> I do not want my health insurance provided by the people that gave us the VA.

I mean, those same folks give us Medicare, which is both quite popular with the public and gets better marks on results, cost, and efficiency than private healthcare.

I see no evidence my insurance company cares about me any more than the VA cares about its patients. Does the VA have problems? Absolutely. Is "give up and give it to for-profit corporations" likely to fix that? Nope.

I’m not sure being private is the issue. Medicare Part D (pharmacy) is entirely run by private insurers, Medicare just funds it.

And Medicare Part C is a private insurer option, where again, Medicare just funds premiums.

It’s how the system is set up that’s the issue, not whether it’s managed by the government or a private insurer.

Private insurers have a profit motive which is hard to align with public interest.

Do you know if Medicare Part D insurers are able to get drugs at a lower cost than the Canadian system does?

Private insurers do have a profit motive, but with the right regulations, that can help, rather than the US system where it encourages more spending. There are plenty of countries with universal coverage that rely on private insurers - the difference is the system is set up to control costs while providing a pretty standard set of benefits and cost-sharing.

So one reason why Medicare Part D works pretty well is because the private insurers do the negotiating on drug prices. I've read reports that they actually get better prices than for their private plans (there is a ton of competition for Medicare prescriptions).

Are the prices lower than Canada? No, not generally. But they are some of the lowest prices in the US (excluding Medicaid which has a mandatory discount).

Why do you think Canada and Japan and England and Australia can do so much better? We (Americans) debate universal care like it's some radical idea. We pretend that there aren't successful implementations with different configurations all over the world.

They're also the same people that brought us Medicare, and people eligible absolutely love Medicare.

The VA's problems are in no small part because of the way it is structured (i.e. duplicate facilities, staff, low salaries, etc) and funded (combined with other military appropriations). If VA benefits were provided via Medicare it would have a structurally better system.

That's the beauty of medicare for all, you can still buy insurance on the private market if you want to. For what it's worth, Medicare itself already does a pretty good job being the single largest insurance provider in the United States.

Comparison to the VA is not apt. It's not the same people, it's not even the same concept as M4A.

The VA isn't a great thing to compare medicare-for-all to. The VA's entire customer base has afflictions you just don't see in the general public.

I'd compare M4A to Medicare/Medicaid, if you look at patient surveys they are much happier in general than people who have to deal with insurance companies.

We really should fix the VA though too.

Yes. I do not know why Democrats block bills to fix the VA.

Tried to find what you are talking about. Turned up a lot of political meme's basically saying vote for Trump, because democrats tried blocking the VA Mission Act. Looked up the actual vote counts and it passed successfully with strong bipartisan support in both the house and senate [1]. Are you referring to something else?

[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/237...

If you're referring to Veteran's Choice, while Trump repeatedly and falsely claims to have created it, it was passed into law and signed by Obama in 2014.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/08/politics/trump-veterans-choic...

It doesn't have to be administered by the federal government. Every state can set up and administer its own system, like Canada does.

My father received good treatment from the VA, from bypass surgery to treatments for various complications from diabetes to a long recovery period from a stroke. So the whole system isn't broken.

I'd be happy with that level of care compared to what's currently available for everyone, which is none.

Would you settle for a public option? So then you could choose either private insurance or Medicare.