Some of America's heroes love their government-run health care:
Rick Tanner is one American who loves his government-run health care.
After serving in Vietnam and spending three decades in the U.S. Navy, Tanner retired in 1991 with a bad knee and high blood pressure. He enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration and now benefits from comprehensive treatment with few co-payments and an electronic records system more advanced than almost anywhere at private hospitals.
"The care is superb," said Tanner, 66, a San Diego resident who visits the veterans medical center in La Jolla, California, and a clinic in nearby Mission Valley. The record- keeping, he said, is "state of the art."
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Researchers publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal and the Annals of Internal Medicine in recent years have endorsed the system. A Canadian policy journal, Healthcare Papers, devoted an entire issue to it in 2005.
"The VHA’s experiences have become a model around the world," the editor-in-chief of Healthcare Papers, Peggy Leatt, wrote at the time.
The government is both payer and provider of care to the veterans, employing 19,000 salaried doctors in 153 medical centers and more than 900 outpatient clinics. Last year, 5.1 million veterans were treated, and millions more are enrolled.
"I really get annoyed every time I hear these talking heads talking about ‘the government can’t run anything,’" said John Rowan, 64, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, who visits a New York clinic for complications from contact with the chemical Agent Orange. "Most veterans would give it a fairly good rating."
The system is not perfect, partly because it's been chronically underfunded by an administration who liked to talk big about supporting the troops, but didn't actually care that much about what happened to them once they got hom, often with debilitating injuries. On the whole, though, patients "routinely rank the veterans system above the alternatives."
With an effective, cost-efficient, and popular system--which even the providers like--socialized healthcare system already in place in America, it's hard to understand what's so scary about a much less ambitious robust public option.
Update: Don't miss VotVet's Jon Soltz post about TRICARE at HuffPo.
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