Obamacare can't be trusted with your info..... not to mention your health.

[Danno 1,228]

I believe you're referring to me.

Had you bothered to read the entire statement, you would have seen that not only did I say a great deal more than "it works pretty good in another country" (by the way, I happen to think there isn't any reason why we, the self-proclaimed "greatest nation on Earth", would fail where others succeed), I also wrote quite a bit on the subject of VA hospitals, including quotes from the RAND Corporation and many other sources which appear to rebut your claims that they are inefficient and provide unsatisfactory service. In fact, they gave them downright glowing praise, and, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I wasn't able to find any reports to contradict them without turning to partisan sources.

(Also, for the record, Medicare was never brought up, but given that its popularity is well known, perhaps that's why you chose not to.)

I'm still waiting for you to tell me where you got your info on Medicaid and to clarify your statement since you didn't indicate exactly what you meant by "the poor".

If you disagree with published reports on VA efficiency and care, that's fine, but it doesn't speak very well of you that you find it more worthy of your time to attack me on another thread instead of providing any proof to back up your claims.

Lastly, I'm a she.

When we embark of utopia the question must be asked AT WHAT COST.

DO you have any idea what the services of the VA are and the huge amount of funding they now get?

Beak it down and compare it to what it cost me to go see my doctor and get back to me about the viability of the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT and how it will translate into 300 million patients.

THe Poor- The poor are noted to have the worst incidents of health, yet they live exclusively on Gov'ts Health care.

And you want that for your fam?

[Protocol417 161]

When we embark of utopia the question must be asked AT WHAT COST.

DO you have any idea what the services of the VA are and the huge amount of funding they now get?

Beak it down and compare it to what it cost me to go see my doctor and get back to me about the viability of the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT and how it will translate into 300 million patients.

THe Poor- The poor are noted to have the worst incidents of health, yet they live exclusively on Gov'ts Health care.

And you want that for your fam?

You want me to compare the budget of the VA to what it costs for an individual with private insurance (whether your own or through the marketplaces) to go to the doctor? I'm not sure how helpful that would be for your argument.

For one, these are completely different systems. Believe it or not, cutting out the for-profit middle man does wonders for cost effectiveness. I refer you back to the quotes about efficiency from my previous post.

For two, private hospitals are notorious for overcharging and nickle-and-diming. $10K for a device that costs $350 to make. $30 for one pill when you can buy a whole bottle off the shelf for $20. $3 for the reusable pen the doctor used to mark the area of incision. Some of this is negotiated down by your insurance company, but even at negotiated rates the costs are very high.

For three, your insurance company gets their money to pay for your care (well, an ever-shrinking portion of it) from somewhere: Other peoples' premiums, most covered partially-to-heavily by employers, which arguably causes take-home pay to be less than it could be if we'd never put this on their back in the first place. So there are additional hidden costs in the insurance system we currently have.

For four, and yes I know you hate it when I compare the US to other countries, but I also spoke in my original post about the statistical analysis of what other countries spend versus what we spend, plus a little bit on comparing tax burdens. What I didn't get into was actual costs in other countries, as in, what a foreign national, who is not covered by their socialist health care, has to pay. In some cases, and this blew me away when I first heard about it, the cost when paying full price there was less than what their cost here would have been after insurance paid its share. This is full cost, nothing subsidized by tax dollars! One of the stories I heard was from the former CFO of an insurance company here in the US (I believe it was either Blue Cross or Blue Shield of CA, can't remember which - but either way, hardly a stereotypical proponent of universal health care), who was speaking about a trip to Switzerland, if memory serves. Even if we didn't get our costs down anywhere near that, we would still benefit immensely, and again, I don't see why the US would fail where others have succeeded.

Although, I think I may see now where the confusion lies. You think I'm defending the ACA here as a single-payer system. I'm not, because it is not. The ACA only builds on the current private insurance system, which is why I don't like it.

When you speak of "the poor" are you counting those who simply qualify as "poor", or those who are eligible for Medicaid (these two groups are not the same thing)? Have those statistics you've seen (which you still haven't shared with me) allowed for factors outside of the control of whoever their health care provider is, such as poor diet/lack of access to higher-cost healthy food, higher rates of depression, or the fact that people who are already in bad health are more likely to be poor (correlation versus causation - a good study would factor these in so they don't skew the numbers)?

Also, would you explain to me how this relates to a single-payer system, since Medicaid is basically insurance which uses private hospitals, not public ones?

And YES, I think it's quite clear that I do want a single-payer health care system, for both myself and my family. I didn't think I was being unclear at all with regards to that.

By the way, since you brought up my family, guess who currently gets health care provided by the government due to military service? Guess whose life was saved when she was six because her family had access to military hospitals?