Posted on 05/21/2014 7:43:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON - The scandal that has exploded in the government's veterans hospitals runs a lot deeper than the issue of long waits for those seeking medical care.
And it's been going on for a great deal longer, too, as a mountain of Government Accountability Office audits can attest over many decades: Countless reports of medical mistreatment; dangerously lengthy delays for ill veterans seeking care; shocking mortality rates when compared to private sector hospitals for similar surgeries; old, rundown facilities; and aged, broken medical equipment.
These and other problems in the VA's vast bureaucracy have been exposed in a sea of reports now gathering dust in congressional oversight committees that have failed to effectively address their findings.
Lawmakers at Senate hearings last week were beating their breasts over reports of veterans facing long treatment delays that have resulted in numerous deaths. We still do not know how many because of recent stories that the real numbers have been covered up.
Still, the fact remains that Congress has not done its job to see that VA programs, staffing, facilities and equipment are adequately funded and reforms enacted across the entire VA landscape. It's been asleep at the switch.
Nor has the Obama administration done anywhere near the due diligence needed to see that VA has the resources to adequately care for the thousands of soldiers returning home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
But the tragedy of this latest VA scandal is that we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and never learn from them.
Let's go back seven years ago when Washington Post reporters -- after exposing shockingly shabby, unhealthy conditions at Walter Reed Hospital -- found many of the same problems existed throughout the VA's organization.
On March 5, 2007, reporters Anne Hull and Dana Priest told the story of 70-year-old Ray Oliva whose "own VA hospital....was a mess.
The [hospital] gown he wore was torn. The wheelchairs were old and broken."
"It is not just Walter Reed," he told them. "The VA hospitals are not good either except for the staff who work so hard."
The veterans in his VA facility, he said, "had to ask for beds that had good mattresses instead of broken and old."
"I sat with guys who'd served in 'Nam," Oliva said. "We had terrible problems with the VA. But we were all so powerless to do anything about them."
"Across the country, some military quarters for wounded outpatients are in bad shape, according to interviews, GAO reports and transcripts of congressional testimony," Hull and Priest reported at the time.
"Among the most aggrieved are veterans who have lived with the open secret of substandard, underfunded care in the 154 VA hospitals and hundreds of community health centers around the country," they said.
Now, veterans are coming forth yet again, telling horror stories of lengthy delays for time-sensitive treatment, and reports that for too many that treatment has come too late.
I recall a more shocking situation when I was writing about GAO investigations in the 1970s and 1980s that told of higher than normal fatality rates in VA hospitals.
Anyone who thinks this problem has been fixed should read a study published in the American Journal of Public Health in December, 2007. The grim title of this report, by a team of medical specialists, says it all:
"Reducing Avoidable Deaths Among American Veterans: Directing Private-Sector Surgical Care To High-Performance Hospitals."
What this study recommended was simply letting our veterans have their surgery done at top private hospitals which would not only give them better, and more timely medical care, but, in many cases, save lives, too.
The study focused on 14 high-risk surgical procedures such as coronary bypass or carotid artery operations, and its findings were striking.
If these patients "had been directed to historically high-volume centers for their procedures, expected mortality would have decreased by 6.7 percent... potentially saving 376 lives" over the two-year period of the study.
"Directing private-sector care to medical centers with a history of low risk-adjusted mortality would have decreased expected mortality by 10.1 percent," potentially saving 584 lives.
In either case, the study concluded that the VA "should consider focusing quality improvement efforts" on the care that veterans receive in the private sector, "particularly for the high mortality procedures" that veterans often undergo as they age.
The study added that VA hospitals have "a commitment to provide safe, high-quality care to its enrolled population. One effective mechanism to meet this obligation is to help ensure the quality of care provided to veterans outside of [VA hospital] walls."
But there could be far more sweeping solutions to VA's continuing failures within the confines of this study. Let our veterans choose which hospitals they want to entrust with their care, perhaps under a voucher system financed by the government.
I once put this idea to Colin Powell during an interview for American Legion Magazine not too long after he had retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Powell told me that our veterans, who may have no other option but to go to VA hospitals, should be given the freedom to choose other medical institutions for needed surgery or other treatment.
The implicit proposal in the 2007 study in the American Journal of Public Health to let veterans have this choice deserves to be taken up in Congress. But probably not without a fight.
A note at the end the study said: "The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the U.S. Government."
It is about time that government failure had consequences for career political appointees and for elected officials.
The whole VA medical things is a scandal.
