Every veteran of our Armed Forces, upon separation from their contractual agreement with the government, attends separations classes in which they learn about the benefits that they earned for their honorable service. One of those benefits is health care. In these classes veterans are promised the world about the availability of that health care benefit and the costs associated with such public works. I think that it is important here to point out that there is a difference between this benefit earned through an individuals labors and entitlements promised for no merit other than to be born from someone else’s labor.
Daily, veterans from our military pour into the Veterans Administration Hospitals around the country to register for their benefits. The rose colored paintings of quality affordable health care for the rest of their lives are quickly replaced with bureaucratic systems, continuing resolutions due to budgetary constraints, and a tiered/rationed approach to such health care. This is hardly the ideal to these individuals who earned these benefits through shedding their blood, sweat, and tears at the expense of their youth.
Upon returning from my service in the Marine Corps I was one of these unenlightened veterans who actually believed, momentarily, that the government would make good on these promises. I spent hours registering in the system, filled out countless forms, and got shuffled to a dozen offices only to be greeted with a letter indicating that due to my level of health, a job that was making me a whopping 16K a year, and the current budgetary constraints that the VA was forced to operate in, that I was to be classified into the very lowest tier to receive health care. In this tier I was not entitled to be seen by doctors because they were too busy seeing patients and their families from the other tiers. I would need to be 100 percent disabled to even be scheduled for any hearing tests, eye tests, or dental care and nearly 50 percent disabled to be considered for getting an appointment within 6 months for basic outpatient care. This obviously did not apply to me because I came out of the service with all working appendages, only a slight, clinically significant hearing loss, and a couple of scars.
The waiting list to be considered for the Disability was between 12 to 24 months and then the “unofficial” policy of the bureaucratic system was to deny the first request and send it back to the local facility only to tie up more time and effort of all the parties involved in appealing the system.
I was only slightly irritated because, even in the military, my theory was that I should treat health care as if I were the one paying for it and should only go to the hospital at the threat to life or limb. I have also classically felt that it was my duty to my less fortunate military brethren to not take up valuable resources that could be better put to use on their health care. Even with a job that put me dangerously close to the poverty line I found a way to get private health insurance to cover me in case something bad was to happen. It would be hard for me to put a brand new car or big house before my personal well being and still make claims that health care was important to me.
This was years before I really saw the realities of the Veterans Administration. When I first started analyzing the local VA there were only 300 employees see a growing patient base. The few doctors that were there had panel sizes that were half of the size of other VA’s across the country. A panel size is the number of patients that the doctor is assigned to provide care for. These panels at the local facility were about 850 patients where other facilities had panels of over 1700 and 2000 per doctor. I should also point out that this panel size is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a sixteenth to a thirty-second of my private practice doctor who could always get me in within a day even when he was really busy instead of several months like the VA.
It was not long before the government went into a continuing resolution because it did not have the necessary funding for the VA’s budget. Supplies and services had to be stretched to meet the needs of the customers. Somehow, within 5 years the employee population doubled, collections on services failed to meet set goals to support its own weight, budgets continued to be on continuing resolution, and major infrastructure project spending boomed. It was necessary to have larger staffing levels and facilities to meet the growing needs for the patients however the number of unique visits did not raise. More doctors, more nurses, more bureaucratic garbage and no increase of unique visits. This to me indicates that the VA is suffering from a diminishing marginal product, no money, and doing less with the limited funds. But since the government does not have to show its gains and losses to receive its funding, and because there is no punishment for being poor stewards of tax payer dollars, the government doubled down and allocated a lot of money to increase the size of its Mental Health Services through the creation of a lot more FTE for staffing in those areas, the creation of more outpatient tele-mental health facilities, and Vet Centers.
Currently the wait for paperwork for consideration of disability is 12-24 months, unique visits are down, Stimulus money is being spent to further build onto infrastructure and staffing, small bureaucratic empires have been built by those savvy/self serving enough to erect them, and I still can’t get an appointment for my hearing unless I have a DAV determined 100% disability for my hearing. At least the appointment times are down to within a few months for basic outpatient care services though (of which I still don’t qualify for because of my career and general health)!
I hear a lot of people talking about how they don’t think it right for the people that they love to die because they can’t afford health care. This, in and of itself, is a ridiculous notion with the oaths that doctors have taken and indigent programs at our health care facilities. The problem is that instead of having to die due to being poor, as they clam, they will die waiting to be eligible for care or waiting to get in for their appointment under a rationed health care system that can not afford to operate anywhere but in the dreams of our nation’s leadership. Just wait until the entire national health care system is on a continuing resolution because of budgetary constraints.
No one is saying that health care is not important or that only the rich should get it… except for maybe those pitching the bill and making paper villains of their opposition in the government. I do have to ponder how health care in its current state can be taken away from 74 million to give it in a lesser state to 42 million. Of that 42 million some 20 million are estimated to be in this country illegally.
It is odd to me that this health care model, Medi-Care, Medicaid, and social security, all of which are failing to support their own weight, are somehow the models of health care in our nation. It also astonishes me that the NHS and France are also touted as a defense of the position that the model works when they are both in financial turmoil and more cases are coming out daily in which they are showing that you are likely to die waiting for care in these systems.
Perhaps I am as stupid as the left continually claims because I say things like, I don’t agree or I think Obama is wrong here, but I hope beyond hope that if this is the case that I remain this stupid for the rest of my life. Especially if I get to keep my money, private healthcare, free speech, land, and firearms close by.
