Re: The Democrat's Candidate

john_kulp@xxxxxxxxxxx (John Kulp) wrote in
news:472b16ea.75657259@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:16:32 GMT, Michael Wolf
<michael.wolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

john_kulp@xxxxxxxxxxx (John Kulp) wrote in news:47234e13.43236440
@news20.forteinc.com:



You don't need the government to choose your healthcare provider
but simply to act as the payor. See Medicare. And, if you're
concerned about government provided healthcare, look at the VA.
That's exactly what it is and it has higher quality measures than
private healthcare

And do you think the VA would work as well, given that there's a
large supply of taxpayers providing the benefits to a fairly small
number of folks?
300 million folks in the country.
5 million currently being served by the VA (2005 numbers, IIRC).

Of course. It has already proved that. It's average cost per
patient per year is $5000 versus $6500 for Medicare. It held its
costs flat over something like the last 5 years while private
insurance rose 40% over the same time period---all while
consistently having higher quality than the private system. It has
the most state of the art electronic records system that private
healthcare only dreams about. The point is not to have the VA cover
all these people but to have others adopt their obviously successful
methods and, perhaps, allow non-eligible veterans use the system
paid for by Medicare which would both save Medicare money and
provide the vets with better medical care at the same time. The VA
has already proven that it can handle a large increase thanks to
Iraq and Afghanistan

you mean that there's no deficit?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/26818.php

I didn't say that, I said the VA has proven it can handle the increase
which it can and does for the moment.
This is about the shortfall in funds needed to provide for ADDITIONAL
vets coming from the system. Which, btw, is up for approval right
now.


the additional vets coming from Iraq and Afghanistan... of whom you said
that it can handle them.
.

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