The government-funded VA system is in bad shape as well:
Soldiers and veterans report bureaucratic disarray similar to Walter Reed’s: indifferent, untrained staff; lost paperwork; medical appointments that drop from the computers; and long waits for consultations.
Update from around the blogosphere -
Volokh:
“If private companies had mismanaged outpatient care for veterans the way the V.A. system has, there would be strong calls from all the usual quarters for a government takeover, and proclamations of how we can’t trust “greedy” for-profit companies to take care of veterans.”
Novack:
“The missing interpretation: the absolute fundamental inability for government-run organizations to escape convoluted, bureaucratic, non-meritorious based hierarchies. Anyone still for VA care for all of the USA now?”
Dunford:
“The patient load increases the problems. The military medical system is dealing with thousands of additional patients as a result of the ongoing wars, and is doing so without much more in the way of resources than they had before the wars started. Part of the excess can be absorbed by farming the care of dependents (like me) and retirees out to the civilian market, but that’s not going to create enough space to take care of the demand.”
Orrin Johnson:
“To all the liberals who see the Walter Reed scandal (rightly) as an example of government failing its people, why do you insist on foisting such a system on the whole of the American public?”
David Catron:
“For years, advocates of socialized medicine have been extolling the virtues of the VA hospital system. Ignoring the collective cri du coeur (No! Don’t do it!) from veterans who have actually been subjected to its tender mercies, the single-payer evangelists have doggedly insisted that the Veterans Administration constitutes a good model for a “universal” civilian system.
Now we have this thing at Walter Reed. How can anyone be surprised? If you turn health care over to bureaucrats, this kind of behavior is inevitable.”
Related posts:
- Walter Reed: Tuesday links
- Walter Reed Army Medical Center to close, was lazy staff a factor in the decision?
- Walter Reed isn’t the VA
- How to solve the problems at Walter Reed and the VA
- What’s wrong with profit-driven health care?
- "No government can effectively run a social program"
- Quashing PTSD
{ 11 comments }
And yet, someone will figure out a way to blame the lawyers for the resulting malpractice.
Walter Reed isn’t the VA ya’ll. I know all the military must blend together for the people who have never served but try to get it right.
No one ever blames lawyers for malpractice. They blame lawyers for knowingly trying meritless cases to turn a profit. Not that it relates to this story in any way, but it seemed important to correct anonymous.
Elliott,
I deleted your comment because of the personal attacks.
You make good points and, as a long time reader of my blog, I encourage your contrarian view. However, I would appreciate leaving personal attacks out of your arguments.
You’re better than that.
Thanks,
Kevin
Kevin, I apologize, but I gotta tell you that the distortion on this story is truly upsetting. It also fits into a pattern on this blog which seems to have become more one-sided.
My points are:
1. That there is conflation here of two very different systems – army military hospitals and the VA. In fact the failings of the army system are exacerbating issues within the VA because soldiers are being discharged into the VA system with incomplete paperwork and/or treatment.
2. The VA system is being tested, but it still remains an excellent system with lower costs, better outcomes, and higher satisfaction than comparable private systems. The comments in the article are purely anecdotal and some, probably come from people who did experience the VA at its worst before serious and successful efforts were made to improve it.
3. The Republican Congress, many of whom use the kind of cheap rhetoric employed in your post have not funded the VA properly even while demanding more or it because of Iraqi vets flooding the system.
This was a cheap shot by you and all of the right wing commentors you employed as proxies.
They need an EMR!
No, wait they have that already. So how did this go wrong?
P.S. I doubt Dunford would appreciate the thrust of your post or being put into the same context as the other comments. His are thoughtful and apply specifically to the military hospital system without attacking the VA or the idea of government run healthcare.
No, it’s not just Walter Reed. The problems are UNIVERSAL, only magnified by the military infrastucture . . . and (DUH) a war.
A few news outlets (not many) have asked the question, where were the doctors in this equation? The answer is keeping their heads down.
Death and body parts. That’s what it takes for anybody to notice.
Why are the doctors keeping their heads down? Are we a generation of cowards? Are we so readily willing to sell our integrity for a pension?
The docs at the military hospital can’t handle the load. Further, we are in need of more speciality neuro surgeons – brain. Additionally, the demnads on them by top brass is unreal. And the military hosptials and the VA are BOTH under-funded.
Failed Leadership all the way up the chain.
Failed Leadership
Failed budgets,
Failed planning, Failed organization, Failed implementation, Failed execution.
Totally mismanaged, just like a mini Katrina for the injured veterans.
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