Deinonychus antirrhopus

More on Socialized Medicine

Victor has a post that also looks at Triumph Socialized Medicine and Phillip Longeman and Timothy Noah's articles on this supposed victory. It is a very good post so go read it.

Update: This quote that Victor pulls from the New England Journal of Medicine article that Longeman sites as one of his main sources (practically his only source) is simply too good to pass up.

Finally, we were able to measure quality in only a few clinical areas, and though the indicators target common diseases, we could not assess the quality of care provided along the entire spectrum of clinical conditions. We therefore cannot generalize our results to encompass the overall quality of care in the VA system, since the focus on these specific areas by VA management may have led to improvements in the targeted conditions alone.

In other words, even if we accept the measure of quality the article uses (administering more tests) it isn't clear that the VA and hence nationalized hospitals are superior in every respect. Not that you'd learn this reading Longeman's article.