Medicare has a $38 trillion projected shortfall, Medicare donut hole
Cost growth, as with the VA, is 3-10 times less than private care. Funding it is an issue...when you give the money to the richest in such an insanely irresponsible manner as the Bush tax cuts did. It's hard to hold out hope that we'll ever recover from them frankly.
VA is terrible at everything except the GI Bill. Anyone who is envious of VA hospitals has never been in a VA hospital.
Great story! The research says the opposite but you're entitled to your imagination-based position.
US military was never civilian
Minutemen.
Another imaginary artifact, nice. Contractors get triple the pay of the soldiers...not that I begrudge guys getting shot at getting paid, but shouldn't we use that money to pay and equip the guys who took an oath (and conveniently have an actual chain of command, standard of training, logistics infrastructure...oh never fucking mind)?
and is hiring more efficient contractors.
For fuck sake, so soon?
Police, libraries, fire depts, lifeguards hah, park rangers, roads, dams, bridges have never been private sector and aren't comparable. (besides, libraries, park rangers, roads, dams, bridges are very inefficient). I asked which industry has been taken over by the government and then became more efficient.
Of course they have, who did it before those services were public, dufus? Who contracted out for roads before government financed it? Private parties, ie, random mulecarts, and it wasn't considered to be terribly efficient until we elected a Hussein Obama.
You don't think that health insurance companies are regulated at all?
Not nearly enough on a federal level.
Employer based health insurance tax incentive but no individual incentive
I'm confused, do you want more regulation here or less? I'm all for moving the system away from employment...that's exactly what a public option does. Obamacare does this to a certain extent.
you can't buy across state lines
Your shitty Alabama coverage is illegal in California. Will of the people and all that. What you just said is you'd like a federal regulation requiring us to sell that shit here...get your story straight.
states mandate practically what every plan must cover, some states forbid catastrophic coverage...
Again, that sounds like you would prefer a federal regulation requiring states offer that coverage... aren't the states supposed to make that call, like California did? I'm all for getting some sane standards nationally, but you're all over the place. What do you want, other than a broken system to fix itself magically by the power of your ideology?
health care is one of the most regulated industries there is.
As you just pointed out, while it is highly regulated on a state level, there's nothing to enforce a minimum standard on a national level, and patchwork pirate system is not working.