The revelation that a Veterans Administration Hospital in Phoenix falsified its reporting of waiting times for veterans seeking medical care pushed a festering problem past its breaking point forcing Washington to wake up and take action. General Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs and probably one of the most honest men in the city, ended up falling on his sword for his commander over the matter. On the theory that it is bad politics to appear soft on supporting our veterans, funding committees for the Veterans Administration that had been languishing in the hyper-polarized and consequently paralyzed Congress, sprang into life. Both the House and Senate have just passed versions of their own bills to address the wait-time issue and some attendant reforms. It is virtually certain some compromise will emerge soon.
The term scandal has been used with regard to the long wait-times. Certainly to the extent that quality and utilization data were falsified in order to look good on paper, scandal is too kind a word. Another kind of scandal is demanding that the VA system perform to a specified standard but withholding the resources required to do so. We see a lot of that in Washington.
Is it better in the private sector?
When it appeared that the VA system itself did not have sufficient capability to provide services to existing veterans, and that the location of clinics and hospitals does not always match up with the locations of the veterans themselves, a groundswell of suggestions arose proposing that if the VA cannot do it alone, let the private sector help! This is not intrinsically an unreasonable suggestion. The private sector is already helping with military retirees and families. There are certainly capabilities that the VA must have that the private sector is ill-suited to deal with, but most care provided in the VA system is nuts-and-bolts medicine that can be provided by the same providers used by nonveterans. Indeed, I have argued in these pages that better coordination or contracting with non-VA facilities can avoid community duplication and help assure that Veterans get at least as good care as the rest of us. It is only a short step to a system in which the government pays non-VA providers directly, at least for specific services or in places where the VA does not have resources available in a timely manner. (Of course, wait-times in the private sector are often very long too, especially for those without commercial insurance!) Continue reading “Congress To Allow Veterans Access to Private Healthcare Providers?”