Yes, the VA is socialized medicine according to Paul Krugman an it works he wrote, in a column a few years ago. But Sunday evening on 60 Minutes, viewers got a glimpse of what the word works actually means.

VA care means long waits for care, a bureaucracy that treats its clients more like inmates than like customers and all too often a deadly reminder that health care delayed can mean health care denied.

Among the 60 Minutes findings:

Krugman writes:

The most efficient health care systems are integrated systems like the V.H.A.; next best are single-payer systems like Medicare; the more privatized the system, the worse it performs.

Yet here is the reality: many veterans avoid the VA system entirely. Even though the care is free, about 90 percent of the 27 million veterans who could use the VA system choose not to, relying instead on private health insurance and other ways of accessing healthcare.

Moreover, Michael Tanner writes in a Cato Institute study:

it takes an average 160 days simply for a veteran to gain access to his health benefits, and the case processing backlog within the VA currently sits in excess of 344,000 claims. Appealing a VA decision is lengthy as well, requiring an average wait time of 1,598 days.

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Is The VA Socialized Medicine?