Good reporting from CNN;
At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system, many of whom were placed on a secret waiting list.
The secret list was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.
[…]
…the elaborate scheme in Phoenix involved shredding evidence to hide the long list of veterans waiting for appointments and care. Officials at the VA, Foote says, instructed their staff to not actually make doctor’s appointments for veterans within the computer system.
Instead, Foote says, when a veteran comes in seeking an appointment, “they enter information into the computer and do a screen capture hard copy printout. They then do not save what was put into the computer so there’s no record that you were ever here,” he said.
It’s almost a shame no one watches them anymore.
h/t Larry W
My father – combat wounded Korean War vet – used to go to the VA hospital in Philly until the quality of care became unbearable. He now goes to Fort Dix instead. Some of these hospitals are good, some bad.
EVERYONE will get used to it! Just wait until Obuttholecare kicks in and regular, every day Donks and Dhimmicruds have to wait in line with those icky military men that they hate so much…
Sara Palin called it Death Panels,
in the military we call it Death Squads.
Hurry up-
and wait to die….
It’s almost as bad here in Canuckistan. Or maybe it already is,just no gutless gubermint leech has come forward.Check out
https://www.facebook.com/groups/CdnVetsAdvocacy/
for more.
It is already happening in Canada. The BC provincial government controls health care cost by limiting the number of doctors given a billing account which pays for their patient visits. This restricts the number of doctors actually practicing.
Doctor numbers restricted and patients triaged at Emergency based on age in many cases.
It does happen here. My GP referred me to a neurologist I never did get to see because my complaint wasn’t serious enough to get an appointment. Periodically I would telephone his office and be told he was too busy for them to make an actual appointment. So I was on a list of patients waiting to start waiting to see him. After about year another neurologist set up shop and I got a letter from the office of the first one asking for me to agree to be passed off to the new one.
According to the system’s criteria I wasn’t waiting to see the neurologist until an appointment was made so the wait time was very long.
Error in the conclusion of my post above, sorry. The point is the system was operated so that it appeared my wait time was not very long.
There were problems with the VA during the Bush administration too. Those, of course, were blamed on Bush. The problem, of course, is fairly typical of a single-payer system administered top-down by a bloated bureaucracy.
Just wait until the US government controls medical care for the entire population. I wonder, are rich Americans going to set up a private hospital in the Caribbean somewhere or fly to Europe instead?
A year ago I was given an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon for November 2014. It’s not like I need my left shoulder for anything, I guess.
We, in Canada, can thank our lucky stars that our Supreme Court put an end to long wait times for medical care.
This is why the CNN reporter did some ‘good reporting’.
In their mind this is somehow a separate scandal that pillories only the military, not the Commander-in-Chief Obama’s government which is responsible for the care or lack thereof which all Americans will get.
Rest assured that military healthcare will remain physically separated from civilian care. The government does not want civilians to see first hand what their foreign policy costs American service personnel in life and limb.
This is not so affectionately known as:
The “Obama-Nation(tm)’s” Go Away And Die Plan.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
The government sees veterans like a car dealership sees cars. Worth gold when you want to buy and worth next to nothing when you want to sell. From asset to liability only takes one war. One injury. Not right, but the only way to change it would be mandatory military service (1 or 2 yrs ?) for all able bodied citizens once they turn 18 (?). No exemptions for rich future politicians or ghetto trash. How that would transform a lazy, entitled , socialist leaning society would be worthy of many discussions but I would guarantee that veterans would no longer be seen as liabilities.
I happen to know that the quality of care at that Phoenix VA hospital is a bit -better- than what you get at your average Ontario hospital in the Golden Horseshoe. Not much, but a little. Because they get access to stuff like CAT, MRI and PET scans in a reasonably timely manner, whereas we don’t. And last I looked you can’t get a PET scan in Canada at all… unless its for your dog.
Something to consider here is that this situation, “an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers” involved the cooperation of the entire department from the top management to the schlubs who physically shredded the documents. None of those people would be getting any actual -money- out of it, so it means they were trying to reduce/manage their collective workload, or they were trying to avoid some VA policy hammer from higher up than the hospital level.
Interesting.
no problem gitting an MRI Phantom, local doctors will even call the MRI shop in Buffalo and set up an appointment for you:-))))
R.A.Heinlein’s book “Star Troopers” (made into a horrible piece of pulp film) postulated that the criteria to vote was a military service history. Men are not potatoes. Wouldn’t that shift the voter demographics and worldview a tiny bit?
” Wouldn’t that shift the voter demographics and worldview a tiny bit?”
Sure it would but look at what we have now. It’s always worked for Switzerland. Can’t see it happening here but it’s worthy of discussion.
Just wait until Obamacare bites down a little harder. Canada’s second tier of medicine, otherwise known as American hospitals, will stop accepting furriners. Well, unless they are minorities.
Gives a whole new meaning to the “No Irish!” sign.
Killing me softly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KpeCk6NyZU
I disgree with Captain Dave. Indeed, Starship Troopers the movie was a travesty of the book, but it wasn’t a bad movie by any means. It was a lot of fun. It was much as if Mad magazine had done a loopy parody of the book, and they’d filmed that. If they’d given it a distinct Mad-like title, like “Partyship Poopers”, it would have been completely unobjectionable.
I agree. Very few movies can do justice to a book but Starship Troopers was well done and quite entertaining. Wife and I enjoyed it.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/starship_troopers/