The Bulwark compares the health care system in Japan to ours. We don't come off looking so great.
I can only point out yet again that universal health care is apparently so terrifically difficult that the only modern, industrialized country that hasn't come up with some way (and there are many) to deliver it is...us. If that was the cost of a few trips to the Moon, then, really, we should have stayed home.
I remember the old VA system. The single payer, single source that the U.S. govt ran for the Veterans who qualified for it. That every decade or so had a big scandal caused by such poor performance that Congress actually had to do something to "fix" it. That eventually was "fixed" by allowing the veterans to get their healthcare from any provider and the VA would pay. I am very afraid that whatever the U.S. govt comes up with for a 'single payer' system would have the exact same problems that the VA health care always had, except there wouldn't be an outside system to allow people to get their health care from once the govt takes over.
ReplyDeleteIf Congress can come up with fixes for VA to give decent care without having to go outside the VA system then yes, lets go with the govt controlling our health care. But not until they can fix the VA system without using the current outside system of health care.
Chris, the government controls our health care now -- just not very well.
DeleteAll health care systems are flawed. But who carries the financial and health burden of those flaws varies.
When improved health care systems are discussed in Britain nobody ever advocates the US system. Dutch, French, Australian, Singaporean ... but never American.
ReplyDeleteThe only reference made to the American system is by lefties who use it as a bogeyman to help them defend the deplorable NHS.
Too many greedy fingers in the pie. No wonder it costs so much and delivers so little.
ReplyDeleteOne could argue that our not really private system has somehow given us the worst of the problems of the single payer systems (poor service, denial of care, ect) while managing to cost far more than a theoretical private system.
ReplyDeleteIt's a massive mess that needs to be fixed one way or the other.