...our small sample of respondents has concluded that the government can and does do a pretty good job of running a healthcare operation, the VA. We know little more about the cost of VA care other than maybe the comment above that the staff is not paid as much as those doing similar jobs in the private sector. I guess we also know that the government uses it's purchasing power to hold down the costs of purchased goods and services. I suppose that it's also safe to conclude that, because the doctors all work for the VA, that the level of fraudulent charges is also pretty low.

The VA experience is an admitted reason why the drug companies, in particular, have lobbied so hard to make sure that laws written involving prescription drugs specifically prohibit government's involvement in negotiating prices from migrating into other publicly-funded insurance like Medicare or Medicaid, or even the new "competitive option" being discussed. As an aside, does it make you wonder why the drug lobbyists, who spent hundreds of millions in campaign contributions and advertising against President Obama in the 2008 campaign is now spending lots of money supporting "Obamacare" with it's Harry and Louise TV ads? Maybe they figure they've already got Congress in their pocket.

A legitimate open question would be whether the government could "scale up" an operation like the VA, which serves only a few million patients, to an operation that might be responsible for ten or twenty times that many. But it does appear, on a very small sample size of respondents to this post, that maybe "socialized medicine" isn't or at least doesn't have to be the bogeyman of which it is so often accused.

Thanks for the honest responses.