ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Kinser79]

(08-21-2017, 06:09 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-21-2017, 01:33 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I've used the VA in Orlando and in Daytona since I separated from the service.  I was not impressed at all, thankfully it was for routine issues I have to deal with rather than anything major.  I definately would not go to the VA for anything psychological like PTSD.  Maybe you found a decent apple in a barrel of bad ones.  It happens sometimes.

I would argue that Medicare for Everyone would not preclude the establishment of clinics and sundry providers.  Ideally we should have the actual provision of services private while the insurance aspects would be public.  This would bring us into line with counties like Germany which use the Bismarck Model.

Part of it is the notion that one should keep cutting domestic services.  There is only so much you can cut and still give the illusion of doing what one is supposed to be doing.  The VA wasn't always this bad.  There's nothing wrong with the model, but a lot wrong with the politicians that are crippling it.  Some folk have economic values, and saving a buck is just more important than helping people.

It's different if your not the person saving a buck, but the person who needs help.

I think what cripples domestic services spending is the Empire and the Military Industrial complex.  If the state didn't have those expenses far more money could be spent on hospitals and schools, etc.  Eisenhower warned everyone about this in his farewell address.

As for the VA, well, there are veterans in every generation in my family less the youngest one (they aren't old enough yet).  Our collective memory of the VA and its services are almost universally poor.  My grandfather (a WW2 vet, deceased now) said that he wouldn't put his dog in a VA hospital.  My uncles (both Vietnam Vets, one Army the other USMC) refused to use those services unless they absolutely had to.  My cousins (Gulf War I vets) were thoroughly unimpressed with the VA.  And of course you have my impressions of it.

Could a model like the VA be used?  Yes.  Can it even be good?  Yes, the UK's NHS is fairly decent.  But in order to make it workable it would have to be universalized so as poor service, and lack of funding comes on the backs of the political class, as is the case in the UK.  The VA is as bad as it is, I suspect because a fraction of a fraction of the population use it and thus there isn't a powerful voting bloc to rail for necessary improvements.