TF replied on Permalink
VA healthcare works
It's disturbing to me that whenever government healthcare is mentioned, the speaker usually refers to the Medicare system. This seems to me to be a misnomer. Medicare is an insurance system - not healthcare. The VA, on the other hand, is a highly functional system of providing health care. While any system is only as good as the individuals who make it function, the care provided by the VA healthcare system is based upon established standards of care and best practices. As a result, patients receive quality and timely care. As a veteran who has experienced employer-sponsored healthplans as well as self-pay options, I am grateful to have access to "government healthcare" - it's the most coordinated and proactive care I've ever received!
What is needed seems to me to be a reform of the way we receive care. If what care I can receive is dependent upon how much profit some other entity obtains, then my life is being treated as a commodity - or property - the quality of which depends upon whether someone else can make money as a result. Is this not a perverse form of human trafficking? To profit from the life, health (or lack thereof)of another? It is very different to make a profit on a service, or a product. But when profit is intimately linked to another's physical/mental being, then I think our morality is what needs reform.
