{"id":25862,"date":"2014-05-21T07:22:36","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T12:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25862"},"modified":"2014-05-21T07:22:36","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T12:22:36","slug":"the-va-really-is-a-good-example-of-a-single-payer-socialized-health-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/21\/the-va-really-is-a-good-example-of-a-single-payer-socialized-health-system\/","title":{"rendered":"“The VA really is a good example of a single-payer, socialized health system”"},"content":{"rendered":"

J.D. Tuccille<\/a> on the Veterans Health Administration:<\/p>\n

Just a couple of years ago, Paul Krugman pointed to<\/a> the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) as a “huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform.” He gloated, “yes, this is ‘socialized medicine.'”<\/p>\n

Similarly, a letter touted by Physicians for a National Health Program trumpeted<\/a> “the success of 22 wealthy countries and our own Department of Veterans Affairs, which use single-payer systems to provide better care for more people at far less cost.”<\/p>\n

How could a bloated government bureaucracy achieve such low-cost success? As we found out recently, it’s by quietly sticking veterans on a waiting list and putting off their treatment for months<\/a> \u2014 sometimes until the patients are far too dead to need much in the way of expensive care. Which is to say, calling it a “success” is stretching the meaning of the word beyond recognition.<\/p>\n

And, while the White House insists it learned from press reports about the secret waiting lists, Press Secretary Jay Carney acknowledges<\/a> that the administration long knew about “the backlog and disability claims” that have accumulated in the VHA.<\/p>\n

This should surprise nobody. Canada’s government-run single-payer health system has long suffered waiting times for care. The country’s Fraser Institute estimates<\/a> [PDF] “the national median waiting time from specialist appointment to treatment increased from 9.3 weeks in 2010 to 9.5 weeks in 2011.”<\/p>\n

Likewise, once famously social democratic Sweden has seen a rise in private health coverage<\/a> in parallel to the state system because of long delays to receive care. “It’s quicker to get a colleague back to work if you have an operation in two weeks’ time rather than having to wait for a year,” privately insured Anna Norlander told Sveriges Radio<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

So the VA really is<\/em> a good example<\/a> of a single-payer, socialized health system. Just not in the way that fans of that approach mean.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J.D. Tuccille on the Veterans Health Administration: Just a couple of years ago, Paul Krugman pointed to the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) as a “huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform.” He gloated, “yes, this is ‘socialized medicine.’” Similarly, a letter touted by Physicians for a National Health Program trumpeted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,84,66,13],"tags":[704,121,162,283],"class_list":["post-25862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-government","category-health-science","category-usa","tag-fraserinstitute","tag-insurance","tag-socializedmedicine","tag-sweden"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6J8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25863,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25862\/revisions\/25863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}