STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 23 June 2014

[Demeter]

14. The VA, Still The “Best Care Anywhere”

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/va-still-best-care-anywhere.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Don McCann of PNHP has this to say about the VA “scandal”:

The uproar over the manipulation of wait times at the Phoenix VA hospital and other VA sites has tended to overshadow the larger issue of whether U.S. veterans have sufficient, unimpeded access to care. The short answer is they don’t, due to the inherent limitations of the VA program and the fragmented nature of our current health system. Among other problems, many veterans don’t even qualify for VA care and are completely uninsured….

Over the years there have been long waits for different kinds of care at the VA, even as the overall population of veterans is declining. …

But the longest and most onerous waits are associated with the time it takes to determine if veterans are eligible to receive care at the VA, and at what level. This determination is done precisely because the VA is not a single-payer system. It doesn’t cover everyone; it’s not accessible to every veteran; it is just one payer among many in our fragmented system. Currently about 2.3 million veterans and their family members are completely uninsured.

In contrast, a single-payer national health program would cover everyone and allow them to choose any provider and source of care in the U.S.

In other words, real issue at the VA isn’t the waiting list; it’s the eligibility system. From a systems perspective, that’s exactly the same problem that ObamaCare has. Both the VA and ObamaCare substitute complex, unfair, and gameable gatekeeping systems for simple, rugged, reliable and proven single payer.

Worse, the neoliberals that infest all our governmental systems are — and I don’t know whether this is stupid, or evil — crapifying these gatekeeping systems wherever they find them as a way of degrading the quality of government service provided to the public, thereby justifying privatization and looting. This is happening with Post Office closures, it’s happening with Social Security offices, and as the author of this post points out, it’s happening with the VA as well....

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