IN most nations with a VA-style (Beveridge) setup, there is great media interest in the least failing or hint of scandal. And they mean politicians lose a lot of votes. The VA hasn't enjoyed that feedback system until recently.
While it's tempting to blame any failure of national healthcare on Republicans, this is simply not factually accurate.
It's been at least two generations since the VA was anything resembling a good model for healthcare, and it's not simply the Republicans to blame for that, nor is it merely a problem of funding.
And sure, I blame the neoliberal third way Democrats as much as the Republicans. Their whole "let's move the party right and follow the Republicans" really muddies the waters here.
The problems with the VA date back to the 60s, although they've accelerated in the last couple of decades.
> And sure, I blame the neoliberal third way Democrats as much as the Republicans. Their whole "let's move the party right and follow the Republicans" really muddies the waters here.
It sounds like you're rather committed to the belief that right-wing ideology is responsible for destroying otherwise-viable public healthcare models. There are plenty of other places where the data might support that belief. The VA is not one of those cases; the VA has gone from bad to worse over the last 50 years, and it's not simply a partisan problem.
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/07/18.html
"Quality of Care in VA Health System Compares Well to Other Health Settings"
A lot of the bad press around it's deficiencies are because it, as a public institution, publishes a lot of information that the private healthcare system isn't required to publish.
And yes, having been from Newt Gingrich's district, and seeing the failed 1994 HEART act, that ended up being turned into Romneycare, and then morphed into the ACA (in order to steal the Republican's thunder in 2012), yes I do blame the right wing for the current state of healthcare.
From your own link, which is a press release by the firm which sponsored the research:
> Researchers say there were few studies [included in this meta-analyis] to evaluate equity, efficiency and patient-centeredness, and that the quality of the available studies vary.
Incidentally, those are three of the four main issues for which people typically criticize the VA.
In other words, that meta-analysis more or less confirms that the VA probably does well at the things people already knew it was good at doing, without looking into any of the areas where it's known to have problems.
I mean, it's the Rand Corporation. It's not like it's some fly by night 'you pay us and we'll say whatever you want' firm. The link to the real study is right there.
> Incidentally, those are three of the four main issues for which people typically criticize the VA.
That statement was for the whole study, including the private side. Once again, the VA publishes quite a bit of this information, when was the last time you saw average wait times for the private side?
...okay? The point is that the primary reference itself shows that the study isn't relevant to this conversation at all: by its own account, it doesn't attempt to investigate the issues that we're talking about. It doesn't attempt to study the issues that make the VA a bad model for healthcare (and have since the 60s).
If a few motivated politicians can ruin the lives of millions those politicians shouldn't have that power in the first place.
Because America isn't the entire world and there are many places where socialized healthcare of various forms have been very successfully implemented for a long time. The idea peddled by conservatives in America that the only options for socialized healthcare are inevitable failure or tyranny is simply, demonstrably nonsense.
It's exactly this kind of parochial, limited mindset that needs to change.
> This is a principal reason why the US was crossed off my list of countries where I would work and live. I fight against the privatization that is occurring within healthcare in my native country, Iceland. We used to have the Scandinavian model but decades of attacks from the right-wing Independence Party has broken our healthcare system. The next phase described by Chomsky is handing it over to private capital since people are outraged that it doesn't work anymore. I'm sickened by the development and feel a little like an old man screaming at the desert wind.
It's exactly your kind of Utopian mindset that needs to change. Please read the news of countries other than the US. You might be surprised at the amount of controversy that surrounds universal healthcare systems.
"I am disappointed by my treatment in the system!"
"Do you want to privatise it?"
"Absolutely not."
If you do have that, then it is highly unlikely that your country will be able to implement a health care system that is competitive with Canada, Japan, Netherlands, etc.
But beyond that, it's very unlikely that your country will be able to implement other fundamentals, such as uncontaminated drinking water, safe schools, etc.
In other words, if your country has three branches of government, and the party that controls the executive, legislative, and judicial branches really is willing to fuck up any government in an effort to prove that government doesn't work... then, I'm afraid you are really pretty fucked.
> Until we change our collective view in what the purpose of a government and society is things won’t change significantly.
So yeah, if we don't change our collective view, then the republicans (or whomever) will continue to undercut these government run programs as much as possible for their broken ideology.
Governments require somewhat good will from politicians and voters to do their job. Some news.
The only reason that system fails is because voters don't care about it. There's nothing exceptionally bad about the US that would not make it so.