Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 16, 2009

Hey Baslim, Jeff thought his question rather than asking it, thus the response that doesn’t match.

We have friends whose young son is a Navy SEAL. A terrific guy. And that’s exactly why he joined the SEALs – to blow up stuff. Fortunately, the military does have a great health plan. It’s called socialized medicine.

Yeah, and after I retired from the Army I had the same “great health plan”…

Which is why I’d rather take the money out of my OWN pocket and go to see my OWN doctor. Not some half-educated foreigner who barely speaks English, who is protected from their incompetent malpractice by the VA.

My step-father died from a brain tumor that was mal-diagnosed by some under-educated dot-head. After his first surgery at the VA hospital in Tampa I paid to have his charts and files looked over by a real doctor. TWO different doctors from two separate practices both came to the same conclusion, that being that his original doctor should be sued for malpractice and should not be allowed to practice medicine. Of course, it’s a moot point since you can’t sue the VA for malpractice. Even with the diagnoses and recommendations from two other doctors, the bleeep still couldn’t get my FIL’s treatment right. She just “stabilized” him until he died. Some fine treatment there!

Yes I’m bitter, because I served my country, as did my father, and my step-father, and my grand-fathers… And the best I can expect from the VA is some quack who isn’t even competent enough to administer aid to roadkill…

Socialized medicine… What a crock…

Since that “socialized medicine” has saved my life (quite literally) three times now, two of them as a result of your precious private medicine and its outrageous money-grubbing which I couldn’t afford, I’m not inclined to think of them unkindly.

Pirate, claiming all socialized medicine will work the same as the clusterfark known as the VA is woefully shortsighted. The VA’s been mismanaged for decades, with the last eight years taking it from bad to pathetic (Walter Reid ring any bells?). When you can work the system, you can do well. A friend of mine is a vet who suffered peacetime trauma due to being female and surrounded by sexist idiots. Once she got recognition of her condition as a direct outgrowth of her military service, she has been getting the best care she can get her hands on through the VA. BTW, picking on a doctor for his English skills says even less about you than the fact you think the VA is the best the government can do.

Looks like Jeff is gonna be driving Predator drones from a basement in Langley…

Jeffy, Jeffy, Jeffy. Think, boy. Blowing up stuff is what got you sacked from your first assignment, and is the reason you’re bussing a Starbucks now.

As bad as VA medical care may be – I do not know, personally – it is light years better than that of tens of millions of civilian Americans, which is no medical care at all. As far as retiring from the military into “the same great health plan,” that differs from civilian retirees, who typically retire into no health plan, until they are eligible for Medicare, which is, of course, a form of … socialized medicine.