How the VA — ObamaCare For Vets — Almost Killed Me
I joined the Navy to serve my country. Period.
I didn’t join to get the great college money. I didn’t join to see the world. Those were perks, but not the reason. Naval service is a tradition in my family, predating the Revolutionary War. So when I was finally old enough, I raised my hand and signed the dotted line with pride in myself, in my country, and in those who came before me. The pride in my father’s eyes and his handshake were worth more to me than the meager paycheck, the fun, the travel, or the nautical experience.
I served in Desert Storm. I got injured.
I was on a physical therapy regime for three years while on active duty, treated with pain meds, electrical stimulation, muscle relaxers, and shore duty behind a desk. When the Navy finally decided that I was too broken to fix, they gave me an honorable discharge for seven years of service and told me the VA would take care of me for the rest of my life.
Ha.
The result of my injury was seven degenerative disks in my spinal column. The VA decided that as young as I was, surgery wasn’t an option. This of course was after spending over a year shuttling from my home in way-south Alabama up to Birmingham for appointments with first an orthopedist who couldn’t understand why I had been sent to him in the first place since I was obviously a neuro patient, then a pain management clinic that just said to keep doing my physical therapy, and finally a neurosurgeon who gave me the news.
Over a year, just to tell me they wouldn’t do anything for me.
When I asked why, I was told that I would probably be in a wheelchair by the time I was thirty, would be impotent, and would be wearing adult diapers before the VA thought it was cost effective to operate on me.
You see, I had to get worse before I could get better.
At the time, I was single, broke, and didn’t understand how the government who promised to honor my service by salving my wounds could be so callous. But the VA, in their wisdom, decided that I could be treated for pain if I would come see them every four months or so. So, again, I did what my docs told me, under the impression that they 1) could actually do something or 2) gave a damn.
I spent 1994 to 1998 trying to get on with my life. I got married and had a son. I moved so that I could be closer to the clinic in Birmingham. Then I had a daughter.
I got fired from a job because the boss tired of me having to take off work to go to the doctor. That boss didn’t understand that if I missed an appointment at the clinic, it would be four months before I could get another — and while I waited, I wouldn’t be receiving any of my prescriptions that allowed me to make it through the pain.
I went bankrupt.
I finally got a good job using some of the skills the Navy taught me. It was a job that offered me health care coverage. As soon as I got medical insurance, the VA started charging me for the drugs they had been giving me for free all these years. With insurance, now they could mail my prescription drugs right to my house. It would cut down on how often I had to make the hajj to the clinic. What I didn’t realize until later was that the VA had succeeded in turning me into a junkie.
I realized this when my meds ran out, I waited for a week, and I still didn’t have any in the mail. They had been stolen from my mailbox, and they wouldn’t be replaced. Their official view was that I was lying about not having received them, because oh so many injured vets were burnouts who just wanted to get their fix. Or that I was selling my drugs. Or any number of other reasons.
However, I was told over the phone, I could get more drugs if I wanted to take a day off of work, come to the clinic, wait on standby to be seen with no guarantee that I would be, and submit to drug screening.
Or I could volunteer for this new pain management drug they were testing.
It is NOT true that “you get what you pay for,” especially when dealing with the government. The correct phrase is “you don’t get what you don’t pay for.”
Sir. While I agree that the VA system is in tatters, I must say that I can not understand how you can put the blame on the current president and his administration. As the Walter Reed scandal, as well as many others, showed, VA care has been long neglected. 6 months in office and you expected this to be fixed?
To give you the benefit of the doubt, I hope you did not choose the headline yourself. If you did, I feel really uncomfortable with your approach to critizising the CiC. You might as well start ranting about Obamas Osprey failure, etc.
This entire article is classless hogwash drowning in melodramatic crap and riddled with pathetic lies from start to finish.
In it’s worse days, times and locations the Veterans Administration has never functioned the way this guy describes.
Why go to this extent when no one needs to convince anyone with a brain not to support Obamacare?
I would like to know why I can get my prescriptions filled at Walmart for $4.00 and the same ones cost me $8.00 through VA, twice the cost. Is this an example of Omamacare?
If a Navy man says it happened- I agree.
My thanks to you and the Navy and Battleship New Jersey.
Our base was being attacked and even overrun several times a week.
They brought in that frigging monster ship, parked it 5 miles off shore and we didn’t sleep for 2 days. But the enemy was totally dislodged from an embedded mountain, we found hundreds of bodies and 3 times drag marks. _Go Navy
My VA story has not been as bad.
I had a very smart woman doctor- try dropping your shorts for a prostrate exam- Hey Doc!
You using the whole fist?
At least her fingers were slim.
Anyway she called me at home 11:30 one night, at first I thought maybe she wanted a late night interview, but then she said:
” I gave you the wrong heart medicine and we are afraid your heart is swollen.”
Oh Shite!
We need you to take several tests to see what damage has been done. Even tests at a local hospital.
Well it turns out my heart was not swollen.
But they didn’t know who’s X-rays the other poor bastard was, whose heart was swollen.
My medicine was discontinued.
Long story short, it is one thing to face and fight an enemy 50 feet away, but to have medicine destroy you from the insides is truly frighting.
Glad I had a good honest doctor that told me the truth.
I appreciate the VA trying to take care of millions of us,
but if the government takes over Universal/National health care and 300 millions of people you will have a much higher body count and millions of drag marks.
I feel very sorry for all the suffering of Ted Bronson. We shouldn’t go back and blame all the inept and careless people involved in situations like this. We should LEARN and design the best possible system to care for people’s health. As usual, lots of these decisions fall in the hands of our legislators. Let’s provide them with ideas and support.
Your story makes me ill and I am appalled at your treatment. I have a close friend with an identical story. Her husband, a rather high ranking Navy officer became somewhat unable to walk. Had foot drop, numbness in his hands and legs. The VA sent him to a podiatrist! (foot doctor) His wife, being a nurse knew he need to have an MRI but the VA flatly, consistently refused. It wasn’t until 2 years later, hundreds of doctors visits, that he presented to the ER essentially paralyzed that they did the MRI, and rushed him in to fuse his neck. Shortly post op, he nearly bled out while my friend hysterically tried to get someone to come take a look. Another surgery. He is now permanently disabled-by the government and lives off of their checks and drugs. He has so much spinal cord damage that he is barely able to walk or use his hands. Any lay person who surfed the web could have told the VA what he needed….and had he had the surgery 2 years earlier, and likely thousands of dollars sonner he would be fully functional. Instead the gov is now paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to “maintain” him. It makes me sick….
Mr. Bronson,
Thank you for your service to our country and for sharing your story. Too many people are refusing to open their eyes to see that the government already does “healthcare” through the VA and the medical care for service members and their family members, refusing to see that this “healthcare” is lacking at best.
My own dear husband is a retired Navy chief. He’s probably going to need knee replacement surgery in a couple of years and I certainly do not look forward to navigating the VA for that. Right now, we have the same choice you do – tighten the belt to afford private insurance or wait for the VA. I’m sure our choice will be the same as yours.
Plus, if our own congressional representatives refuse to participate in the very program they are trying to rahm down our throats, well that says it all for me.
Thanks vivo.
I haven’t had such a good laugh in a long time.
Someone who actually things government is the answer. You must be rarer than a hairy-nosed wombat.
Note to Obama Zombie Trolls. This article isn’t an arguement to allow the gov’t to do MORE of it to other people. A bunch of lawyers who happen to be politicians are NOT equipped to come up with any sort of nation-wide plan that will make HC better. FOr examples, see Social Security and Medicare. Both are bankrupt. Why anyone would want to turn healthcare over to the folks who are in charge of SS and medicare is odd.
Fnord,
It’s obvious that he is drawing a parallel between ObamaCare for us and the VA for veterans. How could you miss that?…
2. Fnord:
…good one …it’s all Bush’s fault.
you think the democrats in congress and the senate do nothing all day ?? …and many of the republicans in the congress and senate should join Sphecter or is the sphincter in crossing the aisle.
the liberals and democrats that are entrenched in civil service jobs control more of what happened in Walter Reed then anyone else ….at least Bush took the blame and moved to fix the problem. Obama will do no sch thing.
Hey! Stop complaining! Don’t you know that hundreds of billions of our tax payer dollars are being spent on illegal aliens instead? Illegal aliens clearly earned first dibs on health care funding before you worthless military veteran folk! Hail Obama!
Er, sorry! I got the keyboard back from my lefty friend now…
Wow! Obama was responsible for getting you hooked on pain killers 7 years before he was sworn in? What a DEVIOUS bastard he is.
Most junkies, veterans or otherwise, realize that taking responsibility for YOURSELF is key to recovery. Good luck. I hope it happens for you someday.
I’m very sorry to hear about the terrible situation you had with the VA but I have to say that my husband has been in the care of the VA and has had 3 surgeries by extremely competent doctors and the medications he takes cost a fraction of what they would cost anywhere, including Walmart. Perhaps it matters where you are located. In Wyoming you do have to travel some distance but whether the treatment was in Cheyenne or Salt Lake City, Utah it was superlative and there was virtually no wait.
Hey Mr B.S.! Did you see those underlined blue words? Those are called links! If you click on them they will take you to news articles which demonstrate what a train wreck the VA tends to be.
Also to those of you jumping on this guy for criticizine the CiC, he did not. That is not what a Navy man does. Read the article. He criticized the notion of govenrment run health care.
2. Fnord:
He’s not blaming Obama for any of this, just pointing out that this is what we can look forward to under ObamaCare; its a government program and the outcome is inevitable. Stop trying so hard to defend Obama, he’s indefensible.
The VA is so bad because of Federal law insulating them from malpractice suits. It is said that if you don’t like lawyers, then the next time you are falsely accused of a crime, call a redneck. he same idea applies to protection from butcher doctor.
Personal injury law–ambulance chasing–is tawdry, it is venal, it is an occasion of sin, encouraging millions to bear false witness. It is also the only protection we have against the horrors of the VA.
Of course, when health care is rationed, when end-of-life counselling becomes th preferred mode of cost-containment, then the causes of acton for failure to treat and failure to diagnose have to go under the bus with all the grandmas. As we used to say in the sea service, STFB.
The government has never been able to handle the relatively miniscule number of vets who are treated at VA care centers, vice the true number of vets who actually qualify for that same care, but have other options or simply choose NOT to subject themselves to its inefficiencies and gross inhumanities. Such is the nature of a badly run government-run program.
And that is the lesson I believe was meant to be drawn from Mr. Bronson’s all too common tale. FIX the VA/Medicare/Medicaid ~ any or all ~ FIRST. Then you can tell the American people to get onboard your “public option” and maybe they won’t squeal so loud. Don’t dictate terms when there’re three PERFECT, dysfunctional examples why we should fight tooth and nail AGAINST it.
My wife is an anesthesiologist at the local VA. She often comes home angry and stressed out because of the VA’s arbitrary and nonsensical rules. The place is dirty. People steal things. Prior to working at the VA, she worked for a private hospital. Her view? If this is government health care, she dreads it.
Obviously Mr. Bronson is not blaming Obama for the problems with the VA medical system. He’s pointing out that this is what it will be like for *everybody* if we put the government in charge of health care. The VA is not made up of evil people who hate the military and want to give them poor care. No, this is just the natural result of putting the government in charge of anything.
To anybody who is still on the fence on this, think about it. What’s the first response of any government to a budget crisis? Do they clean house and become more efficient, or do they try to raise taxes and threaten to cut basic services? You know the answer. Do you really want to play that game with your health care?
“How the VA — ‘ObamaCare for Vets’ — Almost Killed Me”
Since the VA is socialized medicine and Obama Care is not your entire piece is based on a lie.
But that’s nothing new around here.
And I think you’re lying about the rest of article too. The VA gives excellent care.
The Best Medical Care in the U.S. The VA.
http://www.dieteticinternship.va.gov/docs/USBusinessWeek.pdf
Any government-run medical program is wasteful, arbitrary and filled with ineffective and incompetent personnel. Those who are not incompetent are overworked.
I, too, have had to go to the VA for the last 5 years. When the Navy finally agreed to give me a medical retirement, I quickly began using Tricare, the military medical insurance. While it, too, is run by the federal government, at least I can choose where I go, and they have not yet dictated to me anything. However, the doctors I visit are payed ab oubout 1/10th of what they charge.
Do not fall for the snake oil being sold by the Con Man-in-Chief. He knows that he doesn’t have to use Obamacare, in whatever form it ends up. He is systematically taking over every industry that is important in this country: automobiles, banking, insurance, healthcare.
Fatty Bolger:
“Do you really want to play that game with your health care?”
How many times to you have to be told. If you don’t want to enroll in the public plan you can keep the insurance you have.
It’s just that simple.
Are you that stupid or are you a liar?
In it’s worse days, times and locations the Veterans Administration has never functioned the way this guy describes.
I am assuming you have never experienced care at a VA center.
My husband is a veteran of the US Navy and is also disabled.
While his care hasn’t involved pain management and addictive drugs, he does require medications.
