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I doubt we will ever see a single payer health care system like Medicare for all. The insurance corporations have deep claws in the government and they are not about to let go.
Secondly a single payer system would cause a huge plunge in the profits for the pharmaceutical corporations, insurance, and medical facilities. These corporations are major players and control the puppets we call politicians. SPS will never happen.
As a retiree I have seen many people who believed they were financially sound go under because of unexpected medical bills. I remember one person who boasted he had amassed over million for retirement lose it all and be forced to used his credit cards to pay for his wife medical expenses when she contracted cancer.
Another person I know told me he received a bill for $16,000 for radiation treatment for his prostrate cancer. I told him that Medicare will pay most of that figure. He said, "the $16 thousand was after Medicare paid their share."
BTW, once a person is dx'ed with a major illness insurance companies will drop them like a hot potato.
We are all cash cows providing profits for the the corporations that own us.
The VA is not what is widely considered to be single payer healthcare, such as they have in Canada. If expanded, it would be considered national healthcare, such as they have in England.
National healthcare, or in our case the VA, is government healthcare. The doctors are government employees, the hospitals and clinics are owned by the government.
And they major problem with the VA is funding. They can't get the money to offer decent salaries to attract the best care givers. They can't get the money to periodically upgrade and modernize. They can't get the money to expand to meet the eligible veterans who want to use the program.
Still, the people who work for the VA are dedicated professionals who do the best job under the worst circumstances in many cases, IMO. It must be a labor of love and dedication for them, because it sure isn't the money.
I use the VA almost exclusively and I owe my life to the VA system on more than one occasion.
Every year I order 4 boxes of See's Candy for the Phoenix Vascular Surgery Dept., The Prescott VA, the local outpatient VA facility and myself.
I think A straight apples-to-apples comparison of VA hospitals and private sector facilities doesn’t seem fair. Hospital use measurement is a complex undertaking. Size of their staffs, numbers of beds, specialized practice areas they support and lots of other variables make side-by-side looks virtually impossible.
Plus, Veteran care needs will be different from those of the general population.
So I am not so sure you want to expand VA type of healthcare for all. To me, it is comparing apples to oranges.
Bernie is not proposing VA style health. He is more expansion of Medicare which is private doctors, hospitals etc. The main difference is that your insurer is the government (although Medicare Advantage programs are common where the insurer is private too and the government pays them).
I don't care for the single payer model and would much prefer a Medicaid plan like in the better ones that some states have. My state does little right but the medicaid program (called AHCCCS) is a model that could work for the entire country. Basically non-profits perform the role of traditional insurers with the gov paying the non-profits. It is similar to what is found in many countries including Germany.
The good thing about Bernie is he is getting people started on the path to accepting that we can have a better system like the rest of the world has. It is not un-American to have quality health care guaranteed for all.
How would Sander's plan avoid what we saw with the V.A hospitals?
As I understand it, he has introduced a bill to expand Medicare. The VA is a hospital system, like Humana or whatever ... Medicare is not running the hospital systems, it pays for treatments.
Many counties own hospitals (possibly some cities or states own hospitals), as do church affiliated groups, and also profit based corporations and investor groups. The VA is just one of many medical systems out there, they aren't going away.
First, some that get VA coverage get good service while others get absolutely lousy service. Some of that is because one's choice are limited. In a health care system for all, you do not have to continue to go back to the facility providing the lousy service.
Even looking at this in simplistic terms, with the OP's example being the norm let's say you have a single mother working as a waitress that finds a lump in her breast. If the choices are "You are going to have to drive an hour away and wait three hours to see a doctor or "sorry for your bad luck", I would still prefer she be able to exercise the first choice.
That does not have to be how it is though. Unfortunately we are in this spot because people from both sides have put their politics in front of the needs of the people.
How would sanders plan avoid what we see with DMV,AMTRAK,USPS...
Funny how people dont want to mention Medicare in "Medicare-for-all". Because it is popular. Instead people want to distract people with DMV. If people constantly want us to spend trillions on war, that means much higher demand on the VA. If taxpayers just want war, but not higher taxes to expand the VA to care for the results of war, what is the result?
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