Paul Krugman’s Sunday column extols the elegance of the VA health system as I have so extolled in the past. The benefits are decent, the record system fantastic. Once you’re in the system, you can get sick anywhere in the country, go to any VA doc, and all your records are at his or her fingertips. It’s single payer and single provider which is probably way too much to ask for us non-military citizens of the USA. But I still have probably unrealistic hope that the US will see its way into some kind of single payer plan like Medicare for everyone: old, young, rich, poor, employed or not. Meanwhile, Massachusetts’s feeble attempt to at least get insurance for all–even though it was a hodgepodge of many insurance plans and variegated benefits–seems to be foundering according to this week’s Nation. Imperfect as it was, it’s still too much for the special health interests.
