I'm going to mention a simple fix for Veterans and I have tons of Veterans in my family and they know my mind on this to, but just do this. 1. Keep a VA system for Veterans leaving the service to handle paperwork, combat related mental health care and long term skilled residential home care only. 2. Place veterans with other conditions and retirees in Medicare with a Veterans Supplemental Policy that is based on the level of disability but would be very good this would provide for all other medical care not related to the above and just accept any doctor or specialist can be found to treat them in modern care. You lost legs in a landmine or by having a machine tear if off as a civilian the care should not be much different to a proper medical team treating it save psychological care may be needed. 3. End benefits for those who were cold war draftees and didn't see combat at all just served two years as in the drug plan its a waste of money. Stop making Veterans this special group we do have an obligation to them I get that but the VA has to many issues as it is to provide care to me.
Wow, don't you hate it when threads get buried. I 100% agree on numbers two and three, although I don't think previous beneficiaries should be dropped. VA benefits need to be progressive in the way that they are meant for those who truly deserve it. Which is why I laughed at the "so called" VA scandal. None of this would of happened in the first place, if we stopped giving our special veterans free healthcare (the one's who just sat on the sidelines). Isn't it way more fiscally responsible to have them pay for their own premiums?
I'd rather fix the problems than to throw out the baby with the bath. War veterans often have very specialized medical needs that wouldn't be treated as well within our general medical provision system as they are by the Veterans Administration medical facilities. There is also a great deal of military record-keeping involved with veteran care that would be an unnecessary burden for non-military health care facilities to deal with.
I would keep what is needed if they have special needs then why not use them to run medical programs teaching medical providers to deal with them, but note I understand mental health care for example should be covered and better. And it should be easy to narrow care that they must handle such as exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam is unique. But for an example retirees that never saw combat why are they in the same system with disabled combat veterans seems to me a waste of resources they could easily get care by general doctors and specialists not tied to the VA.
If you limited benefits to only combat veterans it would probably be more cost effective to just pay for good private insurance and eliminate the VA totally. The question then would arise about how many people join our volunteer forces influenced by the medical benefits.
Probably better all around to simply do away with private health-care insurance altogether and go with universal, single payer coverage for everyone. Then we would no longer require our Supreme Court to waste their valuable time pondering what sort of medical coverage aligns properly with the personal religious beliefs of our various corporations. I'd still want to see specialized treatment centers for combat veterans, even if we didn't call these entities VA Hospitals.
I agree but we probably have to settle for what is politically possible in our current dis functional environment. And you are right about the need for some specialized facilities to treat combat injuries. But I think many combat veteran problems could be handled better in the private system.
I suspect that the SCOTUS 5 unintentionally made UHC much more politically feasible with the Hobby Lobby decision that they rendered yesterday. Time will tell.
worked for the V,A, hospital system, Hines V.A hospital(the biggest) and Houston V.A. Can tell you that if you really care you beat your head against the wall because they(the system) doesn't want to change things for the better. It is the "status quo". Don't make waves. And, you must document yourself to death to get rid of poorly performing employees and those in charge have been in their positions for "years" and don't want you to make waves. You don't need to eliminate the system but it needs to be revamped. The best hospitals have partnerships with Medical schools, and partnerships that train Residents. Thereby offering the latest medical care practices. And, partnering with ancillary medical service schools such as blind, speech, chiropratic, dental and rehabilitative providers. Get rid of the "old timers" that have been in top administrative positions for 10s of years and bring in younger educated people. But, that is nearly an impossible task given the Federal Unions.