decade, a powerful movement funded by billionaire industrialists like the Koch Brothers and other dark money allies like Elon Musk—supported by the hospital, medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries—have launched a movement to privatize the VHA and even attack the benefits administered by the VBA.

Should this movement succeed, it will create serious problems not only for veterans but for all Americans. As I will explain in the next article, it will exacerbate an already catastrophic shortage of health care in rural America.

---

This article was originally published by Barn Raiser; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.