The doctors at the VA center he goes to keep rotating and each doctor thinks he knows better than the last doctor and starts to tinker with his medications-dropping some, changing some etc. The drug that actually works the best is unavailable to him, because the VA refuses to prescribe it due to it being new and more costly.
When we first moved here, it was almost a year before he could get into the system and be seen regularly. Also, he has no control over when his appointments are scheduled, the VA does it and sends him a note-and it doesn’t matter if that appointment fits within his own work schedule or plans.
So to be honest I have absolutely no problems believing the experience described in the article, and while they involve different injuries and health issues, the experience with appointments and not much concern for actual health and treating the right problem are pretty typical.
And Obama certainly didn’t create the problems we see in the VA system-but he seems pretty fired up to change our medical care over to something more like it and I do blame him for that.
Deep Brain Diarist or should it be No Brain. I did not see the gentleman blame Obama for anything. He trusted the VA until it nearly destroyed him. I think the last few paragraphs showed he took control of his life. You have to be so blinded by your worship of Obama that you read things into this article that isn’t there. I have seen some of the horrors of the VA. My experience with the VA wasn’t a horror story because they aloud my Dad to keep his specialists while supplying him the prescriptions at a low cost. This guy is pointing out as many others have that government run heatlth care will be a disaster. The government has never run a program effiecently and generally needs 3 times the people or resources to do the same thing a private institution does.
Mrs.Evans24-7:
“Plus, if our own congressional representatives refuse to participate in the very program they are trying to rahm down our throats, well that says it all for me.”
More wingnut nonsense.
No one is trying to ram anything down anyone’s throat.
You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake. They are just offering a public plan as another choice.
Are you people crazy? Or just liars?
Yikes. This whole article made me feel like crying. UGH
Fnord
I don’t think Ted was blaming Obama for his problems,if you use common sense and logic he is just saying this is the type of medical you will get if his bill goes through.
B.S. nice name,how do you know how every V.A. hospital is unless you were to all of them you would be just generalizing. Like all regular hospitals some are better than others. If you were not in this mans shoes your first paragraph is an insult to him.
Ted thanks for your service sir.
SEMPER FI
GOD BLESS AMERICA
DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR
22: Since the VA is socialized medicine and Obama Care is not your entire piece is based on a lie.
This is BS…we don’t know what Obama Care is yet.
As with all his initiatives, We will not know what they truly are until we are subjected to them.
Obama cares only about pushing through the bills, he is a front man for the party. I’ve always voted for checks and balances…now we have none.
And anyone that suffers from a chronic illness (as I do) knows that pain management and self reliance/self knowledge are the only way to deal with it. Because at the end of the day very few others GAFRA.
I know all the issues that the administration is trying to sell us, I just don’t believe their pitch. Whereas a conservative at times will exhibit a low social IQ, liberals appear to exhibit 0 IQ.
The inevitable decrease in quality of care and accessibility to care is bad enough.
The real horror comes when you realize that you no longer have any privacy from the Federal government, and that you’ve ceded almost complete control of your lives to bureaucrats who are primarily concerned about their own interests, not yours.
3. B.S. wrote:
This entire article is classless hogwash drowning in melodramatic crap and riddled with pathetic lies from start to finish.
Peter asks: And you have just HOW much experience with the VA to be able to comment on another person’s medical experiences?
I have not had to deal directly with the VA (fortunately – Yet!), but I saw what my father went through the last 30 years of his life, plus just dealing with the Navy clinics on the bases where I was assigned was bad enough.
BTW, very appropriate post name you have.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake. They are just offering a public plan as another choice.”
“Are you people crazy? Or just liars?”
No, we’re just aware of the liberals’ long term strategy, as expressed by Obama himself, Barney Frank, and a host of others.
The goal of their “public option” is to eventually eliminate private insurance and ultimately arrive at a single-payer, nationalized, universal, government-controlled health system.
You’re one of the “useful idiots” – either through utopian ignorance or willful complicity – who are trying to ram this down our throats.
Wow, I knew you had to be stupid to support Obama, but I didn’t realize you had to have a very low reading comprehension level as well.
But I guess it would help. It has clearly helped jharp, fnord, and BS.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Unless your employer decides to cut costs by dropping your plan. The bill — or at least one of the bills, there are variants — says you then have to take the public plan.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Unless your plan doesn’t include the government-mandated slate of coverages — even if they’re coverages you don’t want or even can’t use. If your plan doesn’t meet with bureaucratic approval, you can’t have it.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Unless you quit your job. Then you’re stuck with the public plan. Ironic, this plank: one of the complaints about the current system is people being forced to stay in a bad job in order to keep their coverage; and this plank would force people to stay in a bad job if they don’t want the public plan.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
For five years, until they slowly phase out all but the public plan.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Read the bills.
From the CBO
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8892/MainText.3.1.shtml
It’s about 20 pages so here’s the summary: VA health care is doing a pretty good job of providing positive health outcomes, cost control and patient satisfaction even with a rapidly expanding number of patients to treat. It’s not perfect but it’s getting better results than medicare and much more affordable than high-end private insurance. So that nobody accuses me of omitting the facts there’s also a lot of information about the demographics of veterans which is relevant to any discussion comparing VA health care to Medicare or private insurance.
Obviously what happened to the author 15 years ago was a disgrace and should never be allowed to happen. At the same time, the numbers show that overall the VA is doing it’s job quite well. We need to rely more on measurable data when talking about health care and less on anecdotes and rhetoric.
It’s obvious most of the Obamacare zealots really didn’t read the story. They’re posting to try to get their points out there, and doing badly.
Like Obama doesn’t want the public option. He’s been quoted that he eventually wants single payer.
Like the public option doesn’t necessarily mean loss of choice. When the government gets into a business, loss of choice is bound to happen since they won’t go out of business, although we’re close to bankruptcy when you look at the building deficits. Plus Obama admitted that some may lose their choice of doctor, but the media sure didn’t play that up.
It’s scary that we’re relying on Blue Dogs to stop the momentum. I’m rather sorry that they’ll feel the brunt of this at the polls, as they seem to have stayed by their principles and tried to be fiscally sound. For their troubles, they’ll be the main targets of the GOP since they are in swing districts. It’s a shame all the gerrymandering has created voting districts that where 1/3 are almost always going to be liberal, 1/3 conservative, and 1/3 swing. I wish I resided in a swing district so that my congressional vote mattered more, but I don’t think I am.
To Ted and our other veterans that have experienced this attrocious care, I salute your service and wish you better.
re: Peter the Bubblehead:
“Peter asks: And you have just HOW much experience with the VA to be able to comment on another person’s medical experiences?”
Retired after forty+ (40)years in and/or working for the Defense Department; including all 4 branches of the military first as a private contractor; then as a Civil Servant.
Disabled Veteran incurred in direct aerial combat participation supporting the Vietnam Conflict over unfriendly enemy Territory.
Beginning in 1969, sued the VA and subsequently won a 7+ year long legal battle forcing the VA, among other agencies to HONOR THEIR COMMITMENTS to soldiers instead of copping out politically.
There’s more, but anyone can make a similar to this article case about medical care in our country no matter whether it’s provided by the military, Veterans Administration or private hospitals anywhere in our country.
As an observation from dealing with and watching the Veterans Administration since 1969 There is no doubt in my mind that things have gotten much, much better than they have worse.
Of course for some none of these things matter; right?
The point is that the author chose to rip the VA to shreds in order to make a silly point about Obamacare. In real life he has enough Capitol Hill political ammunition alone to put the VA permanently out of business.
Either the guy that wrote this article is a looser, a liar or both. Peter, that is not a medical judgement; rather it is a personal opinion based on first hand experience; even if it is somewhat limited.
There are better ways to skin a cat than tearing down ANY of those who are doing their level best to serve our country!
You know, I’m sure many of you are familiar with the ass-whipping Bill Kristol recent received courtesy of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. If not, here it is for your enjoyment:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-july-27-2009/bill-kristol
But the really telling thing here is what Kristol ALMOST said when first asked about healthcare for our military, to which he started to say, “Is military healthcare really what you . .. ” and then he caught himself. He realized that he was just about to say ” . . . really what you want?” because he knows just how horrible it can be in the VA system. But like I say, he caught himself and shifted to some ridiculous dodge about it being expensive. He then proceeded to say that the government is capable of running a first-class health care system.
Dissemebling, thy name is conservative.
The real horror comes when you realize that you no longer have any privacy from the Federal government, and that you’ve ceded almost complete control of your lives to bureaucrats who are primarily concerned about their own interests, not yours.
In addition you won’t have any or very many other options. At least right now, when you get sub standard care through the VA, you can work out a way to see a doctor in private practice. What happens when the government’s version of healthcare is all we have?
Martin L. Shoemaker:
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Unless your employer decides to cut costs by dropping your plan. The bill — or at least one of the bills, there are variants — says you then have to take the public plan.
_______________________________________________
Nonsense. 1st your employer can drop your plan today. 2nd you do not have to take the public plan. You can buy whatever insurance you choose.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Unless your plan doesn’t include the government-mandated slate of coverages — even if they’re coverages you don’t want or even can’t use. If your plan doesn’t meet with bureaucratic approval, you can’t have it.
________________________________________________
Nonsense. Insurance is regulated today. And they can’t sell it unless they comply with the rules. Nothing is going to change.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Unless you quit your job. Then you’re stuck with the public plan. Ironic, this plank: one of the complaints about the current system is people being forced to stay in a bad job in order to keep their coverage; and this plank would force people to stay in a bad job if they don’t want the public plan.
______________________________________________
And if you quit your job today where does that leave you. Again, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ENROLL IN THE PUBLIC PLAN.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
For five years, until they slowly phase out all but the public plan.
_______________________________________________
Nonsense. They are not phasing out private insurance.
“You can keep the insurance you have for God’s sake.”
Read the bills.
____________________________________________
I have. You obviously haven’t. Or you are a serial liar.
Mr. Bronson, I have great empathy for your situation and I must say, hats off to you for your incredible will power and determination. As a fellow veteran I know all too well the cost of dealing with the VA for service related issues. I have not yet come to a place where I can afford the care I need in the private sector but it took me all of six months to realize the futility of seeking care from them. They sought to continue the same regiment of drugs and physical therapy that so completely failed to produce results for three years prior to my discharge from the military and ignored the great expense of constant travel.
Our veterans receive the lowest level of care on the average and are treated with far less respect than they deserve and our advocacy groups though they bring results are also run by people that have entangled themselves in Washington politics. The leftists who have replied to this article are prime examples of the attitudes toward our military that liberals hold. When I see their faux outrage over things like Walter Reed and so forth it turns my stomach, because to them we are all just ‘baby killers’ and ‘warmongers’. For them to pretend that they care about our well being is just unfathomable.
Yes, the VA medical system is broke. Will Obamacare be identical to VA medical care, probably not, but it will be close enough to share many of the bad traits.
The real question is why not put the Vets under Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB). It is a great program that is enjoyed by all Federal employees, retirees, and members of congress and their staff. Or better yet, ditch Obamacare, and put us all under FEHB. That way, you do not create class warfare with members of congress having one medical program and the rest of the country on a lesser, not as good program.
Are you trolls brain dead? Haven’t you seen the new videos of BHO stating that EVERYONE in America will eventually be on gov. run health care. He says that they can keep their private HC for a while untill the transition takes place in 2015 or 2225. He is caught saying in 2007 two times and again in 2008. So who is lying now assholes?
Troll Here
Saying “You can keep your current insurance if you like it!” is nothing more than a lie. Under the house plan, existing plans cannot enroll any new members. That alone dooms your current health insurance plan to die due to attrition.
But it is worse than that. If your existing insurance coverage changes, it will fall under the new regulatory scheme. BTW, every plan has adjustments every year. Stuff is added, stuff is removed, co-pays change, etc.
So if your existing insurance freeezes in place, like a time capsule, you can keep it until it dies of attrition.
The new private plans would have to adhere to rules set by the lawyers in congress, and would have to guarantee coverage for whatever our betters decide should be covered: chiropractic, orthodontics, fertility treatments, abortion, botox, weight loss, alternative medicine. Whatever has the best lobby.
Maybe you think all these things are great and wouldn’t mind paying for the coverage for them, but should everyone be forced into one-size fits all plans? That is the house plan. Councils and commitees and all manner of rube goldberg government efficiency will decide what counts as “approved” (ie enough to avoid enormous tax penalties).
Don’t buy the “keep you insurance” freeze tag fig leaf.
I know his description of VA care is accurate. They refused to treat me solely due to cost. Offered to see if they could find cheaper drugs that would work. Cost was the driver. Actual patient care was an afterthought.
38 BS . . . OUCH! Now that’s what I call a smackdown. My guess is you won’t be hearing from Sir Bubblebrain anytime soon after that shellacking. A great example of how quickly feigned patriotism and whiney victimhood fall apart in the face of genuine experience.
I have a lot of first hand experience with the VA and with treatment of spine problems in particular.
Two things I would point out:
1) There are no incentives in the VA system for withholding needed surgery. If surgery was not offered then it was because it would not do the patient any good, which is quite often the case with spine problems. The idea that surgery would be withheld “until it became cost effective” is pure fiction.
