It’s really kind of sad/scary/amusing that a guy that runs a blog called “Health Care BS” and claims to have spent 20 years in health care finance doesn’t know the difference between a single-payer system and a national health service .

Boy David Catron, that’s pretty embarrassing:

For years, advocates of socialized medicine have been extolling the virtues of the VA hospital system. Ignoring the collective cri du coeur (No! Don’t do it!) from veterans who have actually been subjected to its tender mercies, the single-payer evangelists have doggedly insisted that the Veterans Administration constitutes a good model for a “universal” civilian system.

(Nice one-two with the “socialized medicine” buzzword there.) If Mr. Catron knew what single-payer is (and honestly, I think he does, but couldn’t pass up an opportunity), he would realize that single-payer advocates advocate for a private health care system, publicly funded. No single-payer advocate I know of is advocating for a “universal civilian system,” like the VA, where government owned facilities and government-employed docs and nurses provide the health care.

I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face: NHS isn’t NHI .

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