Posted: May 08, 2012 9:57 pm
Ultimate wrote:mrjonno wrote:You also got the extremely large military in the US , would this really be substainable if civilians also got 'free' education and medical care. I suspect it would really struggle especially when it comes to education where people simply join the military just so they can go to university. A lot of the people in the US who don't want universal healthcare already have universal healthcare ie ex-military and the elderly
I would agree. Though I may note the VA system is one of the most horrible examples of centralized medicine in the world. Obama tried to partially privatize it but backed off after ridiculous level of vitriol from veterans and military personnel. I do think its quite ironic that some of the people that spew the most hate against the president for "socializing medicine" also hate him for trying to make it less socialized.
The VA institutions have scored excellently over the last decade.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/featur ... ngman.html
And they have been much better at holding down costs
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0 ... nd-the-va/
It has been estimated that if Medicare switched its prescription drug plans to ones that mirror the VA it could save $500+/yr per patient.