Healthcare, least to most

[bovlb]

Ezra Klein writes in the Washington Post:
If you crudely ordered America's different health-care systems from least government control to most, it would look something like this: individual insurance market, employer-based insurance market, Medicare, Veterans Health Administration (Medicare is single-payer, but VA is actually socialized medicine,

Comments

[mijopo]

I think that what frustrates me the most about the health care debate in the U.S. is that despite the fact that people have strong opinions, few are familiar with the evidence, only the rhetoric and the dogma and they cling to that desperately. I hate to generalize like that, and many Americans defy that characterization, but it's an accurate description of many people I've met who hold strong opinions about the importance of not bringing in mandatory insurance or a single payer system.

[violetlotus]

That's very odd, because I have heard more horror stories of VA problems than I've ever heard about private insurance. VA hospitals have a reputation of notoriously denying to do what's really necessary, and instead opting for "stopgap" measures. I think you might want to google some stories of VA health care to get a different perspective.

[bovlb]

Can you give any examples? I seem to hear horror stories about private coverage every week.

[bovlb]

Here's an article from the Washington Monthly that explains that the VA gives better quality care than either Medicare or private insurance, the only issues being ones of access to the system. A universal system should not have issues of access.