In other words, the VA (a relatively small government health program which serves a small, well defined population) is not a terribly good proxy for a nationwide single payer health system that would have to provide universal health care to everyone. Bruce’s point, which Klein missed entirely in his haste to commence chest thumping, is that if two much smaller government health care programs (the VA and Army medical system) are riddled with inefficiency, waste, and bureaucratic bungling, what on earth makes Klein think a system many times larger is a good idea? Since I’m piling on, there’s a reason military families call TRICARE, “Try to get care”. To paraphrase the last president who tried to foist national health care on the American public, “It’s the Bureaucracy, Stupid”….
The Internet makes people lazy. They don’t bother to read posts carefully, nor do they read the supporting links in their entirety. We’ve all been guilty of doing that. I’ve done it on occasion. And when that was pointed out to me, I acknowledged it. Is Klein big enough to do that?
What [Ezra] Klein and many others who commented on these posts also don’t consider is an inconvenient little fact that blows his suggestion that the VA is an appropriate example for how national single payer might work right out of the water….
no single class of VA eligible veterans receives most of their health care through the VA. In other words, the bulk of their health care needs are met outside the VA system.
I am a disabled veteran, and I receive ALL of my medical care within the VA system……and I rate it excellent, and have since 1986, when I became 100% disabled.
That’s an interesting site, and an interesting post, with statistics to back it up. #1, the poster “Cassandra” partway down in the comments makes it clear that she was not criticizing the people who work at the VA but rather the system with which they have to work.
I wonder just how much Cassandra knows about the VA system? The VA system deals with veterans (and now their families on a space-available basis with insurance co-pay) on a priority basis, with service-connected disabled veterans getting first priority.
Those veterans who are not service-connected disabled are administered a “means test” to determine their eligibility, and they must be covered by insurance. If they have no insurance, they are seen on a space-available basis.