Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc
So tell me why it would be impossible to provide a goverment paid for private medical care vets.
Oh it's not impossible. But writing blank checks for an enterprise (healthcare) that commonly outpaces inflation by 2 or 3 to 1 seems rather idiotic. The only thing worse than typical government unaccountability is
engineered unaccountability.
It is a straw man to assume private medical care for vets would only be engineered unaccountability. On the contrary if the VA used its size, it could easily obtain medical benefits required by the vets in the private sector. It could do this all without owning a single hospital or hiring single doctor. Of coure this would result in more service locations and better service for our vets.
Veterans are a special population:
1) WWII/Korean vets aren't just old, they are old and likely to die in the next few years . . . aka . . . the most expensive healthcare years.
2) Vietnam vets aren't just middle-aged, many have physical, mental, and substance issues. These chronic healthcare issues will require ongoing care until the day they die.
3) Gulf War vets went whole hog . . . they developed a variety of maladies . . . for which we have no explanation.
4) Bush War 2003-???? takes the cake. Improvements in armor and theater medicine means MANY GIs survive what would have been fatal injuries in previous conflicts. Accordingly, a large number of permanently/semi-permanently disabled vets are being generated.
And still most of them do require any special service that could not be found outside of a VA hospital. For those do require some special service, I have no problem with the VA handling those directly.
No private, for-profit enterprise would accept such a population . . . unless of course they are guaranteed a profit. I hear "cost plus" contracts in Iraq have been the epitome of quality and efficiency.:roll:
There are lots of goverment contracts where the goverment gets to decide what the profit level will be. 10-15% profit would easily offset the inherit problems with goverment effenciency.
Tell me again why the VA needs to maintain over 1000 medical facilities to care for our vets.
If there was a network of public healthcare facilites (or even private nonprofit) that could contract with the VA for healthcare, I would advocate for fewer VA facilities. I hate to say it but our current healthcare system is a disaster. It's an amalgam of vested interests that make it horribly inefficient and terribly expensive. It's only a matter of time before it collapses. Care for the poor will be go first, care for the elderly will follow, with emergency care pulling up the rear. In the face of a coming healthcare apocalypse, who would sacrifice vets to such a system?
And I think we can still both agree, that the private system performs better than the VA.
VA history and vital stats
And you make profit sound like a bad thing. I would take corperate profit over goverment inefficiencies as inefficiencies are just wasted taxpayer money.
Uh, as a NET taxpayer ie I GIVE and others receive . . . I would gladly pay MORE to provide better healthcare to vets, children, and the poor. I wouldn't give ONE friggin' cent to boost Pfizer and Lilly profit margins. You do realize how ridiculous your premise sounds? I wonder if you would take corporate inefficiency (Bechtel, Blackwater, KBR) over government inefficiency . . . it's all just taxpayer money . . . eh?
Even if VA was providing medical care for vets, nothing would stop them from maintaining their current drug purchase deals. Heck it would probably even make sense to broker a deal with a national drug store chain(s) to make it easier for vets to get their meds.
And I guess if i am ideologue(it is a shame you keep resorting to ad homs), I guess I believe that our vets deserve the medical care they were promised.
Uh, an ideologue is one that is blindly adherent to a particular point of view. I can give you the benefit of a doubt that you genuinely think vets deserve quality care . . . as long as it's private.
In that respect you would be right, but most of care required by vets is no an inheritnly govermental service. I have no problems with VA managing the private care plans for vet and making sure those with special needs get what they require.
But by the same token, you beleive that only goverment can provide proper care to vets.
Personally, I don't really care. But I KNOW healthcare. Private healthcare facilities are uniformly the MOST expensive. In fact, nonprofit and for-profit insurers from NC to CA have begun excluding private facilities with the highest rates. Private health insurance companies have been at the vanguard of curtailed benefits and increased cost to beneficiaries/payers. As a physician, I have NO faith in private enterprise to provide care to those most in need. Private healthcare is exceptionally good at providing care to people with significant resources. As a generalization, that does not describe our veteran population.