2) Any system that offers something of value to people for free is going to have long wait times and shortages. There is no way to get around that regardless of how hard the medical people work. Voters should keep that in mind when they consider a government run healthcare system.
anything government run is a dismall failure from the aspect of care and cost. get your heads out of your backsides. NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM THIS
this crowd (congress and Obama) is anti-military big time
To B.S. @ #38:
Impressive resume. Still didn’t answer my question and like many libtards, completely tapdanced around it.
Let me type this slow so perhaps even YOU can understand it.
How much experience dealing with the VA do YOU have – PERSONALLY?
Not suing the VA on behalf of other vets.
Not working for the DoD as a CIVILIAN CONTRACTOR. (Which is what I do now following 10 years of active duty in the US Navy.)
Hay YOU, PERSONALLY, had to deal with the VA?
My father did, for close to 30 years. His problems, complications from a service related injury while serving in the Marine Corps during WWII, could easily have been dealt with by a simple operation early on in 1978 or 79. The VA decided the injury was not worthy of an operation and instead prescribed him pills and monthly check-ups for the rest of his life, appointments at THEIR convienience of course. Meanwhile his back problems grew worse and worse and worse as the years passed.
He dealt with the VA in Queens, NYC, though on several occasions had to be admitted to the VA hospital at Ft Hamilton, Brooklyn. Things got so bad at one point he tried to see if he could get treatment at another VA hospital in Connecticut, close to where I was assigned at the time, only to find out it would take 6 months to a year before they could see him at the second hospital. He died from complications following a heart attack in 2000.
I have no doubt, had he been able to be operated on when the back injury reasserted itself more than twenty years earlier, he would have had a much higher quality of life for the remainder of his life.
47. Now and Then wrote:
My guess is you won’t be hearing from Sir Bubblebrain anytime soon after that shellacking.
Peter asks: What shellacking? Maybe when Mr BS (such an appropriate name, BTW) actually answers the question I posed… But as long as he continues to obfuscate, I will continue to push the issue.
Typical troll, thinking someone with facts can be bullied away by fools.
TO: All
RE: Another ‘Indicator’….
….of what we can expect from the VA form of healthcare, if Obamacare comes to pass.
I was a young sergeant in the 82d when my Mother died. I came home on emergency leave for the funeral. And then went back to my unit.
Two months later, my sister called in great distress. Our Father had been hospitalized at the local VA hospital and was in critical condition.
I came home again on emergency leave. My Father had ‘fallen into the bottle’ after his wife had died screaming in his arms of a massive cerebral vascular ‘accident’. It broke him. He had serious cirrhosis of the liver. He was 52.
So I went to visit him in the hospital. He looked close to death. I asked him how they were treating him. He told me they hadn’t given him food or water for the last two days.
I was shocked!
I found the head nurse for the ward and asked her what was going on with that.
She told me, “Doctors orders”.
I was shocked again. Then after thinking on it for all of about 5 seconds I went BALLISTIC as only a sergeant of paratrooper can. I realized they were trying to kill my Father, as they figured he had no other reason to live, wife deceased and both children mature enough to fend for themselves.
If I hadn’t been right, I’d have been taken to jail for raising such a ruckus and threatening the doctor with his very life.
We got him OUT of that euthanasia facility and home again where we nursed him back to health. I having received a compassionate reassignment to work with the local national guard while my case was reviewed for a permanent reassignment or a hardship discharge.
Bottom line?
Government doctors will kill you if they have the chance and the inclination. Especially if it will save money.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....]
50. Peter the Bubblehead:
” . . . working for the DoD as a CIVILIAN CONTRACTOR. (Which is what I do now following 10 years of active duty in the US Navy.)”
Still on the public dole, eh? Why don’t you get a real job and stop sucking on America’s teet?
Far be it from me to disagree with the idea that the VA system is messed up. I’ve seen it first hand. I also agree that if the current administration has its way that we are likely to see more incidences of rationed care.
It sounds as if the author was probably treated appropriately, though, for someone who had no other good options. Unfortunately, degenerative disc disease is not a condition amenable to surgery. Pain management and “living wisely” are the only treatments. It sounds as if the author had many functional years with standard drug treatments, and when they stopped working he was offered something new to see if it would help. It didn’t, but that’s no one’s fault.
Until the author was willing to accept that HE was responsible for managing his own pain, not his doctors, the only thing his doctors could offer him was pain medicine and advice to change his activity level that he was obviously either unwilling or unable to accept. It’s fortunate that he decided to take charge of his condition and make the lifestyle changes necessary to control his pain, but steroid injections don’t cause spur formation. That’s a wear and tear phenomenon. And having surgery sooner would not have changed the outcome, because surgery won’t fix what he had.
Don’t get me wrong. I am tremedously sympathetic to the author’s plight, and the VA is tremendously inefficient, but too many people expect miracles from back surgery, and except for a few specific conditions which are correctible, back surgery often just makes things worse, not better. It’s impossible for a surgeon to put things back together exactly the way God intended, and often the best treatment is no treatment at all.
The VA is not the only instance of government-run healthcare in this country. The entire active-duty ranks of our armed forces are subject to government-run healthcare. I grew up in it, 22 years and went through a major illness (tuberculosis), as did my mother (brain surgery, twice). The medical care I and my family received through this government-run system was top-notch, always.
Likewise, Medicare is a governemnt-run system. While the conservative right likes to call Medicare a fiasco, the truth is those receiving Medicare wouldn’t give it up, surveys show they have high opinions of it, and it operates at 3% cost, nearly 7 times more efficiently than the average private-run insurance company (20% or so).
So, while the VA has its issues, it is not a clear-cut indictment of all government-run healthcare, it is merely one example of a poorly-run system, amid other examples of well-run systems.
There are several government funded medical programs that can predict what “the mother of all government bureaucracies” will look like. The socialist Medicaid and Medicare programs have had so many special (voting) groups shoehorned into them in the 45 years since the programs were foisted on the American people that they bear no resemblance to the original beasts. They just kept getting fed, got more voracious, corruption became epidemic, and the bureaucracies bloated into top-heavy enemies of patient and doctor. The Ryan White program was screwed up from the beginning, with the money spent according to population, not presence of HIV, so in LA and NYC, Ryan White recipients get all HIV meds, housing assistance, alternative medicines, transportation, etc. while Southern states have people dying on waiting lists to just get basic HIV meds. Medicaid and Ryan White programs depend on each state matching federal funds, so states with less tax revenue can afford less of the federal pie, while states flush with revenue get ice cream with their’s. The government has not delivered a consistent quality or quantity of health care to citizens with any of its programs. Just like car dealer closings, politics will determine hospital closings, districting of patients to facilities ad providers, and locations of testing facilities. The best public plan would be to allow doctors, hospitals, and labs to take dollar for dollar tax deductions for charitable medical care. Certain diseases that may become epidemic and create large populations with high dollar medical needs, like polio and HIV, will still require temporary super-funds to control the epidemic. Return the care of people to family, church, and community. Charity is not the business of government, and when government took that power and privilege from We The People, it destroyed a basic common decency among Americans. Get politicians out of this power-grabbing mania by sending them all back to the private sector. 2010 we’ll see if America has learned anything for this rush to become the U.S.S.A..
“I got fired from a job because the boss tired of me having to take off work to go to the doctor.”
You cannot legally be fired from a job because of this. If you make your employer aware that you need a medical accommodation, you are legally protected from losing your job. Even if you don’t make your employer aware, the burden is often seen to be on them to make sure you are accommodated. If you truly were fired for this reason, then you should have taken the company to court for wrongful termination.
Bad outcomes never happen with private insurance.
53. Now and Then wrote:
Still on the public dole, eh? Why don’t you get a real job and stop sucking on America’s teet?
Peter writes: And what part of the word CONTRACTOR do you not understand. That means I work for an actual, privately owned, profit producing company contracted to the DoD that requires we do REAL work in order to be paid.
As for being on the public dole, sounds like you would know as a real welfare case living in his/her/it’s mother’s basement.
So do any of the VA bashers out there have any kind of real empirical evidence that the VA health care system is broken today? Note: anything that starts with the word “My” as in “My experience”, “My cousin”, or “My hazy memory from 30 years ago” does not count.
TO: MilitaryBrat
RE: It Ain’t Always That
On active duty, I broke my leg.
An Army doctor put a plate on it with screws to hold the pieces in place.
Later, I was told to go out and ‘play’.
Three months later, on a infantry battalion officer’s run it broke again, as I planted my foot and executed a turning movement with my comrades-in-arms.
The doctor had failed to get the ends of the bones together. It was a really ‘interesting’ moment in my life as the bones FINALLY came together slashing through all the nerves and muscle that had grown into the gaps between the bones.
A couple of years later, it came out in the news that about 25% of the doctors in the military were not licensed to practice medicine in the country.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. I grew up in the Strategic Air Command. And, as I recall, all of my hospital stays, save the skull fracture were in civilian hospitals. The skull thing was at age 4 when I walked into the follow-throw of a swing at my first ever sandlot baseball game. That time I was taken to Walter Reed.
Ike was just down the hall from me. He’d had a heart attack. I claim he got it after hearing about my injury…..
TO: Paul in MI
RE: Heh
Based on that comment, I take it YOU have NEVER served your country.
I suggest you visit your local Army or Marine recruiter and go airborne. Then, after you’ve had a serious injury jumping out of perfectly good aircraft in flight, you can experience the VA for yourself.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Go on….I DARE ya…..
My answer is always the same: I didn’t have a choice.
But you did have a choice, Ted. You could have gone the private medicine route at any time. Why didn’t you?
Likewise, Medicare is a governemnt-run system. While the conservative right likes to call Medicare a fiasco, the truth is those receiving Medicare wouldn’t give it up, surveys show they have high opinions of it, and it operates at 3% cost, nearly 7 times more efficiently than the average private-run insurance company (20% or so).
Medicare has a $32.4T unfunded liability through 2082. On top of this, according to the <href=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/retirementspecial/02health.html?_r=2&ref=health) more doctors
The point a few of you are missing is that we are discussing injuries and not disease. Surgery to repair damage/replace damaged parts is being denied on basis of cost and/or the possibility that a second surgery may be necessary in the distant future. This was the reason I was denied surgery (double knee replacement). I was told I am too young and that I might possibly need it again 20 years from now. So, instead of receiving surgery that would improve my quality of life and allow me to hold a full time job to better support my family, I am forced to manage my pain by spending my days in a recliner watching the country I fought for go to hell on the news.
I find it repugnant and condescending that you assume veterans expect miracles and refuse to take responsibility for their own needs. While that may be true for some, the majority are veterans because they are men of character whose beliefs and values cause them to do just the opposite. If they were the type of men (and women) who sat back and relied on others to do on their behalf, they would not have stepped forward, risking all, to defend this great nation and its people.
The real point though is, if this is the care that we give to the men and the women that sacrifice so much for us all why would we expect to get better care. There are roughly 24 million veterans alive in the US and not all of them use the VA health care system. How will we provide better care to twice as many people? Then once we are all on Social medicine? It would cost nearly $1 trillion per year to medically ensure every US citizen. It cannot be allowed to happen.
Likewise, Medicare is a governemnt-run system. While the conservative right likes to call Medicare a fiasco, the truth is those receiving Medicare wouldn’t give it up, surveys show they have high opinions of it, and it operates at 3% cost, nearly 7 times more efficiently than the average private-run insurance company (20% or so).
Medicare has a $32.4T unfunded liability through 2082 and, according to the New York Times) more doctors are choosing to opt out of Medicare, citing low reimbursements and high paperwork. Regarding the 3% cost figure, there are several reasons for that including lack of fraud control and the ability of government to use accounting gimmicks to hide or shift costs.
TO: All
RE: Is It Just Me?
Or did Blarty Boy just [indirectly] admit that private health care is superior to government-provided healthcare?
What does that mean with regard to Obamacare?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth comes out....]
TO: Chuck Pelto
RE: Shove it pogue
Based on your comment, I take it that you question the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with you.
I got my VA benefits the hard way. When you’ve spent all night lying in a garbage dump in Baghdad waiting for the enemy to try and emplace an IED then you can talk smack. I’ve killed the enemies of my country, can you say the same?
Government-run healthcare: This (above) is what everyone will get for a doubling of their tax bill. (This is what Deomcrats want for America.) Single-payer system? No way!
Um, dude, the situation described here is normal at the VA. Get out and see it sometime… don’t listen to liberals who proudly claim the VA is be heathcare “system” is the whole world; it probably is, but the SERVICE sucks big time.
TO: Paul in MI
RE: Really?
Now that’s a down-right interesting report, you have there.
Earlier you were coming across as if you had never done anything for your country.
So tell US, compadre….
What unit and what specialty you served with in that garbage dump in Baghdad.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Inquiring minds want to know....]
TO: Rob
RE: Excellent Point
Diseases, especially the long-term, debilitating forms are a REAL ‘strain’ on economics. That’s especially true for families that have someone with cancer or childhood on-set diabetes.
