Haha... IF it could be successful... LOL...
The VA is what killed my friend. They dragged their feet on testing for so long (four months) his tumors had an opportunity to grow past the point of being eligible for a tansplant.
As a last ditch effort he went to India to try and get a transplant. They ran the same tests in TWO DAYS.. TWO DAYS... The doctor told him if he had left the US and tried to score a new organ in India while he was in the middle of being jacked around by the VA he would have had his transplant and been back home already.
Now he's just a puddle of goo on my couch with a couple of weeks left to live.
Yeah, the VA is a great shining example of how socialized medicine works. Expensive treatment? No worries... just drag your feet until it's too late. Problem solved!
And this is really my fear with the Fed. nationalizing healthcare: Poor - as compared to a private model - public service that is the almost norm at every publicly run operation.
Infrastructure (which covers a large swath), DMV, there is just not a good level of service for the money invested in these operations. Ever. (at least where I'm at, Chicagoland).
Then again, the private model my mom and dad (mom had cancer, seems to be clean now, dad just diagnosed with interhepatic cholangiocarcinoma) are on, BlueCrossBlueShield 'Bluevantage', so far the Dr.'s here on the south side of Chicago can't get their sh1t together either. Been 2 months since he went in, they still haven't even got around to getting an oncologist meeting (where is the oncologist proactively earning those big bucks they make, and the HMO which gets paid those big premiums???) nor have they solved his primary complaint: Pain and bloating after eating, so much so, he just won't eat.
So.....a bad public model (and, we know given the service mentality in the US, it'll be bad) or a private model that clearly has large issues.
Decisions, decisions......
Chuck