On the flip side, your assailment of Walmart as a freeloader is unjustified. How many companies do you know that even “offer” health insurance to part-time workers? If you work part-time for my city, you don’t get benefits. If you work part-time for the drug company I worked for, you don’t get benefits. I bet the number of employers who don’t provide benefits to part-time workers far outnumber those that do. That’s where the majority of uninsureds come from at Walmart. They CHOOSE to work part-time and have to wait 2 years for benefits. Furthermore, Walmart pays 2/3 of the premium of its workers. That’s pretty dang good Preston. Yeah some companies pay more of the premium, but a heck of a lot don’t and a lot of small companies don’t even offer health insurance to full-time employees. Furthermore, take a look at what retirees pay for medicare and supplemental medicare policies..I’d bet you my last dollar on a comparison basis they pay a bigger percentage out of their SS income for health insurance premiums than the guy who works at Walmart.

I have no particular reason to care about Walmart or GM. I pay $2160 a year for my health insurance offered via my former company (a drug company at that). I’m glad to get it. It’s not cheap, but my company doesn’t even have to offer it to their retirees, especially their early retirees.

None of this solves the health care insurance crisis in this country. I just think you better take a broader look at the “system” and who you condemn before you bite.

We used to fund our fire protection individually: you would pay a fire company and they would come to your rescue if your house caught fire (and you had paid your dues…). Eventually, we realized it was not only immoral to stand there and watch your neighbor’s house burn down- it actually threatened the whole community. So now each community shares the burden.

Similarly, our current system is expensive and ineffective judging by life expectancy and infant mortality. People who can’t afford insurance and have jobs that don’t provide it (1 million Wal-Mart employees, for example) then get sick more frequently and burden emergency rooms that are not intended for that use- expenses the rest of us pay both monetarily and through increased disease in our communities.

I don’t think the French model or the Canadian model are necessary best for the US- let us figure out what works. Maybe each state is allowed to experiment. But I feel that companies like GM that are doing right by their employees are being punished by the current system while freeloaders like Wal-Mart are subsidized by Medicaid and your local hospital emergency room.

The current system is like a lead weight on American companies.

Something has to be done about a system that allows 40 million people to roll the dice with their health and go without health insurance.

I’m as nervous as you about allowing a single governmental agency run health services but the VA could provide an interesting example about a better way to run health care in this country. It’s clear that our current system is allowing millions to fall through the cracks while putting an unsustainable burden on American companies (GM reportedly spends over 1 Billion dollars on health care).

The VA does move slowly; much more slowly than similar services in the private sector.

But I’v always received great service, care, and treatment from every sector of the VA system I’ve worked through (medical treatment, disability benefits, educational benefits, and insurance).

I agree that we will benefit from a short window of opportunity before Vietnam Veterans begin the ends of their lives- that’s why I feel that it’s incumbent on the government to address these problems now.