Our entire medical system is pharmaceutically driven
And these companies are feeling the crunch. They are pushing the C of C for amnesty
I agree, and the many complications are not insurmountable (e.g., a “doctor” shortage, since many VA doctors would not be employable in the private sector, where liability lawsuits happen).
Assuming your $80 billion figure is accurate, next step would be to estimate how many veterans there are now, and projections into the future, to derive how much insurance that would buy.
Vets don’t have a lot of money to bribe the jerks in congress... maybe that’s the problem...
Well, maybe ‘bribe’ is too harsh a term - vets don’t have enough money to ‘donate’ to the worthy re-election of our country’s blowhards...
Scrapping the va system which is more good than bad and exponentially better than what you’re about to see with obamadontcare is possibly what this brouhaha was put out there for
Placing vets into obamacare will reduce their care
So let us drop that, shall we ?
Hubby is a Vietnam vet who came home, went to work, and never....not once has used the VA system. How many millions are there just like him. Seems to me that with millions like him not using the system they should be able to afford good treatment of the ones that are.
It's like the sheiks of UAE taking beggars along on desert vacations - they get puffed up with all the humiliation people have to give to get something.
Close the VA down... let these jerks find real work where they're not treated like Gods.
Yeah, he was using his “angry voice.” Now he’s taking questions and has cooled off considerably, so I guess the indignation was just an act....
Same here...Vietnam veteran. Got a gold crown on a molar after I mustered out, but that had nothing to do with VA, just a temporary post-seperation extension of dental benefits. Since then I have not used VA “benefits” and as someone now on Medicare, I expect I never will. I’m one of the lucky ones, in many many ways....
Vouchers for veterans! Long live the free market!
I never said we should drop vets into zerocare....
They should sell the B&M assets and the government pays the premium for whatever health provider they want....give them no strings attached vouchers....
It is really that simple. ..
The VA has willfully murdered vets through denial of service and mistreatment for at least 40 years. Its not "a few facilities" at the present time as Obama claims, its the whole damned system everywhere.
So why now? What would be the motivation for a politician, known to despise the American military and its veterans, to suddenly care, to suddenly have a great awakening to VA misconduct and why has the mainstream media suddenly become so patriotic in getting behind this issue?
I see a couple of posters calling for the VA to be shut down. Obamas comments in his address today seemed to carefully insinuate that very suggestion at times. Why? Is the entire point to in fact shut down the VA to get all of those vets forced into Obamacare? Remember, this mess was originally Hillarycare. Are the same insurance companies, that were behind her and likely behind Obama, expecting some type of monetary gain in this big public/private cooperative fascist wet dream?
Is the VA not the problem Obama is trying to fix at all? Is the problem actually that too many know how the VA has operated. Has this malfeasance become so emblematic that it is one of the primary reasons people wont enroll in Obamacare? By feigning committed devotion to this VA issue is he protecting his legacy and protecting his benefactors investments?
So a "few" vets died recently and "few" more have recently been mistreated, really, "what difference does it make?" The fact is that the VA has operated as it was intended to for a long time or it wouldn't have been allowed to abuse veterans for decades...so why now?
It is NOT simple.
First, no way are our vets going to get better care than they do. It’s not just that it’s big govt it’s that people really won’t do anything about this worth anything more than talk
And they very often find excuses to resent the military
The only thing worse than government led health care for vets is publicly run health care left to the whims of people like Obama
And the second most important point is, insurance, doctors, clinics, hospitals, nurses, and private healthcare , plus pharmaceuticals, med equipment and research and development are all about to take an awl iron dive
People can deny it to their content. But it is over.
There will be no private sector health care.
Come on out from under the rock
And the last thing to do for vets is put them in the pool competing for the most diminished and expensive system of health care in history
They’ll be the first on the death panels
Spot on
You may be correct except for this....
-——There will be no private sector health care.——
I think at the end of the day after the government gets done ramming socialist medicine down our throats there will be a segment of the medical profession that will offer concierge medical services outside of government intrusion....
Basically groups of doctors who will cover a range of services for an annual fee....or a monthly premium ....
There is no reason why vets should not be allowed to join one if they believe they will get better care....paid via a voucher...
All probable. However, you can’t flood the system with vets, it would crowd out those seeking private care, which they have the right to do. Their taxes pay for the vets to get service.
The VA hospitals are good. THey are huge facilities and many clinics which already exist.
Fixing that is the ticket.
Utopian to think the private system will take care of vets.
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