I’m ‘curious’ as to how a government-run medical system would ‘treat’ such patients. Make that ‘suspicioius’ instead of ‘curious’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind. -- Livy]
60. Paul in MI wrote:
So do any of the VA bashers out there have any kind of real empirical evidence that the VA health care system is broken today? Note: anything that starts with the word “My” as in “My experience”, “My cousin”, or “My hazy memory from 30 years ago” does not count.
Peter asks: Okay, how about this?
You honestly expect a government bureaucracy that ran the Cars for Clunkers program into the ground in a week when it was supposed to last four months can run ‘free public health care for all, including illegal aliens’ ?
Oh, and Now and Then, perhaps you can tell BS I’m still waiting for his answer to my initial question?
Boy, and you thought he had chased ME away with his lame tapdance?
So, are conservatives willing to go on record as saying the government shouldn’t provide health care to veterans since it is so bad at it?
TO: Chuck Pelto
RE: Yes Really
“Earlier you were coming across as if you had never done anything for your country.”
You’re proving my point. Because I disagree with you, you feel entitled to question my service.
What the hell.
Scout Platoon, HHC Co., 4/31 Infantry, 2nd BCT, 10th Mountain Div.
Here’s the dump
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=khadamiya+Iraq&sll=33.796268,44.358673&sspn=0.375465,0.528717&ie=UTF8&ll=33.389743,44.300931&spn=0.011789,0.016522&t=h&z=16
Here’s our FOB about 2 km east of the dump, it was called FOB Justice in 2004 not sure what it’s called now.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=khadamiya+Iraq&sll=33.796268,44.358673&sspn=0.375465,0.528717&ie=UTF8&ll=33.383132,44.355004&spn=0.01179,0.016522&t=h&z=16
Here’s my platoon
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=26836
So how about that empirical evidence?
#73 Peter
Rhetorical arguments ≠ empirical evidence
If it’s really that bad it shouldn’t be so hard for you to prove, right?
For reference here’s the CBO report stating that the VA has a pretty good system.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8892/MainText.3.1.shtml
I do appreciate the debate but it all sounds a bit strange to me:
we have no longer any choice, the socialist regime seems to be still pretty much solid despite the large, and growing, opposition in the REAL country.
The nomenklatura of the regime has repeatedly declared that it couldn’t care less of what the Americans want.
I’m NOT saying that the debate is useless and that dissent is useless, I’m just sharing my sense of horror for the process in which our Freedom is being lost…
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Mr. Bronson’s story is horrible and I have no reason to doubt a word of it. But there’s a boatload of objective, dispassionate, peer-reviewed research that shows it is not at all characteristic of VA health care in general, let alone an accurate predictor of how any legislation that emerges from this Congress will function.
The research I’m talking about is compiled in a book titled “Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours,” by Phillip Longman and Timothy Noah. Some of the findings it reports:
* New England Journal of Medicine, May 29, 2003: VA “significantly” tops fee-for-service Medicare in 11 criteria out of 11.
* Annals of Internal Medicine, 2004: VA’s diabetes care tops commercial managed-care systems in seven of seven criteria for diabetes care.
* RAND Corp. study, 2004: VA outperforms all other American health-care sectors in 294 areas of patient care.
* Medical Care, 2006: Patients in Medicare’s Advantage Program had “significantly higher” mortality than corresponding VA patients.
* American Journal of Managed Care, 2004: VA topped both Medicare and best available non-Medicare programs in 18 of 18 criteria.
(The rest of the book goes on to explain why this is the case.)
The one problem that does exist, the waiting time vets frequently must endure for appointments or care, is the direct result of Congress giving the VA, year after year, less money than it needs and asks for. And during the Bush 43 administration, the GAO found, the White House ordered the VA to understate its likely financial needs even further so as to make Bush’s claim that we could balance the budget by 2012 sound more plausible.
So there’s no reason to think Mr. Bronson’s case is typical even of the VA, let alone a likely predictor of how any health-care reforms enacted this year would turn out. (A better predictor might be Medicare, which is actually pretty darned popular among those who use it.)
As for the “Cars for Clunkers” program crashing within a week, it did so because it was more popular than anyone predicted and so the money ran out too quickly, something Congress is addressing this week. It didn’t crash because of any inherent problems in the program.
More fact-based arguing, please.
From my experience, doctor’s know almost nothing about spinal injuries, all guesswork.
For the VA, they found the pressure on my mom’s brain after years of private misdiagnosis and pain. Then, in the operation, the VA doctors left all sorts of sponges and junk in her. All in all it ended well, but…
Somewhere along the way the objective should not only be to contain costs, but to actually raise the standards of medicine in this country. The VA is only one piece of the puzzle. But the idea that socialism, that is government-directed allocation and purchase of medical services, will do this is nuts.
#75 troll
So, are conservatives willing to go on record as saying the government shouldn’t provide health care to veterans since it is so bad at it?
Are the commies willing to go on record as saying that the Veterans (capitalized, thank you) must accept BAD health care OR go to hell ?
(For the trolls small brains: rich and fat vouchers for Veterans ,for free choice private care would do great , wouldn’t they ???)
Thank you for the opportunity to smash trolls.
This thread is a microcosm of the whole socialized medicine debate. Some folks share their personal experiences with government run healthcare. Other make reasoned arguments about extending the lessons from such experiences to proposed nationalized healthcare.
And the Obamabots repeat misleading talking points and call everyone who disagrees with them “Liars” or “stupid.”
Deny, Delay till the vet dies.
That is, was and always will be the VA.
The system is a self perpetuating place where the people who work there work very hard at trying NOT to work.
Go to the VA only if ya ain’t got nowhere else to go and don’t expect much more than a run around.
TO: Paul in MI
RE: Proving of Points
No. Because you were disavowing all the first person experiences with the VA is why I questioned you.
Then, when you started in with the Baghdad garbage dump business, I questioned you with regards to providing evidence that you weren’t some bozo trying to bluff their way through a discussion. I’ve encountered such before. Hence my questions about units and specialties. That sort of questioning usually blows any smoke-blowers away. As one of my First Sergeants used to say to some troop who was throwing a lot of ‘dust’ up regarding an infraction of proper decorum, “Once the dust settles, there you are.”
Your service to the country is duly noted. And respected by me. And probably by many others here.
What concerns me is, based on your comments, WHAT experience have YOU had with the VA?
RE: Empirical Evidence
You’re seeing it right here before you. Empirical evidence, by definition IS….
“Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation and/or experience rather than theory.”
Were you thinking of clinical data instead? When you made the statement of….
All of the comments of personal experience with the VA presented here, aged or not, IS “empirical evidence”.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[God is alive....and Airborne-Ranger qualified. And so am I.]
P.S. I enlisted in 1970. Retired in 1997 as a LTC of infantry. Never fired a shot in anger. Although I figured I was Nam bound when I went in. God just never saw fit to put me in such a situation….and that’s a longish story best told over fine scotch and great tobacco…..
This falsely implies that the testimony of an individual with first-hand knowledge is inadmissible as evidence.
It doesn’t take a committee of statisticians to know on what’s true and what isn’t.
81. Sherab Zangpo:
Are the commies willing to go on record as saying that the Veterans (capitalized, thank you) must accept BAD health care OR go to hell ?
So where was all this concern for veterans over the past sixty years or so? Did no one care about how shabbily they were being treated during the Reagan or Bush years? Did Reagan hate veterans? How about the Bushes?
Also: commies? Really?
82. George Bruce:
I draw your attention to Lex’s comment at 79. It contradicts what you’re saying.
#83 Kim
Individual testimony is perfectly valid for assessing individual cases. To get the complete picture of a system that treats 5 million veterans you need statistics. And yes, it does take a committee of statisticians to figure that out.
Ted Bronson (a pen name to protect his pension)
Why would writing this article endanger his pension?
#84 Chuck Pelto
Regarding data I was working more from this definition of empirical: “In economics, “empirical” generally refers to statistical or econometric analysis of numeric data. Other forms of observation-based hypothesis testing are not considered to be empirics.” Basically I’m looking for numbers not stories. Perhaps I should have used a more precise word, but this is something on which honest men can disagree.
My experience with the VA is not as extensive as others. I managed to make it through 5 years with just a slightly bad knee and some breathing problems from smoke inhalation. My treatment at the VA has been entirely satisfactory. More to the point though, I don’t think my experience is relevant to the discussion. I’m more interested in how much the VA spends per patient, infection rates and patient outcomes.
P.S. God may be airborne qualified but Jesus was definitely a Leg, he only extracted by air
75. Blarty Blarckleblart:
So, are conservatives willing to go on record as saying the government shouldn’t provide health care to veterans since it is so bad at it?
no one is even remotely saying that. …is that supposed to be your argument.
what a lot o people miss is that the government makes a lot of revenue from the medical establishment at present.
(through taxes at various levels)
when they take over that revenue stream will go the other way …draining money.
also for blarty …yes there are horror stories in the private system too ..but there are recourses as well …wait till a government doctor has a booboo on you ! no sir you will not have any recourse.
89. Blarty Blarckleblart:
Ted Bronson (a pen name to protect his pension)
Why would writing this article endanger his pension?
you think that the O-bum-a crew isn’t tracing IP addresses. you guys kill me.
catch me if you can …I hi-jacked blarts IP ..so they will think he is a subversive.
no offence intended blart
#89 Blarty
More importantly, is there a real Ted Bronson out there whose pension might be endangered? Maybe John Doe would have been more appropriate?
86. Blarty Blarckleblart:
81. Sherab Zangpo:
Are the commies willing to go on record as saying that the Veterans (capitalized, thank you) must accept BAD health care OR go to hell ?
So where was all this concern for veterans over the past sixty years or so? Did no one care about how shabbily they were being treated during the Reagan or Bush years? Did Reagan hate veterans? How about the Bushes?
Also: commies? Really?
blarty, you still blaming Bush. I think you should give the Clinton years and Back door Barney Franks some credit. …and the dems in congress along with senator sphincter of penn.
The troll problem here is awful, why do so many of you feed their narcissistic need for attention(surprising that they would vote someone like themselves into the presidency, eh?) and keep them coming back?
This is how liberal ‘logic’ works:
- Anecdotal stories about how bad our existing health care system is: good
- Anecdotal stories about how bad socialized medicine and government-run health programs are: bad
- Before making a statement about how effective, well-funded, and practicable Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are, check who’s in the White House? Is it Bush (or any Republican)? Then they’re bankrupting the programs, killing our old and poor. Is it Obama? Then these are fine examples of existing government-run health care, and perfect models for a future full government takeover of the system.
- Is Bush in office? Then the Veterans Administration is a disgrace. It’s underfunded, overworked, understaffed, and the fact that we haven’t ‘fixed’ it shows how little Bush cares about our troops. Oh, it’s Obama now? Well then the VA works great. It’s proof that our government CAN run health care – just like it can run a military, you’re not so against the government running something now, are you, you right-wing extremist?
- Is Bush in office? Then dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Is Sarah Palin running for office? Hanging her in effigy, publishing columns of rape fantasy, all earmarks of a healthy voting public.
- Is Obama in office? Any depictions of him as Hitler or the Joker are racist. Heck, even thinking about Obama and not immediately smiling is racist. Dissent is for ‘fringe groups’.
Et cetera, et cetera. One wonders how these lefties can look at themselves in a mirror.
Lex, I’m military from someplace where the VA and military share the same hospital facilities… don’t let the over-quantified libtard idjiots Longman and Noah’s “Best Care Anywhere” Kool Aid-drinking fest fool you; they’re taking the Robert McNamara approach that lost us the war in ‘Nam. Somehow, with the same resources and facilities, VA care doesn’t even come close to military’s… go find someplace with shared VA/military facilities and you’ll see (or, more likely, it’ll scar you and you’re faith in “book learning” forever, but we all have to learn from experience sometime… Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny don’t exist either).
On July 28th, Rep. Jack Kingston’s (R-GA) press office fired off two releases bragging about a $106,901 grant for the Alma Police Department and a $138,286 grant for the Jesup Police Department in Georgia.
These grants, distributed by the Department of Justice for the “hiring of new police officers, to combat violence against women, and to fight Internet crimes against children,” were fully-funded by President Obama’s Recovery Act. Nonetheless, Kingston took credit for them, calling the funds “local initiatives” unrelated to the policies set forth in Washington and a type of “tax relief” for local communities:
“We’ve seen from experience that local initiatives go a lot further toward solving local problems that policies set in Washington. This funding will provide tax relief by savings local tax dollars and, under the stewardship of Chief Livingston, will go a long way to fight crime more effectively through community policing.”
On July 28th, the same day he took credit for jobs created by the Recovery Act, Kingston took to the floor to slam Obama and the Recovery Act:
KINGSTON: Mr. President, where’s the stimulus package? Where are the jobs? [...] Mr. Speaker, this is not the change the folks in Coffee County, Georgia, can use. They need jobs.
Republican Congress members: Shameless lying hypocrites, or just plain morons? You decide.
#96 AtheistConservative
Dunno how liberal logic works. I’d probably classify myself as a moderate conservative. But how about this for a rule:
-Anecdotal stories about large systems: Completely meaningless
-Actual statistical data (and dare I say it, analysis): Yippee!!
