Why is it if our Health Care System is so damn good

[Toots]

That those in the military are forced to endure government run health care? Why aren't they allowed to have the best system like the rest of Americans?

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. Because it's good for morale.

:sarcasm:

[Thtwudbeme]

2. and why does it consistently need "Overhauling?"

I despise our health care system---I was a paramedic---and I saw first hand how very shitty it is.

The MOST decent health care workers in the US are the nurses, paramedics, and technicians.....many of the doctors are just greedy egotistical fuckwits who don't have the brains of the nurses they are ordering around.

[Warpy]

3. Oh, but some of them are

Check to see how wounded Reservists are being stiffed by the system and shunted back into the for profit system that serves the rest of us so well. It's quite a scandal, that lack of services that Reservists who have been misused as regular troops are confronting once their bodies have been shattered. As for mental health care, forget that one.

Of all the horrible things Stupid has done to the rank and file military, what he's done to Reservists has got to be the worst.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. Krugman holds up the VA as an example of a successful govt health program:

January 27, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Confidential
By PAUL KRUGMAN

American health care is desperately in need of reform. But what form should change take? Are there any useful examples we can turn to for guidance?

Well, I know about a health care system that has been highly successful in containing costs, yet provides excellent care. And the story of this system's success provides a helpful corrective to anti-government ideology. For the government doesn't just pay the bills in this system — it runs the hospitals and clinics.

No, I'm not talking about some faraway country. The system in question is our very own Veterans Health Administration, whose success story is one of the best-kept secrets in the American policy debate.

In the 1980's and early 1990's, says an article in The American Journal of Managed Care, the V.H.A. "had a tarnished reputation of bureaucracy, inefficiency and mediocre care." But reforms beginning in the mid-1990's transformed the system, and "the V.A.'s success in improving quality, safety and value," the article says, "have allowed it to emerge as an increasingly recognized leader in health care."

Non-pay link: http://www.topplebush.com/oped2502.shtml

[cyclezealot]

5. Anyone take the US health care seriously.

It's purpose is not to keep Americans healthy. But to channel profits to insurance companies or pharmeutical companies. Living overseas, watching health carrier ads makes it look like such a joke. Talks of choices. Americans only choices are which program can I subscribe to at the most affordable price and what choice do I loose, in order for them to be profitable.
I detest the US health care system. HMO's . I almost let my wifes cancer get out of control, when it could have been treated effectively,and cheaply when it was but a mole. Our GP did all he could to not give us a referal.
Got to keep his 'global budget' in tact. Such a relief living overseas. In most of the industrial world, health care consumers don't even worry about health insurance. Don't even know what the word means.

[applegrove]

6. Apparently - the veteran system is the only one that works. At all.