The United States, Canada and Australia have single-payer health insurance programs named Medicare; however, Australia’s program provides universal health insurance, while U.S. Medicare is only for senior citizens and some of the disabled.[2][6] Government is increasingly involved in U.S. health care spending, paying about 45 percent of the $2.2 trillion the nation spent on medical care in 2004.[7]

According to Princeton University health economist Uwe E. Reinhardt, Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP represent “forms of ‘social insurance’ coupled with a largely private health-care delivery system” rather than forms of “socialized medicine.” In contrast, he describes the VA healthcare system as a pure form of socialized medicine because it is “owned, operated and financed by government.”[8]

The Veterans Administration is a single-payer system and provides excellent quality, said Reinhardt. In a peer-reviewed paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers of the RAND Corp. reported that the quality of care received by Veterans Administration patients scored significantly higher overall than did comparable metrics for patients in the rest of the U.S. health system.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_health_care

C’mon, the V.A. hospitals as the best hospitals in the U.S.? WTF? The closest thing we have to a true “single payer” system in the U.S. is the V.A. hospitals, and we want to make ALL of our hospitals like that? Fuck no!

I remember talking to a V.A. nurse about 10 years ago, and she was appalled by the conditions in the hospital, and would gladly go to another hospital to work, except the V.A. paid better. That’s what we’d get, shitty hospitals and overpaid bureaucrats, all to the detriment of our health.