#94 Anonymous
Sorry, veterans is not capitalized. It’s a generic term rather than a proper name.
#97 Anonymous II
So Lex quotes the following:
* New England Journal of Medicine, May 29, 2003: VA “significantly” tops fee-for-service Medicare in 11 criteria out of 11.
* Annals of Internal Medicine, 2004: VA’s diabetes care tops commercial managed-care systems in seven of seven criteria for diabetes care.
* RAND Corp. study, 2004: VA outperforms all other American health-care sectors in 294 areas of patient care.
* Medical Care, 2006: Patients in Medicare’s Advantage Program had “significantly higher” mortality than corresponding VA patients.
* American Journal of Managed Care, 2004: VA topped both Medicare and best available non-Medicare programs in 18 of 18 criteria.
And you respond with roughly: “Yeah but the VA hospital near me is terrible.”
It’s like a mental illness with you people.
P.S. My experience with medical care in the Army was more like “Here’s a bottle of Motrin, now suck it up and drive on” but thankfully I never had to get any serious care.
This is an ABSOLUTE MUST READ for everyone in the midst of Universal gov’t healthcare (ObamaCare) being forced upon us.
Read this. Read the comments. Then re-think what YOU want be done.
2010 is just next year folks.
2012 is just beyond that.
Throw them all out, but before that can be done, be sure to contact your Senator & Congressman (and if you are feeling up to it in other states as well).
I go to a VA Hospital and have never, ever been treated that way. I would think that this letter is phony and that the writer of it has an agenda of some sort. Before publishing something like this do a fact check with the Senator of his State, all have VA rep’s. This sounds like something out of a drunks delirium.
98. Marv G.:
the republicans can take credit for the programs …if the federal justice department knew the money was for a police force and not the brown shirt ACORN group the feds. wouldn’t give them the money.
…..who’s MONEY is it ..is it democrat money or republican money ?? get real. THE WHOLE POINT IN THESE ARTICALS IS THAT IT IS THE PEOPLES MONEY . NOT THAT OF THE POLITICIANS . AND THAT IS THE POINT THE LIBERALS/SOCIALISTS CAN NOT SEEM TO GET THEIR COLLECTIVE MINDS AROUND …OR DON”T CARE THAT IT IS THEIR NIEGHBOURS MONEY THEY WANT TO USE TO IMPOSE PROGRAMS ON THOSE WHO DON”T WANT THEM.
the O-bum-A group did get a lot of republican governors to prostitute themselves and join in the orgy of spending. doesn’t make it right Marv.
TO: Paul in MI
RE: [OT] Jesus
My understanding is that when He comes back, it’ll be an Air Assault operation.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Jesus had a twelve-man A-Team. You'll have one too oh Lordy! -- Special Fecees 'spiritual' jodie]
Been going to the VA for several years for high blood preeasure. I have been to three different locations and they were all marginal. Don’t think I have ever seen the same doctor more than once.
Anonymous II @ 97:
I’ve never been to a JOINT military/veteran facility, but as a reporter covering veterans’ issues, I spent time at both the Salisbury and Durham VA centers here in NC. They weren’t exactly houses of horror.
And although the main issue I was covering was problems vets were having getting disability benefits, the issue of quality of care did come up frequently in the discussions … and what all the vets I talked to had to say was remarkably consistent.
And that was: although they sometimes had to wait too long for an appointment, procedure or treatment (a direct consequence of chronic underfunding), only in the most isolated cases did anyone have anything but good things to say about the quality of their care. Many of the vets went out of their way to draw a clear distinction between the problems they were having getting their benefits and the problems they were NOT having with their medical care — when I say they went out of their way, I mean they brought it up, not me.
Finally, w/r/t Mr. Bronson’s experience: Having also covered medicine, I understand from the specialists that tracking down the exact cause of chronic musculoskeletal or neurological pain can be extremely difficult, and treating it more difficult still. That’s true whether a patient is being treated by the VA or in private care, and it’s another reason not to presume that Mr. Bronson’s experience sheds any light on how well any reform plan would work.
Coupla other points, Anonymous II @ 97:
– Longman is hardly a libtard; his previous book was about the need for more choice in medical care. “Best Care Anywhere” actually arose from an assignment he originally took on from one of the big business magazines (Fortune, I think; I don’t have the book handy at the moment) to “expose” how bad VA care was. His findings so directly contradicted what the magazine editors expected him to find that they killed the assignment. So he turned it into a book instead.
– The kind of “book learnin’” you deride — objective, peer-reviewed research — is the same kind competent doctors engage in and rely upon all the time. It has nothing to do with Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I will grant that the findings were surprising — so surprising that when I read about those studies in the book, I went and looked them up in the original scientific publications to make sure Longman wasn’t misrepresenting them. He wasn’t.
– I’d be very careful about any kind of generalization about the quality of military vs. VA care. Remember all those problems at Walter Reed that the Washington Post won a Pulitzer for exposing? WR is a military facility, not VA. (Also, when those stories came out, the VA ordered inspections of all its facilities nationwide, and allowing for the age of many of those buildings — some stuff that had met code at time of construction decades ago no longer met code in 2007 — they didn’t turn up much.)
Tragic story – little to do with Obama’s plan. I have a private plan – Guess what I have to get my drugs in the mail too. It is cheaper that way. For every tragic story about Medicare or the VA there are many other stories of private healtcare like orthopaedic surgeons who operate on teh wrong knee. This case proves nothing about the virtues of the Obama plan
Tragic story – little to do with Obama’s plan. I have a private plan – Guess what I have to get my drugs in the mail too. It is cheaper that way. For every tragic story about Medicare or the VA there are many other stories of private healtcare like orthopaedic surgeons who operate on teh wrong knee. This case proves nothing about the virtues of the Obama plan
92 Anonymous
you think that the O-bum-a crew isn’t tracing IP addresses. you guys kill me.
So it is your contention that “Ted Bronson” had to use an alias because if he didn’t, the Obama Administration would somehow trace his IP address through the PJM site and take away his pension? Wouldn’t it be easier for them to identify him using the many personal details he included in the article?
Personally, I don’t think there IS a “Ted Bronson” because his excuse for using an alias is so silly. I suspect this piece was written by an insurance company flack who never served a day in his life.
94 Anonymous
blarty, you still blaming Bush.
Not at all. I’m just wondering why, if the system is and always has been so broken, that no previous administration has done anything about it. Or has the VA system only been broken since January 21, 2009?
Anyhoo, anecdotal evidence of bad outcomes at the VA don’t say anything by themselves. You need a large-scale comparison of VA outcomes vs. private hospital outcomes, and from what I’ve seen posted here by Lex, the VA comes out quite well in such comparisons.
This definition reduces logical induction to second class status, thereby undermining the ability to form concepts from experience. This is a false condition for empirical knowledge, and it can be traced to the philosophy of science known as logical positivism, and further still to Kant’s analytic/synthetic dichotomy.
Essentially, by ruling qualitative knowledge out of court, one is left unable to reason from individual cases to general conclusions, in the way that, for example, Darwin did in forming his theory of evolution, after he spent many years observing thousands of specimens. To say that the theory of evolution is not empirical because it doesn’t rely on numeric data would be a failure to understand that empirical means something more general than just statistical knowledge.
Both math and logic are tools that bring a complex world within range so that our limited minds can deal with it, and both work through a process of unit reduction.
Statistics are quantitative by nature, so all you can do is count, and then only when the units are comparable.
What’s generally being debated here is the qualitative difference between government run medical institutions and privately owned medical businesses. They’re not comparable in quantitative terms because they’re as different as apples and oranges.
You can logically reduce the complexity, and compare these two alternatives, by focusing on the essential differences: bureaucratic rule vs. profit-motivated competition, rationing vs. price-constrained free choice, force vs. freedom. One system aims for collective health, and the other system aims for individual health. One system violates individual rights and the other doesn’t.
Things act in accordance with their nature. This applies to people too: you can’t expect good doctors and good performance without the right incentives.
Individual testimony confirms what commonsense would lead one to expect.
I rarely if ever doubt any VA horror story I read, I’ve experienced to many myself. As far as my own service acquired medical condition, if I can’t pay for it myself I will stay home and die with a bit of dignity before I ever go into another goddamned VA hospital again!! Note to you supporters of government healthcare, the government can’t run VA, medicare, medicaid or the Indian Affairs medical system, what the devil makes you think they can run a national healthcare system?
103. Anonymous:
98. Marv G.: …..who’s MONEY is it ..is it democrat money or republican money ?? get real. THE WHOLE POINT IN THESE ARTICALS IS THAT IT IS THE PEOPLES MONEY . NOT THAT OF THE POLITICIANS . AND THAT IS THE POINT THE LIBERALS/SOCIALISTS CAN NOT SEEM TO GET THEIR COLLECTIVE MINDS AROUND …OR DON”T CARE THAT IT IS THEIR NIEGHBOURS MONEY THEY WANT TO USE TO IMPOSE PROGRAMS ON THOSE WHO DON”T WANT THEM.
No, moron, the WHOLE POINT is that Republican congress members voted against the stimulus money, then took the money, then tried to take credit for the money by lying to their constituents and telling them that it was local funds that paid for these programs. Then they lied again by claiming that the stimulus did not create jobs, when clearly they are aware that it did.
Hello? BS? Still waiting for the answer to my question!
I feel your pain, literally.
I took a fall in a rolling ship 30 years ago, still two weeks out to sea. When I finally got an x-ray, the geniuses at Newport NH said my shoulder wasn’t broken but “bruised.” Six months later at a re-up physical, the examining physician noticed the deformity in my shoulder, more x-rays showed that the shoulder was broken and had healed/fused incorrectly. They said there was nothing they could do about it then.
LSS I live on Lortab and Flexoril because every disk in my back is degenerating from the pressure of overcompensation. I get the nerves in my back burned every six months or so, just so I can’t feel most of the pain.
I’m retired now and am a defense contractor. I use tri-care standard instead of prime, and pay $180 a month for a suppliment, just so I don’t have to use a military medical facility or the VA.
Good luck.
Kim:
You have to compare quantiatively the outcomes to understand which treatment and/or system gives the best result. Otherwise you end up with a so’s your ald man argument. You might want to live in a fantasy world where every story is equal, but I doubt that any doctor or researcher would.
#111 Kim
The situation we’re faced with here is that all of the statistical data and peer reviewed science indicates that the VA is doing, at worst an acceptable job of managing health care. The anecdotal evidence is that they’re a bunch of clueless communist murderers. Obviously we need to reconcile those differences.
“Statistics are quantitative by nature, so all you can do is count, and then only when the units are comparable.”
In a system that serves 5 million people all you can do is count. Unless you have the manpower to interview every single person, compile their opinions and check the details with their doctors. Even then, you would still have to count. The units are comparable, a heart attack in a 72 year old veteran can reasonably be compared to a heart attack in a 65 year old non-veteran.
“What’s generally being debated here is the qualitative difference between government run medical institutions and privately owned medical businesses. They’re not comparable in quantitative terms because they’re as different as apples and oranges.”
They’re as similar as any two systems can be. If you can’t compare the VA health system with Medicare and private medicine then what could you compare? They have the same problems to deal with: cost, patient’s rights, quality of life, long term outcomes. They have the same goals: patient health. It’s like saying you can’t compare Ford and Toyota.
“Things act in accordance with their nature. This applies to people too: you can’t expect good doctors and good performance without the right incentives. Individual testimony confirms what commonsense would lead one to expect.”
And yet peer reviewed science and statistical analysis indicates that “common sense” and individual anecdotes are both completely wrong.
To jharp:
If the Government pays for it, whatever it is, they OWN IT. The industry doesn’t have to be outright nationalized for it to be socialism.
You keep saying that if you don’t want to take the public option, you can go out and get your own coverage. Well, what happens when the public option drives all but the most exclusive (and expensive) private options out of business due to the Government Plan’s ability to take losses for years, if not decades, that the private option cannot compete with?
As to the tale told in the original story, I don’t doubt it in the slightest. I’m 15 year active duty Navy, and the quality of care I have received has been dependent on the doctor I saw at the time. When it was good, it was really good. Conversely, when it was bad, it was trying-to-kill-me bad.
I personally will never use the VA system for anything, once I retire, as I will not take the chance that I will be seen by That Guy who is so incompetent that his efforts have the end result of further injuring me or killing me.
What I can’t figure out is why socialists would even tolerate legalized abortion, let alone encourage it or fund it. After all, they need the workers in order to pay for their social programs. You can’t fund socialism unless the average women has at least three children.
I worked for the VA for many years and had some good supervisors and learned a lot. One of them had been a director of alcoholism treatment in Russia. I think that something of a hypothetical Russian perspective helps in understanding what is going on here. The common Russian worker rode the bus in the city and would see those who wanted to travel by car as being excessively individualistic. The Pain Clinic at the VA I worked at was concerned about possibilities for rehabilitation outside the use of narcotics and wanted to, in my opinion, easily for itself, insure that patients weren’t abusing pain meds. This led to the strictures as described by the blogger. To want to have it otherwise would have been, as per the typical Russian, ‘excessively individualistic.’ Since we won the Revolutionary War, there are those who don’t take the ‘typical Russian workers’ perspective on their health care, and yet there can be the good VA results cited by Paul in MI on comment 100 above.
