“The evidence for the VA model is compelling. As someone with expensive individual health insurance, I would appreciate the opportunity to buy into the VA system. That would be my choice of a public option. The VA provides better results with higher patient satisfaction and lower costs. Further, it has all the features that we like in a single-payer plan: doctors on salary with no financial incentive to order unnecessary tests or treatments, computerized patient files so test results are not lost and tests don’t need to be repeated at high cost, computer checks on medication delivery so incorrect medications or doses are not delivered, and an incentive for the hospitals to prevent hospital-based infections. This is the type of system I would like to be cared in. And it will save the government billions to deliver health care this way. If people prefer to go to a private hospital without those systems, fearing “government health care,” I will leave them to it. Give me the government health care. Please.”
