O.K., here’s what’s bugging me about the VA scandal.  Of course, it’s inexcusable to knowingly delay treatment for sick veterans. When healthy people who have the training and the skill and the responsibility to address and perhaps fix the physical and mental malfunctions of veterans hold back from doing everything they can in as timely a manner as possible, I am shocked and offended. How could I not be moved with compassion when I learn that a sixty-five-year-old man is near death and will almost surely die because he couldn’t be scheduled for a colonoscopy which almost surely would have saved his life? Members of Congress and the general public should be outraged when care for the sick and disabled is denied or delayed. 

What’s also bugging me is that members of Congress who are pounding the table and yelling loudest are the very ones who have delayed or declined to support bills introduced in their committees and to their assemblies to provide financial support for Veterans Administration health programs.  They are the ones who consistently vote against any request for any program if it comes from the Democratic side of Congress or from the President’s office.  They are the ones who continue to discredit the Affordable Care Act even after it has been clearly shown to be meeting the critical health needs of Americans. The Affordable Care Program, which Republicans continue to deride as “ObamaCare,” is clearly not the best program that was possible for Congress and the Administration to create for Americans.  A single-payer program would be better.

Whether it’s for an octogenarian veteran with AIDS or flu or a kindergarden kid stricken with leukemia or flu or a miner with black lung disease who worked for years in a West Virginia coal mine, in a civil society, especially one that is known to be the most powerful in the world, denying or delaying medical care is inexcusable and probably in the best of all possible worlds would be considered criminal.  Congress has the power, and some of us would say the obligation, to establish a single-payer national health insurance system which could with a single public or quasi-public agency organize health care financing for all citizens.  The nation already has a Medicare Program which could be developed to extend to all citizens.  A national Medicare Program for all could leave delivery of care in private hands. It’s basically a no-brainer.  Under a single-payer system, all residents of the United States would be covered for all medically necessary services, including doctor, hospital, preventive care, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Veterans already qualify for such health-care benefits if they have served in the active military and have not been dishonorably discharged.  About 9.3 million of the nation’s 22 million veterans are enrolled the VA health-care system.  Why not for all residents?