DAR
Yes, let’s take a careful look at that:

***
VA — more than fine

WaPo reports on the sixth year in a row that the VA has outperformed the private sector in customer satisfaction:

Inpatient care received a rating of 83 on a 100-point scale; outpatient care got a rating of 80. In comparison, a similar survey of patients receiving private care found they rated their satisfaction at 73 for inpatient care and 75 for outpatient care.

Nicholson attributed the high ratings to the changes in the system, such as implementation of electronic records to reduce the risk of errors.

“Our system has become not only much more efficient, but safer,” Nicholson said.

The VA is the only completely insulated government-run system in the U.S. Medicaid and Medicare, although their growth of spending tends to be much more predictable than the private sector, still exist within it. They rely on our fractured care delivery system, lack of preventative care, and inefficient system of paperwork and hard copy medical records. In the private sector, that means to uncontrolled spending, bad health outcomes, and especially medical errors.

The VA not only routinely out-performs the private sector, it arrived at that level of quality after years at the bottom of the barrel. When conservatives harp about Medicare Part D and conclude “government can’t do anything right” — here’s another direction to point them. The only truly government-run system in the U.S., and it provides better care than all the others.”

LINK.

It is not socialized and your study compares VA to fee for service Medicare. It does not compare to the private sector because the private sector always beats any government care.

Socialized would be where people pay in so others could have care without doing anything for it. People who receive VA or military care paid for it. It is government provided but not socialized and the costs are astronomical. The military system cannot compete with private insurance for good care at a reasonable cost. You get great care but it is very expensive.

DAR
And that is EXACTLY what I said you said, while quoting you verbatim. It’s all above, in black in white. Including your distortion and completely misreading of your own claim:

“How many here have actually worked in military medicine? The care is the best in the world, the administrative side and the costs leave little to be desired. Military medicine is a bit of a specialty of mine.”
–Big Dog, Monday Jun 15th, 2009 at 23:09

Here is the link:

http://www.onebigdog.net/the-rangel-rope-a-dope/comment-page-1/#comment-132336

This means, according to you, that military medicine provides health care that is “the best in the world.”

BigD: I specifically know about military medicine which is not socialized,>>

DAR
It is completely socialized. It could not be more socialized. The VA’s system is also completely socialized medicine. It could not be more so.

I am sorry you don’t know what you are talking about. But there it is.

D.
————————
“Socialized medicine has been tried in the United States, and it has proven superior to health care supplied by the private sector…

The socialized medicine to which I refer is the complex of hospitals managed by the Veterans Administration. Longman cites a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003 comparing veterans’ hospitals with fee-for-service health care funded by Medicare… By every criterion, the New England Journal found the veterans’ hospitals to be superior…

Surveys by the National Committee for Quality Assurance and other organizations, have reached the same conclusion. The superiority of VA hospitals is so obvious that by now it ought to be common knowledge. But it isn’t, because an insane political consensus that firmly opposes turning health care over to the government—because the government is presumed incapable of doing anything well—doesn’t want to hear that government hospitals are outperforming private hospitals.”

The Triumph of Socialized Medicine.

Military medicine is not socialized medicine and I am tired of you twisting things around.

Let me be clear, they are not socialized, I do not work in socialized medicine and the system is not the best in the world. There is a difference between the care one gets and how much one pays. The cost is staggering and is borne by the department of defense.

You know little about any of it so best not to speak. Take your own advice.

DAR
This from a person who works in a completely socialized system of health care, and at the same time, says this care “is the best in the world.”

And I agree.

Amazing what one cannot see when they are completely blinded by ideology.

D.
——————-
Excerpt:

“A team of researchers recently set out to compare the quality of VHA care with that of care in a national sample by using a comprehensive quality-of-care measure.

*VA scores highest in quality of care*

The research team found that patients from the VHA scored 16 percentage points higher for adjusted overall quality…

For chronic disease care, the VA finished 13 percentage points higher…

For preventive care, the VA finished 20 points higher (64% vs. 44%; difference [CI, 12 to 28 percentage points]). The comparison the VA did not win was for acute care.

The VHA held the strongest advantage in processes targeted by VHA performance measurement, where the VA finished 23 percentage points ahead of the competition…

From the study, the research team concludes that patients receiving socialized, government-run medicine from the VHA received higher-quality care according to a broad measure…

What this study really says is that the more accurately we measure, the more we begin to see that socialized, government-run medical programs like the VA provide extremely high quality medical care.

…This recent study of the government-run VA medical system shows that contrary to those doubters, government-run healthcare leads in nearly every measurable category.”

LINK.

DAR
You should be proud of the what these hard working people at the VA have accomplished for our veterans. Instead you ignorantly and baselessly bash them.