113. Anonymous:
103. Anonymous:
98. Marv G.:
113. Anonymous:
103. Anonymous:
98. Marv G.:
in your comment after raging about the republicans, you claim the stimulus has created jobs …what planet are you on.
a sh!tload more jobs have been lost then created or saved.
you really are an idiot
9. Tolbert:
“I haven’t had such a good laugh in a long time.
Someone who actually things (sic) government is the answer.”
We make the government we want. Who you elect and what you tell them will shape the legislation you get. When you get sick and old, look back and see if you helped or just sat doing nothing.
Admittedly this is merely an anecdote, not ‘peer-reviewed statistical data’: but the malpractice of a VA hospital killed my father (career Navy) at age 54. And the callousness, laziness and insolence of the ward nurses there would have to be seen to be believed.
Blarty, me fine fool:
It doesn’t matter who is president: government operations suck. Period. I speak as a veteran, and much as I love the men in uniform, past and present, there isn’t one who has any good things to say about the Pentagon, a fat, inefficient, often moronic bureaucracy like any other.
———-
jharp:
Give up the spin already: the ‘public option’ is designed to be the cuckoo in the nest. Its goal is to crush out private insurance. Take a quick look at what happened in Hawaii in the nine months their very similar system was in operation.
———–
118. Mark:
“To jharp:If the Government pays for it, whatever it is, they OWN IT.”
No they don’t you dimwitted fool.
The government pays for Medicare and Social Security today. And the don’t own the hospitals nor our seniors.
They are simply pooling the risks of something going wrong among all taxpayers.
Vivo,
I am old and I vote in all elections – local, state and federal. The guys down at city hall know me well from when we slapped down the local under 35 Liberals who attempted to create an ordinance that would have infinged on local property rights. I regularly talk to my congressman as we share a fence and a property line.
As to shaping government, the best thing we could do as a nation would be to repeal the 19th and 26th admendments.
George Washington –
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! It is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.”
The VA is not the only instance of government-run healthcare in this country. The entire active-duty ranks of our armed forces are subject to government-run healthcare. I grew up in it, 22 years and went through a major illness (tuberculosis), as did my mother (brain surgery, twice). The medical care I and my family received through this government-run system was top-notch, always.
I beg to differ here, I would say that our experience with the military medical care was spotty at best. I did learn quickly that if the doctor was in uniform the quality of care was likely to be comparable to private care, but if the provider was a civilian, you were probably in trouble.
Part of my husband’s disability was actually preventable. When he injured his knee the doctor (civilian working for military) refused to order an MRI, and when my husband informed him that the knee still hurt, the doctor accused him of trying to get out of working. Pissed my husband off, and he stopped complaining about the knee pain even though it still hurt.
Fast forward 4 years when he was on a ship (he was in power school when he injured the knee, then went to NPTU, and stayed on as a staff pick up so he didn’t actually have ship duty for several years)-his knee pain returned with a vengeance, and he began falling down the stairs and ladders, after one pretty bad fall his chief made him go to the doctor (military who was actually an orthopedist). The doctor referred him to the ortho department at the Navy hospital, they did an MRI at that point and discovered the tear. The doctor scheduled surgery to repair/clean up the scarring but once they were in, he realized the tear and scarring were too significant to actually do surgery without a knee replacement, but the damage wasn’t quite severe enough to do the knee replacement. I took him home and a year and half later he was out of the Navy.
While he was at NPTU his lung collapsed at the end of a shift (he was having severe chest pains and actually thought he was having a heart attack). His friends took him to the ER and the doctor (civilian) accused him of faking once again, and had him walk over to x-ray for the chest x-ray, which showed the collapsed lung and he was hauled off to have a chest tube inserted. The ER doctor did have the decency to apologize for yelling at my husband and making accusations of faking considering he had a pretty serious condition.
There is also the time he sat in a waiting area for two hours with facial swelling from a drug reaction before he was actually seen.
I will say that he had a very good allergist.
The care for my kids was very inconsistent, and there were several times I called for appointments for a sick child and was given an appointment time days in the future. We eventually opted to take our kids to a civilian doctor for continuity of care. One of my big frustrations with the military was that my kids always saw a different doctor or nurse practitioner and half the time they were civilians from the Phillipines who barely spoke fluent English. My oldest daughter didn’t see the same doctor two times in a row over the course of 2 years before we opted to see civilians.
The scariest care my daughter with asthma ever got was when we took her to the ER on her pediatricians advise and the ER doctor told us to take her off her asthma medications and give her tylenol. The next day she was admitted to the hospital for her asthma. Oh and that doctor was a civilian.
So, I don’t have a terribly high opinion of military care or how it is run, some of my frustrations could be fixed to some degree (continuity of care issues and perhaps being pickier about who they actually contract with to provide care), but the beauty of the less than stellar care my kids received was that I was able to take my kids to a civilian doctor (for a higher out of pocket cost) of my choice, and if the government eventually ends up being the only thing in town, I will be reduced to the care my husband received which was spotty at best, and actually let a medical condition that was fixable end up a condition that is not and resulted in permanent disability.
I am not a fan of the military system and I am really not a fan of the VA system (although I will say the VA system in Durham, NC was pretty decent while we were there, for 4 years my husband saw the same doctor for his various ailments and this doctor grew to know my husband’s issues (my husband has a multitude of drug allergies which makes treatment a challenge). Since moving to NH which is a rural state with crappy VA care I can’t say it is even close to good. But there are some decent VA hospitals out there, although my guess is that most of them are in large cities and probably close to excellent medical schools.
The point a few of you are missing is that we are discussing injuries and not disease.
Actually my husband’s disabilities-one is injury-the knee.
The other is asthma-which didn’t develop until after the collapsed lung and a severe reaction to an antibiotic they used to prevent infection. So the VA is in charge of managing his asthma-and it does a fantastically sucky job of it. One of the best medications for his asthma (which his sister gets for him from her doctor husband) is a drug the VA refuses to prescribe due to cost. He has had 4 different doctors in the past 18 months and each one tinkers with and fools around with the last doctors medication schedule-often because they think they know better than that they want to make things work better.
So, are conservatives willing to go on record as saying the government shouldn’t provide health care to veterans since it is so bad at it?
I always liked John McCain’s idea of giving all veterans an insurance card and letting them choose to go to a private sector doctor that accepts it and especially choose somebody close where they can schedule appointments that fit the patient’s schedule.
Too bad Bill Kristol already told a huge Daily Show audience that VA care was the best in the USA.
jharp mentions that the government “pays for” Social Security and Medicare (re #125).
jharp are you mentally ill or just uneducated? WE pay for Social Security and Medicare out of our TAXES dimwit. Guess what else dimwit? THEY’RE BANKRUPT.
So jharp, the same government that you’re forced to hand over your TAXES to that has bankrupted those two agencies now wants to control health care for all of us? LOL!!
jharp = DIMWIT
131. Anonymous wrote:
So jharp, the same government that you’re forced to hand over your TAXES to
Peter writes: That’s where you make your first mistake, assuming jharp actually works and would therefore actually pay taxes.
jack:”They are simply pooling the risks of something going wrong among all taxpayers.”
that sounds like a FANTASTIC plan!bask in it,genius:
http://www.organdonor.gov/pdf/prevention.pdf
“While genetic variation may contribute to the risk of various chronic diseases, most of the
solutions for chronic disease prevention involve changing environmental influences that may
affect personal choices. Mokdad, et. al., have calculated cause-attributable fractions of
preventable deaths for the year 2000. The results indicate that up to 48 percent (1.16 million) of
the 2.4 million deaths in 2000 could be attributed to modifiable behavioral risk factors. (2)”
What is the significance of Bill Kristol saying that the VA was the best in the USA? Jon Stewart is a comedian. What’s the point of this discussion? It’s a friggin’ entertainment show. This is not entertainment, it is real, and it is serious. Most VA hospitals located in large metropolitan areas are typically staffed by physicians working at nearby academic institutions. It is not unusual to see M.D.s chair both a VA unit and the university’s hospital unit. VA’s are frequently teaching hospitals and have some of the most distinguished M.D.s in the country working there, teaching young doctors. Rural VA’s operate differently, but I tend to think their attendant staffs are more motivated and dedicated than the inner city VA’s attendant staff. This latter point is a personal observation. My opinion is this relationship between Universities and VA’s would suffer under a universal health care system. This would most likely happen due to a decrease in students seeking a career in the medical field, and their distinguished professors too overworked to provide the quality teaching required. Drs in the Texas Medical Center have already come forward saying universal health care is going to be disastrous for the medical community, and patients in the Houston area. Doesn’t it occur to any of you how ludicrous it is to have our legislatures deciding what we need for health care? It scares the crap our of me? Just look back and see the other inane things they’ve gotten us involved in.
131. Anonymous:
“jharp mentions that the government “pays for” Social Security and Medicare (re #125).”
“jharp are you mentally ill or just uneducated?”
Not only did I mention it. It was the central point of my post.
Yes, the United States government pays Medicare and Social Security.
I think the part that confuses you is they tax us to do it. Somehow the wingnut brain can’t understand that concept.
Just like they pool tax dollars to pay for many things in our country today, MEDICARE, MILITARY, roads, air traffic control, SEC, CIA, FBI, National Parks, Consumer Products Safety Commission, dams, locks, national defense, and so forth.
Kind of like they are about to do with health insurance.
Get it?
I am very educated. A B.S B.A from a Big Ten U. And 25 years business experience.
You?
TO: Michael, Paul in MI, et al.
RE: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I’m sure there are good VA places. I know of one myself. The VA hospital in Denver, CO.
Why is it ‘good’?
Because it’s co-located with the University of Colorado’s Medical Center. It would be VERY bad form to have crappy VA doctors working next door to Colorado’s BEST. Word would get out.
Then there are the sort of places as reported here.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Refuse Novacaine... Transcend Dental Medication]
‘Private medicine works. I had to re-prioritize my life so I could afford proper medical care, but now I can afford it when I need it. And I need it to combat the ineffectual and, in the long run, damaging care I received when it was “free.”’
Yes, except for a few snafus (letting a patient die in the waiting room, amputating the wrong limb, killing patients with the wrong medication — this last in one of the nation’s fines private Cancer centers) private medicine does work. But if the VA is so bad, it should be shut down. I’m sure the veterans’ groups would agree.
Most VA hospitals located in large metropolitan areas are typically staffed by physicians working at nearby academic institutions. It is not unusual to see M.D.s chair both a VA unit and the university’s hospital unit. VA’s are frequently teaching hospitals and have some of the most distinguished M.D.s in the country working there, teaching young doctors. Rural VA’s operate differently, but I tend to think their attendant staffs are more motivated and dedicated than the inner city VA’s attendant staff.
While I agree that larger cities with teaching hospitals and med schools close by probably are better quality (the hospital in Durham, NC was actually more like an experience with a private physician), I am not sure that I agree that rural doctors and staff are more dedicated. We live in NH, where many people have to drive hours to access any VA care. Where we live the nearest hospital is over an hour away and the clinic my husband uses is about a half hour away (although only about 15 to 20 miles). The turnover is very high. There hasn’t been a doctor that has stayed at the clinic for more than 4 consecutive months in over 2 years. It is really hard to maintain any continuity of care when you have that much turnover.
But if the VA is so bad, it should be shut down. I’m sure the veterans’ groups would agree.
I think shutting down the VA system and issuing a Veteran’s insurance card so that veterans can choose their own doctors and choose their own hospitals would be a far better way to provide care to the veterans-especially for those who live in rural areas and who are unable to easily access medical care.
Huh, I come very late to a topic all-too familiar to me.
The VA system is institutionalized incompetence. I can only add to the comments of laziness, incompetence, and uncaring bureaucracy. I’ve been in this system for 25 years, and it’s been uniformly horrible.
…and all of the rest of you will experience what we’ve been saying for years, if “Obama-Care” passes. Count on it.
Reps. Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Tom Price (R-GA) offered an amendment to ensure that Americans who like their current employer-provided coverage can keep it. The Biggert-Price amendment was killed in committee at the behest of Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Miller.
So the VA’s mistakes are all Obama’s fault, even if it was around b4 he was born and this guy was complaining about events when W was president and private health care is always effective, I learn something new every day
I have suffered at the VA hands in much the same way. After a VA hospital stay of 5 days for a 10mm kidneystone and severe kidney infection I was sent home after they inserted a stent to keep my urinary system working.I was left in this state from Jan.13 until April 29th eating Percocet like M&M’s due to the fact the stent had looped inside of me within 24 hours(VA Documented)and cystals were forming on the device they implanted.The VA could not fiqure where they were going to send me to have the surgery.
