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You are essentially saying "The US public healthcare system for the military (or veterans?) is terrible". I'm sure most people are more than willing to accept

by ska 8y ago

You are essentially saying "The US public healthcare system for the military (or veterans?) is terrible". I'm sure most people are more than willing to accept your experience in this. However, the jump from that to asserting that it's the "public" part of that statement that leads to the "terrible" part is a huge one, and frankly not in evidence.

toast0 8y ago
The statement isn't that all public run healthcare systems are terrible. The statement is the United States governments, either federally or as individual states, are likely incapable of creating or running a non-terrible healthcare system. We've already got at least a Medicaid system by state, federal Medicare, and federal VA. Are any of these non-terrible? Is there any realistic reform towards making them non-terrible? Is it realistically feasible to scale any of the non-terrible ones up to service the whole US population? Certainly, it's possible for a government run healthcare system to not be terrible (or at least, mostly not terrible; any healthcare system has to make some hard choices at times, and people don't usually like it when they're the hard choice), and I'm sure you can find examples of that; but it doesn't seem possible with the governments the US has.
- ska 8y ago
  I think the "political reality" attitude is an interesting one, but can be used as an excuse. I'm not convinced that it isn't possible to scale up to the entire US population in a way that doesn't suck, but you could be right. To work well it would certainly involve systemic change across the healthcare industry, and some current players would be hurt. Perhaps it's not politically feasible in the US, but if so that is a pretty damning indictment of the state of things.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I don't perceive Medicare as terrible, based on my relatives' experience. And that's the one most likely to be converted into a universal program.

by ska 8y ago

toast0 8y ago

The statement isn't that all public run healthcare systems are terrible. The statement is the United States governments, either federally or as individual states, are likely incapable of creating or running a non-terrible healthcare system. We've already got at least a Medicaid system by state, federal Medicare, and federal VA. Are any of these non-terrible? Is there any realistic reform towards making them non-terrible? Is it realistically feasible to scale any of the non-terrible ones up to service the whole US population? Certainly, it's possible for a government run healthcare system to not be terrible (or at least, mostly not terrible; any healthcare system has to make some hard choices at times, and people don't usually like it when they're the hard choice), and I'm sure you can find examples of that; but it doesn't seem possible with the governments the US has.

ska 8y ago
I think the "political reality" attitude is an interesting one, but can be used as an excuse. I'm not convinced that it isn't possible to scale up to the entire US population in a way that doesn't suck, but you could be right. To work well it would certainly involve systemic change across the healthcare industry, and some current players would be hurt. Perhaps it's not politically feasible in the US, but if so that is a pretty damning indictment of the state of things.
perl4ever 8y ago
I don't perceive Medicare as terrible, based on my relatives' experience. And that's the one most likely to be converted into a universal program.