VA or Private Care: Denied Care Is Always Bad Care and GOP to Blame for Both
May 26, 2014
These past few weeks, the biggest news (prior to a young douchebag with a history of mental problems being able to buy a gun and kill a half dozen classmates because no girl would date the creepy bastard) was that Administrators of the Arizona Veterans Administration had been cooking the books, intentionally deceiving the VA HQ, in order to win performance bonuses. Last March, Senate Republicans blocked a $24 Billion increase in funding for the VA that would have included the construction of
One of the reasons
Oh yes, my friends. Just one month before the invasion of Iraq, with U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, President Bush proposed partially privatizing the VA, suggesting we “halt new enrollments” and charge existing
The soaring cost of health care, putting it out of the reach of millions of Americans, is nothing new.
Veterans that manage to get in to see their doctors and receive treatment actually have a very favorable opinion of the VA. In fact, VA hospitals are routinely rated among the best in patient satisfaction. Likewise, doctors and nurses like working for VA hospitals more than regular hospitals. As “OpEdNews” put it in 2007:
Many VA employees work there for idealistic reasons. One technician told me she got “fed up with the paperwork” in private sector medicine and switched to the VA to devote herself to caring for patients full-time.
Happy doctors. Happy patients. And GOP Bouncers at the door turning patients away because they don’t want to fully-fund an incredibly successful system that makes a mockery of everything they’ve been telling us about “government healthcare”. Same thing with ObamaCare. Millions now have insurance that couldn’t afford it before. The soaring rise in insurance rates has suddenly begun to slow for the first time in 30 years. And remember all that trouble with the “ObamaCare website” last October? The site kept crashing because too many people were forced to use it because their Republican governors had refused to create a State Exchange that would have lightened the burden on the Federal Exchange (what ever happened to the “states can do it better” position of the GOP?) No “Death Panels”, and just about every (if not every) “ObamaCare horror story” the GOP has tried to dig up has fallen apart. The only strategy left open to them: deny access by denying funding, and then point to the inevitable failures as PROOF they were right about them all along.
So on this Memorial Day when we are thinking about those who lost their life in service to our country, let us not forget those… both vets AND private citizens… who have died or are going to die as a result of a GOP working overtime to obstruct access to heath care.
Links of interest:
- Politifact rates President Obama in 2010 as having “Kept his promise” to increase VA funding and work to cut the patient backlog.
- The Daily Show points out that the mistreatment of our veterans is nothing new.
- No surprise. Just as we went to press: Boehner Suggests Privatizing The VA: ‘I Still Like The Idea, And Especially Now’. Because as we all know, Private Sector hospitals NEVER have long wait times or commit abuses.
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May 26, 2014
· Admin Mugsy · 7 Comments - Add
Posted in: Healthcare, Partisanship, Party of Life, Politics, rewriting history, Scandals
7 Responses
Grant in Texas - May 26, 2014
The so-called VA SCANDAL is being pushed by the GOP as another “Benghazi” SCANDAL already. Today’s Sunday Houston Chronicle says it has happened here TOO. One case was cited by an ANONYMOUS source and the other by an EX-employee. My partner, retired from the Navy 11 years ago after 23 years service has nothing but high praise for the DeBakey and Galveston VA hospitals. He has had no problem with wait times and says he is seen promptly at the time of his appointments. He often waits patiently for me when I go to private practice oncologists and sits patiently when my 1 p.m. appointments mean I get called into an examining room often an hour later, then sit there another half hour before ever seeing a physician. Since he had a brain injury while in the Navy, he was seen immediately recently when he fell from a ladder and was knocked out a few minutes. DeBakey took him right in upon arrival and gave him an MRI. However with only two complainants the Chronicle made it a front page headline: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/health/article/Scheduling-abuse-alleged-at-Houston-VA-5503099.php
Admin Mugsy - May 26, 2014
Simply put, bad news sells… even if they must create it.
Grant in Texas - May 26, 2014
On Fox News last week, Senator McConnell attacked President Obama over the problems at the Department of Veterans affairs, saying he needs to “step up to the plate” and take responsibility. But he didn’t take any responsibility for his own role in blocking funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs and denying healthcare to our veterans.
In February, Senator McConnell blocked the Omnibus Veterans Spending bill from receiving an up-or-down vote in the U.S. Senate, preventing veterans from receiving expanded healthcare benefits, educational opportunities and access to job training programs. His excuse for blocking the bill was that it didn’t include unnecessary sanctions on Iran, which are totally unrelated to veterans’ benefits.
Of the 151 VA hospitals and even more VA clinics, only 26 have had ALLEGED charges directed towards them. We don’t need another GOP witch hunt to disrupt out nation but need to get any real problems resolved. Good interview today: http://www.msnbc.com/30-seconds-to-know/watch/honoring-fallen-vets-on-memorial-day-260484163649
Grant in Texas - May 30, 2014
This is becoming increasingly partisan with GOP hankering for yet another “SCANDAL”! Even “liberals” are running scared like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews who is coming down on the President for not rolling heads. Extremists like the Koch brothers would love to see the VA privatized, to prove that any government healthcare won’t work. They won’t rest until they can dismantle the whole New Deal/Great Society etc. BTW, check out “whistleblower” Dr. Samuel Foote, the VA doctor in Phoenix and his political contributions, a total of $3,100.00 to Republican Sen. John Kyl the last two times Kyl ran for office in Arizona. So could Dr. Foote be playing “footsies” under the table? http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/samuel-foote.asp?cycle=00 A good read: http://politicalmoll.com/tag/president-barack-obama/
Grant in Texas - May 30, 2014
Here is a 2005 VA IG review under the Bush administration. Same problems existed then: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1174360-2005-wait-time-review.html
Admin Mugsy - May 31, 2014
Good link. Back in 2005, before Bush’s “Surge”(TM), wait times were still relatively low at “30.1 days”, but even back then, as the report points out, was “44% more than the reported average waiting time of 20.9 days.” So they were lying about wait times even then.
Grant in Texas - June 1, 2014
And in 2005, only a fraction of the 3 million maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan had returned home.
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