A Plea: No More False Dichotomies

[Suudy]

When is the last time you received VA health Care? The New England Journal of Medicine has repeatedly named VA health care the best health care in the United States and has a 15% higher satisfactory rate from its pateints

My father, a 27 year Navy veteran, had no complaints about the care given by the VA or Tricare. What he did have extensive complaints about was the inefficiency in their operations. For example, he did a 6 week road trip, driving from Seattle to Charleston, SC and back to visit friends. During that trip, he suffered from some dizzy spells and exhaustion. He went to the nearest hospital where he was in AZ (neither VA nor military). He spent the rest of his life fighting with Medicare, Tricare, and the VA to get one of them to pay the bill. When he died, I decided to pay the hospital off rather than get mired in the bureaucratic morass he had been slogging through for the last 3 years of his life.

Tying this back into Hastrman’s OP, we can talk about ways to eliminate this kind of inefficiency without resorting to discussions about pulling VA funding would harm people. For example, I think we should not be dual or triple-enrolling people in these programs. My father was on Tri-care as a retired Navy officer, Medicare because he was over 65, and VA because of his service related disability. Prioritize who has coverage. In other words, pick one!

And BTW, he noted that the care he received at the hospital in AZ was just as good as the care he received at the VA and Navy hospitals. He never said the VA was better or worse than the Navy hospital. And he never said the VA was better or worse than private hospitals. And for my part, I grew up a Navy brat and think that private care is no better or worse than care I received at the Navy hospitals or clinics.

 

[Hastrman]

My father, a 27 year Navy veteran, had no complaints about the care given by the VA or Tricare. What he did have extensive complaints about was the inefficiency in their operations. For example, he did a 6 week road trip, driving from Seattle to Charleston, SC and back to visit friends. During that trip, he suffered from some dizzy spells and exhaustion. He went to the nearest hospital where he was in AZ (neither VA nor military). He spent the rest of his life fighting with Medicare, Tricare, and the VA to get one of them to pay the bill. When he died, I decided to pay the hospital off rather than get mired in the bureaucratic morass he had been slogging through for the last 3 years of his life.

Tying this back into Hastrman’s OP, we can talk about ways to eliminate this kind of inefficiency without resorting to discussions about pulling VA funding would harm people. For example, I think we should not be dual or triple-enrolling people in these programs. My father was on Tri-care as a retired Navy officer, Medicare because he was over 65, and VA because of his service related disability. Prioritize who has coverage. In other words, pick one!

And BTW, he noted that the care he received at the hospital in AZ was just as good as the care he received at the VA and Navy hospitals. He never said the VA was better or worse than the Navy hospital. And he never said the VA was better or worse than private hospitals. And for my part, I grew up a Navy brat and think that private care is no better or worse than care I received at the Navy hospitals or clinics.

People forget that it was the military themselves, not anti-war activists, who coined the “military intellligence is an oxymoron”, thing—they were actually talking about this kind of bureaucratic nonsense. (Incidentally, I find “just like journalistic integrity” is a more than adequate comeback.)

And this story reminds me of something a lot of people don’t understand about healthcare in this country: the problem is not getting care, the problem is paying for it. Cancer is fatal less than half the time in this country, which is an unusual state of affairs in this world, but a lot of those people spend much of the lives that are saved working off their bills. Better than them dying, but could definitely do with an improvement.

 

[Nimzovik]

What does “this government, in its totality, is in error”, mean, if not “this government is 100% wrong”? If a thing is 100% wrong, it is quite evil, and can only be fought, probably not corrected.

Perhaps I was reading too much in, but you were being pretty over the top.

Ahem… I do believe you are miscontextualizing the response I offered. One simply can not take mere snippets of a post and and paste them together to validate one’s perspective. Such things, IMHO, should really be left to the major newspapers methinks.