Why privatizing the VA health care system is a bad idea

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2016/02/17/why-privatizing-health-care-system-bad-idea/2PyB5Dz36pdahjwVFr3p3M/story.html



The Veteran’s Health Administration must fix major problems, but its integrated care system should be a model to learn from.

Why privatizing the VA health care system is a bad idea
By Suzanne Gordon
February 17, 2016

Obamacare isn’t the only program at stake in the next election. The future of the nation’s largest health care system?—?the Veterans Health Administration?—?is also up for grabs. Republican candidates for president, some with support from the Koch brothers-funded group Concerned Veterans for America, are waging a campaign to demonize, remake, and perhaps ultimately privatize the VHA. Marco Rubio wants to “jolt the VA back to life,” by forcing it to compete with the private sector. Donald Trump insists we should “empower our veterans to vote with their feet,” which, he seems sure, will take them far away from the nearest VA hospital.

Critics of the VHA have done a good job of erasing any memory of its successes from public consciousness. This is particularly ironic today, 70 years after the head of the Veterans Administration signed a memorandum affiliating veterans’ hospitals with academic medical centers. Since that time, the VHA has become “the largest single provider of medical training in the country,” according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, helping prepare over 70 percent of the nation’s physicians as well as members of more than 40 other health care professions. VHA researchers have helped pioneer innovations?—?the shingles vaccine, the implantable cardiac pacemaker, the first liver transplant?—?that benefit all Americans.

Of course, the VHA today has serious problems that can and must be fixed, including a suicide prevention hotline that sent some callers to voicemail, according to a recent report. An independent assessment of the VHA conducted by MITRE Corporation, the Rand Corporation, and others and released last year highlighted problems with top-heavy management, cumbersome hiring processes, and delays in access to care in some regions.

On the whole, however, the assessment also reported that the VHA’s 288,000 employees, including 20,000 physicians, are able to deliver high-quality care to the more than 6 million veterans who receive its services. “VA wait times,” RAND reported, “do not seem to be substantially worse than non-VA waits.” VA patients get care that is often higher quality than that in the private sector?—?with performance variation “lower than that observed in private sector health plans.” A study published recently in JAMA reported that men with heart failure, heart attacks, or pneumonia were less likely to die if treated at a VHA hospital rather than non-VHA hospital.

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I have had extremely good luck with the VA here in Boston.

Why is the VA put on the chopping block? We are talking about helping veterans who serve in all Merika's wars. Fuck up the VA and you may have problems recruiting new cannon fodder for your forever wars.

[NuclearDem]

1. The VA health system works amazingly when it's properly funded and overseen.

Better quality of care than the private sector from people specially trained to work with veterans.

[tazkcmo]

2. Management

The problems intensify as you go up the chain of command. At the user level, the personnel are generally terrific, caring and deeply appreciative of those they are charged with caring for. It's the muckity mucks who muck it all up.

[Turbineguy]

3. Sqeezing the last bit of profit

from wounded Veterans.

The republican dream.

[The River]

4. Thanks for Posting This

I agree completely.

I have used VA in both Virginia and California and have gotten excellent care.
I try to respond to any negative posts or articles I find on-line and really enjoy
the positive news articles like this one.

Bravo Zulu

[HDSam]

5. I've had my issues

with VA healthcare, but all-in-all, I'm happy to have it.

The so-called "Concerned Veterans of America" are all for privatization. What they clearly fail to realize, among a host of other things, is that private sector healthcare ain't all that great. For-profit healthcare has had it's share of disastrous screw-ups. If they didn't, why do medical practitioners need malpractice insurance?

Arguing for privatization on the presumption it's better is ridiculous and the CVA are being used by the Kochs to monetize war from cradle to grave.