Government run health care? Will it be like the VA?
The VA botched 100 cancer patients treatment, and exposed 10,000 patients to HIV. To to mention cases in the past where maggots where living on paraplegics and rats where running around a hospital directors office during and inspection. Will the new government run health system make all hospitals work this well?
2009-06-25T06:47:25Z
The VA is run by the government and reports to congress.
There are 28,000,000 million vets in the US and not all of them go to a VA, I know because I am a vet and refuse to go there.
If there is a one payer system, the government will decided how much a treatment will cost. They will set the price they will pay, then all hospitals and doctors will have to provide treatment for that ammount.
Anonymous2009-06-25T05:14:37Z
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Hospitals aren't that clean now! You can go into the hospital for a blood test or some other minor procedure, and come out sick as a dog! Problem with National Health Care, did anyone think of what the doctors are going to do? I can see Private physicians appearing all over the country again. Sure, you would have to pay for it, but at least you will get better care! Under this Socialized Medicine Plan, a doctor will be limited to how much time he spends with a patient! Quick way to keep the "ball" rolling would be to dole out sugar pills and tell the patient to call him in the morning - that's if he is still alive! Does anyone out there think that is right, not only for the patient, but for the doctor himself! They would be burnt out within a month. No time to go play Wednesday afternoon golf game. They did their time while going through internship working 20 hours a day! They paid good money to become doctors, and expect a return once they leave the confines of the hospital. That's one of the reasons UK doctors left their system and came to America! The UK gave them a salary, told them how many patients they could have, gave them a car and gasolene to go see patients who couldn't make it to his office - everything laid out for them, with no choices! If this plan Obama is cooking up for us, you can bet history will be repeating itself!
Yes, this is true, all due to the fact that the VA has historically been underfunded and understaffed. I have several veterans in my family, all of which use VA hospitals as their primary care providers who have been extremely pleased with the outstanding care they have received from them. If the government is such a bugaboo and are so totally inept and evil consider that the military, Post Office, Social Security, Police departments, fire departments, county hospitals, licensing bureaus, parks and recreation facilities, state highway systems, local libraries, unemployment compensation and the like were all built/established, managed and run by the government. The only problem that I can see is tightfisted, myopic and seflish constituents that have a "me-first and damn everyone else" attitude. They are the ones whose mouths are always open and their wallets always closed.
Well, to be sure, in the article you cited, the Palomar Hospital referenced for possible infections from colonoscopy procedures is not a government or VA hospital. So this isn't a problem with just government run hospitals. Aside: I do wish reporters had more curiousity, because I'm kind of gobsmacked at how handwashing dentals tools prior to putting them into cleaning machines somehow is worse than just putting them into cleaning machines without any prior cleaning. Isn't anybody else curious about that?
The VA system is a government run health care system. It has a better record, despite the exceptions mentioned than most private systems and is far cheaper than any private system. The health care industry as a whole has many problems, but most systems seek to solve and resolve those problems when they are discovered. The VA system is one of the most up to date systems in the world and would not be a bad model for a national system. That is not however the plan being proposed and currently debated. What is running through Congress right now is a plan to streamline health care coverage, not health care. The objective is to make health insurance more affordable.
Both my Father and my Mother, got their healthcare at Hines VA Medical Center near Chicago. I have taken both of them there at least once a month for the past 10 years, and have probably been in just about every section of that center. I have never seen one rat, or a patient with maggots. In fact, even though they weren't that bad to begin with, the conditions at Hines have improved greatly, and since they automated all of the medical records, the level of care has increased.
Don't blame the entire VA system for conditions at one or two cenrers, and in those, the problems have mostly been cleaned up.
I know you posted those numbers for their shock value, but you wouldn't dare try expressing them as a percentage of all patents treated at the VA, if you did, they would not support the point you are trying to make.