Let's see your sources. I provided an article that discussed the strenghts of the VA system. If you've got something to counter that, besides your own "thoughts," please post it up. Thanks.I always thought Veterans Hospitals were a step below Veterinarians. They're kind of an incompetence cliché. I even googled “veterans hospitals incompetence” and there was plenty of current material. Newer than yours even.
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I'm all for doing something to fix healthcare, but I'm thinking the VA is not even close to a shining example.
(If you're disinclined to follow the link I provided, here's a segment)
"Pushed by large employers who are eager to know what they are buying when they purchase health care for their employees, an outfit called the National Committee for Quality Assurance today ranks health-care plans on 17 different performance measures. These include how well the plans manage high blood pressure or how precisely they adhere to standard protocols of evidence-based medicine such as prescribing beta blockers for patients recovering from a heart attack. Winning NCQA's seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. And who do you suppose this year's winner is: Johns Hopkins? Mayo Clinic? Massachusetts General? Nope. In every single category, the VHA system outperforms the highest rated non-VHA hospitals.
When it comes to health care, it's a government bureaucracy that's setting the standard for maintaining best practices while reducing costs, and it's the private sector that's lagging in quality. That unexpected reality needs examining if we're to have any hope of understanding what's wrong with America's health-care system and how to fix it. It turns out that precisely because the VHA is a big, government-run system that has nearly a lifetime relationship with its patients, it has incentives for investing in quality and keeping its patients well--incentives that are lacking in for-profit medicine. "