The latest ploy about health care I have seen from my liberal-left colleagues is this:
To which I replied,
It would be nice if Soldier Jane also went onto describe the fact that health care in the military is rationed, not universally available and not available on demand. Nor is its quality uniform across installations. Nor do the patients (service members) get any say in the level or choice of treatments provided. If they refuse they can get fired, meaning discharged from the military against their will, or legally even sent to prison. And if an illness or injury is severe enough, they can simply be discharged anyway, ending their military health care completely to be thrown to the tender mercies of that *other* fully-government-run health care system, the VA.Yes, let's talk about that government-run system, shall we? VA only filling half of its medical appointments while veterans wait for weeks.
Internal Department of Veterans Affairs data provided by whistleblowers reveals the agency is only filling about half of its capacity to make medical appointments, even as veterans continue to wait an average of at least 30 days before a medical appointment can be scheduled.
The VA documents show that between July and September of 2017, the agency only used 51.44 percent of the appointments available across its healthcare system.
VA documents also show there are currently 184,520 veterans across the nation waiting longer than 30 days for an appointment and more than 45,000 new veteran patients waiting more than 90 days. Internal VA documents also indicate 479,239 veterans nationwide are waiting for physician requested follow-up appointments over 30 days for the period July to September 2017.
I am a retired Army officer, so I am pretty sure I can speak to this matter with somewhat more authority than Soldier Jane, for whose service I am grateful but whose tweet really should not carry much weight when thinking about health care for the whole country as opposed to a very tiny, specialized percentage of it.
Then we have the latest bright idea from the socialist Democrat left: Berniecare, a.k.a. Medicare for All, the coming curse of the working class.
Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Act, introduced last Wednesday, outlaws private health insurance. Curiously, not one of the Democratic presidential wannabes crowding around Sanders for photo ops mentioned this alarming fact.
If Sanders has his way, 180 million Americans who currently have private coverage would have it ripped away and be automatically enrolled in public insurance.
Kids would be enrolled at birth.
Medicare for All doesn’t just offer government health insurance to the needy. It makes private coverage illegal, including the health coverage you get at your job. Employers are prohibited from covering workers, retirees and their families.
Sanders’ bill raises a critical question: If you’re seriously ill, will you be able to get the care you need?
BernieCare guarantees you hospital care, doctors’ visits, dental and vision care, mental health and even long-term care, all courtesy of Uncle Sam. Amazing, right? But read the fine print. You’ll get care only if it’s “medically necessary” and “appropriate.”
Government bureaucrats will decide, and they’ll be under pressure to cut spending.As a number of people have pointed out, "single payer" always always always means single decider, and the single decider is always a government bureaucrat whose only real job - and the basis of whether s/he is promoted - is controlling costs.
And yet almost all my liberal colleagues think that it is a moral imperative that the federal government run all medical care for everyone, without exception.
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