Vets Loving Socialized Medicine Show Government Offers Savings

[Joanne98]

Source: Bloomberg

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Rick Tanner is one American who loves his government-run health care.

After serving in Vietnam and spending three decades in the U.S. Navy, Tanner retired in 1991 with a bad knee and high blood pressure. He enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration and now benefits from comprehensive treatment with few co-payments and an electronic records system more advanced than almost anywhere at private hospitals.

“The care is superb,” said Tanner, 66, a San Diego resident who visits the veterans medical center in La Jolla, California, and a clinic in nearby Mission Valley. The record- keeping, he said, is “state of the art.”

As Congress considers changing Americans’ access to health care, the veterans agency, whose projected budget this year is $45 billion, is evidence that the government can provide care favored by patients that may offer savings when compared with private insurers.

Researchers publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal and the Annals of Internal Medicine in recent years have endorsed the system. A Canadian policy journal, Healthcare Papers, devoted an entire issue to it in 2005.

“The VHA’s experiences have become a model around the world,” the editor-in-chief of Healthcare Papers, Peggy Leatt, wrote at the time.


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aLIc5ABThjBk

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The private sector can't do anything right!

[cap]

1. not true in Philly unfortunately

eom

[Barack_America]

3. Really? Explain.

[madokie]

5. I call bullshit

[cap]

6. my MIL is a WWII vet recently relocated to be near us so

I asked around because I thought it would be a great supplement to her Medicare and Federal BCBS. Folks weren't happy with the VA in Philly 20 years ago when I went to Penn... and they still aren't. I dont know why they can't get it together here. The VA hospital is right next to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the U of Penn Med School both ranked in the top 10. The VA has some of the same professors and staff members as Penn. Wharton has one of the leading Health Care MBA programs so I don't know what the deal is.

I was kinda hoping it had changed but I haven't heard a kind word about the Philly VA. People who had used other VA hospitals had much better experiences than they did in Philly.

[Lagomorph]

2. I don't know how far we could scale up the VA model...

...at some point, the resources enjoyed by the VA would succumb to volume.

VA hospitals are training hospitals. Much of the work is done by medical students.

[madokie]

4. You don't say

really is that it?:eyes:

[Lagomorph]

7. They've had me waiting seven years for a hip replacement...

If I don't sound impressed, there's a reason.

I need pain relief. What they offered was to drive 32 miles to the hospital for a shot of methadone when I need it.

My personal experiences trump stories of exceptional success.