This Sceptered Isle - Part CLXXI

Today I happened on a statistic published by UK's National Health Service about a year ago: the NHS is the largest employer in Europe, with more than 1,300,000 employees.

Are you curious how a bureaucracy of that magnitude might relate to the US?

Well of course, I was.

The 2010 populations were about 62 million in the UK and about 307 million in the US. A rough ratio based on populations suggests an NHS-like health system in the US would require something like 6,400,000 employees.

That would make such a system the largest employer in the US--and probably in the entire Western Hemisphere, if not the whole world.

6,400,000 is double the number of employees in the US Department of Defense, which employs about 3,200,000 people. By the way, that's also much larger than the Chinese People's Liberation Army, too.

Looking at it another way, 6,400,000 is about equal to the combined number of employees in the ten largest private employers in the US. (i.e., not counting such federal behemoths as USPS, Department of Education, EPA, etc).

Looking at it yet another way, the largest private employer in the U.S. is Wal-Mart, with about 2,100,000 employees. An NHS-like bureaucracy in the US could well be three times the size of Wal-Mart.

Lucky for us, we probably won't ever have an NHS-like system in the US. Don't ya think? And luckier still, regardless how many employees ObamaCare eventually hires, federal deficits will actually reduce because of it.

Oh yeah, and don't forget - after ObamaCare all our children will be good-looking and smarter than average.

I can barely contain my enthusiasm.