by Glen Wallace
While some may like to point out how the VA has supposedly done such a bad job, as a reason why the government shouldn't take over health care, they are ignoring some important counter arguments or reasons supporting government takeover. For one, the negative accounts about the VA that people tend to refer to, are to a large extent brought to you by private, for profit, news media that gets a substantial portion of ad revenue from private insurers that have a vested interest in retaining the private health insurance system. As a result I believe the private news programs are highlighting, focusing and magnifying the VA's problems, while largely ignoring similar issues and problems that plague the private health insurance system. One need only look at the online reviews of private insurers to find a plethora of examples that make those insurer's look even worse than the VA. And if a single payer system were implemented, then it would be more of an expansion of Medicare than an expansion of the the VA.
Before Obamacare was implemented, while listening to an NPR feature about individuals having problems with private insurers, if I remember correctly, I believe they quoted a statistic that two thirds of all individuals that declare medical bankruptcy, already had health insurance at the time of their bankruptcy. And the reasons for such bankruptcies wasn't just due to high deductibles, many were the result of disagreements between insurers and providers about what procedures are, or should have been covered. As a result, a patient ends up being responsible for for medical bills they thought were covered. Sometimes the patients can end up getting such bills lowered or covered by the insurer, but getting to that point often turns into a full time job for the patient in the form of phone calls, and negotiations with a hospital and insurer. Hearing such stories one has to wonder "There has to be a better way!" Well there is a better way and there also is no need to reinvent the wheel -- that better way is already being used successfully in most of Europe in the form of a government run single payer health care system.