I had surgery before my ureter was totally scraped open from the inside out. I was never told the stent had looped until I could not take the pain anymore and found a private Urologist in my hometown that I paid for out of my own pocket to remove the kidneystone and stent.During my first visit with the hometown doctor he showed me my VA X-rays and told me that is why you are in so much pain.I saw him on a Tuesday and the stone was removed 2 days later.
The VA wanted me to travel 300 miles one way to go Richmond,VA and have the surgery in a VA hospital there.This required 2 different trips(1200 miles). First trip for the consult and the second one for the surgery. The first 2 attempts for the consult was canceled by the VA and had to be rescheduled.
I was never told of another VA hospital that was 90 miles away that could have done the surgery while I was in the hospital in January.Since that VA hospital is not in the same VISION Network I could not be sent there.I only found this information out as I was preparing a legal claim against the VA for “breech of care”. My hometown Urologist wrote 4 very damaging letters to the VA asking them to fix this problem.
OUR VETERANS ARE BEING TREATED WORSE THAN THE TERRORISTS AT GITMO BAY OR PEOPLE ON WELFARE!
Thank God,I am no longer addicted to the painkillers but my ureter is now badly scarred and I will have pain for the rest of my life and may lose my kidney in the future because of what the VA did(or did not do in treating me)
If you have loved ones in the military please tell them to FULLY DOCUMENT ALL CONTACT WITH THE MILITARY MEDICAL AND ALL VA STAFF.Get a printed report everytime you see any doctor. This will be what saves them many problems down the road.The VA has already been caught shredding paperwork in many cases in different offices around the country. Be sure to get a complete copy of all of your medical records upon leaving the service.Get them copied 5 times and store them in a safe place and with other relatives in case you have a house fire and yours are destroyed.
I have to admit I no longer encourage young men and women to enter the service out of fear this will happen to them. The VA has been grossly underfunded for many years by Republicans and Democrats alike. We offered the citizens of America a blank check payable with our own lives and now when we need them we found welfare people and drunks(NY POST-7/12/09-HOSPITALIY ABU$E-READ IT)are ahead of us in the line.
Next time a plane full of terrorist flies into a building in America and you want to go to war and kill all of them,send a crack head or someone on welfare so that when they return they can get better medical treatment then our veterans are getting right now.
UNIVERSAL HEATHCARE IS ONE NIGHTMARE YOU DONT WANT TO HAVE TO GO THRU.OUR GOVERNMENT HASNT FIXED THE VA AND THEY ARENT GOING TO FIX IT THIS TIME EITHER.
Sorry for the second post.
If you are a military veteran,have veterans in your family or friends with a veteran in need of help you can go to the following website.
VAWATCHDOG.ORG
This site has a great search engine and 1000′s of articles for all veterans to use in applying for assistance.I have used it many times to get information on how to proceed with my claim and beat the VA at their own game.
Be sure to read about how the VA offices around the country have been caught shredding documents that are important to settling veterans claims.You wont believe what they are doing!
“I am very educated. A B.S B.A from a Big Ten U. And 25 years business experience.”
Yet you set your trolling sights on a political website, well known for their volatility. I’m disappointed in you.
126. Tolbert:
“I regularly talk to my congressman as we share a fence and a property line.”
I commend you for your civic mindedness, and you’re lucky to be so close to your congressman.
“As to shaping government, the best thing we could do as a nation would be to repeal the 19th and 26th admendments (sic).”
The XIX Amendment allows women to vote.
The XXVI Amendment sets the voting age at 18.
And you want to repeal THAT?
Just because they preferred Obama? Sorry but this is too egocentric and discriminatory. Your wife must be hopping mad or already left you.
If young people can kill at 18, they deserve to vote.
Horace Well:
No, what us Veterans are telling you is that if President Obama gets his Healthcare bill passed, all Healthcare in America will descend to the sorry state of VA care.
141. Horace Well wrote:
So the VA’s mistakes are all Obama’s fault, even if it was around b4 he was born
Peter asks: Why does ot always come down to the same old chant with the libtards? No one, not a SINGLE person on this entire thread (except for the libtards like you Horace) have even implied the VA system is Obama’s fault.
Try actually READING the comments before you add your own idiocy to them. As Lincoln said, “Better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
What we have been saying is the VA, as a bureaucratically run system, is less than stellar in its function and care, and that we’re warning our fellow citizens that ObamaCare is only going to bring that same inefficiency and lazy attitude to everyday civilian medicine as well.
Try living in England or Canada for a few years and try their government-run health system for a while, then come back here and tell us all how ‘great’ it is!
Go swim to Cuba, that medical paridise Michael Moore so praised, and tell me how great their government-run, ‘free’ healthcare is a year later.
We’re only trying to open people’s eyes before its too late and our once great health care system is no better than, or perhaps even worse, than Cuba’s!
Lex and Paul in MI: Seriously, military healthcare isn’t the greatest either (but here’s-some-Motrin,-get-back-to-work care beats don’t-bug-me,-I’m-underpaid-and-on-my-coffee-break care… with shared facilities, it’s an easy difference to see) and, forgive my combatant-minded cynicism, but cubicle-bound experts using graphs and statistics to tell me what what my experience in the field was like get old (like folk who don’t use the VA saying how it’s the best “system” of its kind in the world).
TO: Biblio44
RE: I…..
…AGREE!
The VA SHOULD be shut down and the veterans go to private facilities to receive their care.
Hope that helps….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
LTC, IN (Ret)
P.S. AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE…..
TO: Horace Well
RE: Try….
….NOT to be a total ‘jackass’. You become an embarrassment to Obama.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Let a fool hold his tongue.....]
Anonymous @ 148: No one’s trying to use peer-reviewed studies to tell you what your experience is like. Your experience is perfectly valid. But it’s only a single data point among millions.
And while we’re dealing in facts …
SGT Ted @ 10 & Anonymous @131: Social Security is hardly bankrupt. True, Congress keeps borrowing from the trust fund buildup that was started in ’83 to pay for the Baby Boomers’ retirement. But the government still has to pay that money; it is not going to default on its obligations. If we do nothing whatsoever to Social Security right now, it will be able to pay full benefits for another 35 to 40 years, and with minor changes it can be made sustainable to the maximum 75-year horizon that the government measures.
Medicare is another story, however.
I do believe Four-Leaf Pelto, at 149 and 150, just acknowledged that he favors a single-payer system.
That’s great, Four-Leaf! Me too! Let’s get it done!
Chuck Pelto:
You have become worse than an embarassment with you moronic comments
Geez, trolls including Paul in MI: Do you really want a health care system that even remotely resembles the VA system? I’m a vet as well and I wait sometimes six weeks to see a Nurse Practiioner. Not a MD-a nurse.
Paul you can argue points not germane to the topic but the VA is government run health care and can you say it is a good system? Can you say, that a system covering all Americans and illegals will be run efficiently? Just a couple years ago, the left was screaming murder about the terrible conditions of the VA system and now we have trolls saying the VA system is wonderful. Which is it?
All you paid or unpaid trolls advocating government health care better watch out for what you wish for. Plus the question unanswered by all trolls is that: Why is Congress, Senate and all federal and state bureaucracies and unions NOT going to have to give up their private insurance??? Do you think Hollyweird and Soros will use our govenment system?
“Why is Congress, Senate and all federal and state bureaucracies and unions NOT going to have to give up their private insurance?”
Because they like the insurance they have now, duh!
The public plan is for those who lack insurance or who are not happy with the coverage they have. Nothing more. You can keep the coverage you have if you so desire.
TO: jharp
RE: Liar
The president and a number of other high federal government officials have been caught on tape saying that EVERYONE will ultimately be on the public plan.
See it all HERE!
You’re found out, buckie.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....jharp is a liar.....]
“The president and a number of other high federal government officials have been caught on tape saying that EVERYONE will ultimately be on the public plan.”
An out and out lie from the liar Chuck Pelto. I suppose you call yourself a Christian too.
And I watched your ridiculous clip. No one was on tape supporting your lie.
Don’t you have some teabagging to get to? Posting lies here just ain’t gettin it done.
#155 Blotto
I think you have me confused with someone else. I haven’t suggested that Obamacare is or will be a good thing.
“Paul you can argue points not germane to the topic but the VA is government run health care and can you say it is a good system?”
Yes, can you prove that it’s not?
“Can you say, that a system covering all Americans and illegals will be run efficiently?”
Can’t say for sure but I would think not.
“Just a couple years ago, the left was screaming murder about the terrible conditions of the VA system and now we have trolls saying the VA system is wonderful. Which is it?”
The left and a number of people on the right were screaming bloody murder about conditions at Walter Reed and other DOD hospitals. Perhaps you’re confused?
As far as points not germane to the topic I’ve been talking about VA health care this whole time apart from a brief **** measuring contest with Chuck. You’re the one who brought George Soros into the discussion.
Here’s the complete report I cited earlier.
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8892/12-21-VA_Healthcare.pdf
Once again, not a completely glowing review but average to high ratings in every category. Of particular interest is this from page 18:
“VA also tracks its performance in terms of patients’ satisfaction, including using the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which ranks customer satisfaction with a
variety of federal programs and private-sector industries. In 2005, VA achieved a satisfaction score of 83(out of 100) on the ACSI for inpatient care and 80 (out of 100) for outpatient care, compared with averages for
private-sector providers of 73 for inpatient care and 75 for outpatient care.”
TO: All
RE: jharp
We’re talking REAL ‘delusional’ here. Or, as I suspect, MUCH MUCH worse. In other words….LIAR.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. -- George Bernard Shaw]
I have limited experience with the VA system; more experience with the military system. I have private individual insurance and tend to avoid the VA, both because of my own uneven experience and because any time I go there I see all these WWII guys and feel like I’m stealing their resources. (I’m an eligible combat veteran).
There is a wide variation in quality of both physical plant and human resources in the VA system. I would not send a dead goat to the Brockton, MA facility for a necropsy, let alone a living human being for even the most trivial procedure. On the other hand, if I had a loved one needing emergency care and eligible for VA care, I’d want that patient in the West Palm Beach VA hospital.
VA care that has been provided to the combat wounded has been good to a point… the quality and availablilty of rehab seems to closely track your ability to game the system and stay at Walter Reed on medical extension (ADME for reserves and Guard). Once you’re back home, which is what many of the wounded want desperately, the quality of care, its availability, and the convenience of appointments nose-dives. Whether a guy learns to use a new leg, etc. is more his own responsibility.
The VA system has good eligibility tracking for GWOT vets but they bend over backwards to admit even the most questionable Vietnam-era vets… to the point that any PTSD counseling is usually in group sessions with a bunch of flakes that any combat vet can finger as phonies in about thirty seconds. This means that actual combat vets usually don’t stick around those sessions, but they can usually work things out better than some MSW counsellor (who has been dealing with a solid caseload of wannabees for years) can. VAs incentives are to promote greater uptake of its services, so an amazing amount of service gets sucked up by head cases who were trainee discharges if they served at all.
The VA system is large and I suppose some level of screw-ups is an unavoidable feature of any large-enough system. Still, I can’t think of a civilian counterpart of the massive HIV and Hep C infections that have been in the news lately, or of the cancer clinic that destroyed dozens of patients’ bladders and other internal organs with radioactive pellets improperly emplaced by a surgeon.
But in the final analysis, it’s good it’s there for vets who have no other option. Its probably a net public good.
Even though its called the “Veterans Health Administration,” it also provides some other practical benefits, including the well-known education benefit, which has just been improved. The colleges are of two minds about this — they all like the money, but some of them don’t like the veterans that come with it.
TO: Paul in MI
RE: Out of Curiosity….
….were those who died in the care of VA participants in the ACSI survey?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Doctors bury their mistakes. Mechanics have to repair them.]
#163 Chuck
“….were those who died in the care of VA participants in the ACSI survey?”
Please, this is the federal government we’re talking about. You think being technically dead is going to get you out of having to fill out paperwork?
Seriously though, the people who died under private care weren’t part of the survey either.
Another perfect example has occurred just this week.
A co-worker of mine, retired Navy, was recently diagnosed with kidney stones. (Stones that are the side effect of a VA prescribed medicine, BTW.) VA told him “Don’t worry. They’re small. Just wait it out and it will eventually pass.”
Using his tricare prime, he went to a regular doctor on Monday, who sent him to a specialist today (Wednesday), who confirmed he needs to have the stones broken up before they can pass, and made an appointment for him tomorrow to have the procedure done.
VA = Wait and see if it gets better.
Private health care = Let’s take care of this now and you’ll be better by next week.
TO: Peter the Bubblehead, et al.
RE: Heh
Ever have one? They’re rather ‘interesting’. Even the ‘small ones’….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Take two aspirin and darvon. -- Typical VA doctor]
“Using his tricare prime, he went to a regular doctor on Monday, who sent him to a specialist today (Wednesday), who confirmed he needs to have the stones broken up before they can pass, and made an appointment for him tomorrow to have the procedure done.”
I can see you have never experienced kidney stones. Option one is always better. Option two is a last resort. Opinions differ. Yet I myself would clearly wait it out.
And there’s about a 50% the doctor ordered breaking up the stones for… …you guessed it. More money!
