Let us not forget that this idea was intended to apply to wounded veterans, and was not limited to veterans with chronic illnesses. Their own insurance would have to pick up their medical expenses for wounds received in military action. This like so many government policies of the past would further distort the whole Health Care System.
You are right about that Ed, one hundred percent. However, just about all of the distortions in the HC system over the past thirty years came from the unintended consequences of government policies which we must assume were founded on good intentions. If it weren't for those policies we would still have the most efficient, cost effective and therefore most available HC system in the world. And even now it is far better in all those ways than we are constantly being told by those who yammer at us about how terrible it is so that they have an excuse to take it over and re-engineer it. That, of course, will degrade it further.
In 1966 a hospital stay in our capital city cost $72 a day, not including attending physician's charges. On a fairly good wage of $3.00 per hour a person could've paid for each of those days with 3 days of labor. but instead of that insured person paying 3 days in labor value, health insurance paid for almost all of it from a premium of about $5 per week. That was the amount of a premium for a family of two adults, or about 2% of a day's labor value for just one of those adults if they both were working. There was nothing onerous about that. Now do some factorial multiplication and see where we are today based on today’s cost and income levels.
What you would find out is, in spite of all the harm that has been done, it is really not so bad for the equivalent medical services which were available in 1966. But furthermore, the comparison is not so bad, even compared to what's new and available today including heart, lung, liver, kidney, knee, hip and all kinds of other transplants, and an endless array of other life saving drugs, chemotherapy, and health services, like Xray machines which are in about every doctor's office who does surgery, etc. etc. An ordinary bone surgeon (one who does elbow, wrist, or knee surgery) will even have an MRI machine in their building. Western Pennsylvania, the poorest part of that state, has more MRI machines than the whole of the country of Canada, which is a standard we are told we should vie for.
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