And really? You’re friend is covered by the VA and Tri-Care.
And here all this time I thought the VA qualified it’s recipients quite differently. In other words if you can afford Tri Care, are on Tri Care, and it ain’t service related, the VA doesn’t accept you.
I’m no expert and I don’t know for sure. But I suspect you are a liar.
Peter the Bubblehead:
“A co-worker of mine, retired Navy, was recently diagnosed with kidney stones. VA told him “Don’t worry.”
“Using his tricare prime, he went to a regular doctor on Monday”
Just as I thought Peter is a liar.
“However, if you are a military retiree, or the spouse of a veteran who was killed in action, you are and will always be a TRICARE beneficiary, you can´t choose between the two.”
Eligibility
“To be eligible for CHAMPVA, you cannot be eligible for TRICARE/CHAMPUS and you must be in one of these categories:”
The website of the VA for those who would like to see Peter exposed as the liar that he is.
http://www.va.gov/hac/forbeneficiaries/champva/champva.asp
VA also tracks its performance in terms of patients’ satisfaction, including using the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which ranks customer satisfaction with a variety of federal programs and private-sector industries. — Paul in MI, citing some report
I am curious how this survey was administered-my husband has never been surveyed with regards to satisfaction for his care at the VA.
And here all this time I thought the VA qualified it’s recipients quite differently. In other words if you can afford Tri Care, are on Tri Care, and it ain’t service related, the VA doesn’t accept you.
I am pretty sure you are either medically retired and get Tri Care and retirement pay or collect VA benefits and use VA care, but you don’t get both. However, I also think VA med centers will see any veteran-but they may charge the veteran for the care, but I am not sure where the medically retired would fit in.
TO: All
RE: jharp Lies Again?
Or maybe it’s just projection? That bit about never experiencing a k-stone. I get the distinct impression he’s never had one either.
Why do I say that?
Well….
…because if he had to wait more than five days to get treated for one that was not ‘passing’, he’d be saying otherwise.
I’ve been more fortunate. Only one sleepless night because no pain relief medicine I had on hand would relieve the ‘interesting aspects’ of the experience.
I can imagine what someone who was going through that for several days would be like. Maybe feeling something like going ‘reaver’, i.e., berserk, from lack of sleep and other effects.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Looks like our friend is getting a tad piqued about being properly ID’d as a ‘liar’…..
Chuck,
Peter’s story is a lie. Can’t you see that?
Peter’s coworker is made up, pretend, a fantasy.
No retiree is on Tricare and the VA.
It’s on the VA’s website.
http://www.va.gov/hac/forbeneficiaries/champva/champva.asp
Is it some sort of tacit wingnut agreement to ignore and defend a liar when he is on your team?
TO: All
RE: jharp & Sophisticated Lying
A good effort, but the point of Peter’s comment is not about TRICARE v. VA v. CHAMPVA. It’s about the report that the VA doctor told the fellow to take a couple of aspirin and drive-on, or words to that effect.
Whereas the following week, while the problem persisting going to a non-VA doctor determined that the stone was NOT passing and referred to a treatment that would dissolve it.
As if the VA doesn’t have a sonarator to do the same treatment. Or if they don’t, there’s prima facia evidence that the VA is a crappy program….at THAT facility.
And jharp attempts ‘disinformation’, i.e., lying, by non-sequeter change of subject.
Typical of these people. Disgusting cretins that they are….
RE: The Liar’s Trait
As I stated in a tag-line earlier in this thread….
The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. — George Bernard Shaw
The point here being that jharp insists that Peter, or his associate, is a liar, on that flimsy non-seq business. Whereas jharp has already been proven to be a liar in point of fact on something much more significant.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson]
“Is it some sort of tacit wingnut agreement to ignore and defend a liar when he is on your team?”
Thank you for your candid response.
But I knew the answer already.
How you sleep at night I don’t know.
TO: All
RE: jharp & the K-Stone Experience
Also, I notice that jharp hasn’t answered my question about whether he’s had a kidney stone.
I have to wonder about that.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it. -- Samuel Johnson]
jsharp: I have seen your posts on other forums and have ignored them. Tonight, I went through and read every one of your posts on this board. For a man with the kind of education and experience you say you have you sure are an incredibly shallow and one dimensional debater. In fact, you sound rather ignorant, which i guess is a requirement to be an Obama supporter. Each and every one of your posts accuses someone of lying. Every one – over and over. There is no substance to anything you have written. You are not reading what others are writing, because you already have it in your intractable mind that your argument is correct. So, why bother reading, correct? Obama has not lied yet so he surely won’t lie on this issue, correct? Let me repeat what other people are saying: Obama’s plan is to make it a one payer system. Don’t listen to what he says today. Because he lies. He has lied. And he will lie again. Your saying he won’t does not change that fact. I know someone with the same name as yours and he is very much like you, not sharp at all. After this post I will ignore every post I see from you and I encourage others to do the same. You say a lot, but it’s the same thing over and over, and none of it is profound and none of it is original.
Lets take a moment to look at other “GREAT MOMENTS IN GOVERNMENT”
The US DEPT. of ENERGY was brought into existence on 8/4/77. Today,32 years later it has a budget of 24.2 billion dollars,16,000 federal employees,100,000 contract employees.
It was created to move us away from and to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.They have totally failed at their primary mission just like the Post Office is now going bankrupt,Social Security is running out of money,Medicare is allowing drunks to sleep it off in many emergency rooms across America(post#142) and the list can go on and on but I will end it here.
If cannot understand why so many Americans are against our healthcare being turned into the same mess as what I have mentioned above then there is no hope for you.When your family members are dying from lack/quality of treatment who are you going to blame then?
You will have to sit back and watch the so-called elite(democrat/republicani)in this country get their medical needs taken care of in a timely manner while you are watching your family members and friends die. I would love to be a fly on the wall and see what your opinion of universal health care will be then.
WHEN YOU REPORT TO THE WHITE HOUSE THE INFO THAT I HAVE PROVIDED,PLEASE BE SURE TO GET MY NAME RIGHT IN YOUR E-MAIL.
175. vech:
jsharp:
“Tonight, I went through and read every one of your posts on this board.”
That’s good. I must be making an impact.
“Each and every one of your posts accuses someone of lying.”
Wrong. Only about 90%. And only to call out liars when I catch them lying.
“There is no substance to anything you have written.”
Yet you took the time to read through my posts. Hmmmm.
“Obama’s plan is to make it a one payer system.”
Another lie. Obama’s plan is to offer a public option for those who can’t get insurance. And most importantly, to lower costs.
How about it vech? Are you making plans for an alternative to Medicare?
I’m sure you’d like to rid Medicare of the pox of being “government run”.
170. Chuck Pelto wrote:
Maybe feeling something like going ‘reaver’
Peter writes: Another Browncoat on the thread? Cool.
As for jharp (who obviously ain’t sharp) accusing me of lying, perhaps when my co-worker returns to work (since he is out today getting his kidney stone dealt with) he can explain it all to jharp himself, since he has been known to read throgh the PJM threads from time to time.
On the other hand, even if Bill did write back, jharp would still choose to not believe in his existance.
“perhaps when my co-worker returns to work (since he is out today getting his kidney stone dealt with) he can explain it all to jharp himself”
I very much look forward to hearing from your imaginary co-worker who gets treated at the VA and participates in Tricare. Even though it is clear that it is impossible to be enrolled in both.
Granted, Peter, that you very well might ignorant enough to believe your co-workers lies but I don’t think that is the case.
I think it is you who is a liar and made the whole thing up.
Go read it. Right here on the VA’s website. I don’t think it could be a any more clear.
http://www.va.gov/hac/forbeneficiaries/champva/champva.asp
I’m crushed. I can’t believe Four-Leaf Pelto would lie.
TO: Peter the Bubblehead
RE: Heh
Shiney.
TO: Blarty Boy and jharp
Nue ching gau che shin….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Have cursor, will curse.]
3DOGMAN @ 176:
[[The US DEPT. of ENERGY was brought into existence on 8/4/77. Today,32 years later it has a budget of 24.2 billion dollars,16,000 federal employees,100,000 contract employees. It was created to move us away from and to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.They have totally failed at their primary mission ...]]
That’s because the department, being part of the executive branch, does what the White House tells it to do. And since 1977, neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have been particularly emphatic on the subject of reducing dependence on foreign oil. If the White House had made it a priority, so would the department have done.
The current administration’s energy policy could, maybe, reduce our dependence on foreign oil a little with its emphasis on wind for generating electricity. That would free some natural gas, now being used to fuel many power plants. That natural gas, in turn, could be used instead of gasoline or diesel to fuel some, though by no means all, motor vehicles.
And that, my friends, is as close as we have come since 1977 to taking any real action to get independent of foreign oil. Pitiful … and both parties are to blame.
181. Four-Leaf Pelto:
Nue ching gau che shin…
Considering the source, I’m assuming that means “I surrender.” No doubt a useful phrase, huh?
TO: Blarty Boy
RE: You….
…truly are a card-carrying member of Densa.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[I aim to misbehave. -- Captain Malcolm Reynolds]
To Whomever: The link you provided is for ChampVa which is for the spouse and/or children of veterans who meet certain criteria. It is much different than the VA Medical Benefits package which a veteran can use in addition to other insurances , private and federally funded, including Tri Care. Not that the VA accepts other insurance, but the veteran can have more than one insurance.
The first (CHAMPVA) is shown below and then the second below that. So yes, veterans can have VA insurance and Tri Care (and Medicare, Medigap, etc.).
1)To be eligible for CHAMPVA, you cannot be eligible for TRICARE/CHAMPUS and you must be in one of these categories:
the spouse or child of a veteran who has been rated permanently and totally disabled for a service-connected disability by a VA regional office, or
the surviving spouse or child of a veteran who died from a VA-rated service connected disability, or
the surviving spouse or child of a veteran who was at the time death rated permanently and totally disabled from a service connected disability, or
the surviving spouse or child of a military member who died in the line of duty, not due to misconduct (in most of these cases, these family members are eligible for TRICARE, not CHAMPVA).
2) If you are enrolled in the VA Medical Benefits Package and also have private health insurance or federally funded coverage through TRICARE, Medicare or Medi-Cal, you may use your existing coverage in addition to your VA health care benefits. The programs are independent and do not coordinate. As a result, you cannot use your Medicare card at a VA facility because the VA cannot bill Medicare. To use Original fee-for-service Medicare, you must go to doctors and facilities that accept Medicare assignment. You are responsible for paying all Medicare premiums, deductibles and coinsurance. The VA does not pay for these Medicare costs.
In addition, if you have other private health insurance, including a Medigap policy, the VA is required by law to bill your insurance carrier when you receive care for non-service-connected conditions.
Thank you, vech.
So tell me, jharp, how does it feel to ALWAYS be proven wrong?
TO: Peter the Bubblehead
RE: jharp
He’s behaving like a sociopath. I doubt if he feels anything particularly useful about being proven wrong.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. I find it interesting that there are so many apparent sociopaths amongst the so-called ‘progressives’.
If that’s their idea of ‘progress’, US is in for some interesting times these next few years…..
My God so what do you think is going on here?
I was poisoned at war causing me to have a multitude of symptoms; and severe PTSD- WHICH DOES NOT GET BETTER!!~ONLY WORSE IT SEEMS
Now I have complained and written several letters against the use of depleted uranium and the chemical hazardous toxins that were being burnt in those burn pits in Iraq
still yet I get harassed and followed…
Last year I began collecting 100% disability for my PTSD; which my PTSD seems to only be worsening~
well all of a sudden and without warning-
I just stopped getting paid!
Yet I am still being followed/watched/stalked by the feds/CID/SPECIAL OPS… (I thought you would not see these guys?!)
WTF CHARLIE OVER AND OUT???
SGT MASON,
On going Studies of Depleted Uranium posioning may prove in your favor or may not. I have searched you on google and see that you are very active in your search for what ever is wrong with you. I want to give you some advice and pass on some stories. First PTSD does get worse before it gets better a person with this needs to seek help which I am sure the VA is providing. Second many organizations have invested millions of dollar into DU(depleted Uranium studies) They have only found small amount that back up a posioning theory but then again the depends on the source you read. Second my friend works in munitions building bombs and another friend works in a warehouse with DU bombs. Neither one has been effected and they have been workign with them for 10 years or more, because of this I tend to lean towards another cause of your sickness. I am not saying I don’t beleive you. Next this finding DU in the body isn’t that hard all it takes is simple blood work and urine test from what I have read. I want to address your paying getting stopped, the VA deals with alot of people and errors happen human or computer. I am sure that you aren’t getting follow the GOV has alot of other things to worry about. Now the VA might have you followed to make sure you are really disabled because from what I have read in your other posts online your symptoms are more internal. I want you to know I thank you for your service and I am just trying to lend some helping words and advice, please rule out normal stress to PTSD is very serious and stress can do crazy things to the body and cause wierd reactions. Good luck with your ongoing search and I hope you get better.
I am now not certain where you are getting your info, but good topic. I must spend a while learning more or working out more. Thank you for wonderful info I used to be in search of this info for my mission.