The VA is the best health care system in the United States.

[ProSense]

Whenever sabotage-related problems with the VA come into focus, conservatives use these incidents to slam government-run health care.

Here is Mitt Romney's health care advisor in an op-ed today:

<...>

But the VA is an altogether different beast. The VA is not merely single-payer health care; its vast network of hospitals is also government-financed and government-operated. And that is why the VA is the worst health-care system in America.

<...>

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/05/23/no-the-va-isnt-a-preview-of-obamacare-its-much-worse

Complete bullshit.

The VA, due to the sabotage of those who continually give lip service to Veterans, suffers from inadequate funding and staffing. That is not synonymous with the quality of care the VA is capable of and does deliver. Lack of funding and staffing leads to the kind of fraud and long waits currently being reported. Increasing funding will have some impact, but the VA desperatedly needs increased capacity, facilities and staffing, to deal with the rising number of Veterans relying on the system.

After more than a decade of war, with tens of thousands of wounded Veterans relying on the VA, it's time to cut the bullshit opportunism, which aims to make an argument for privatization, and do the right thing: Fund and staff the VA. It can be done. If wars can be funded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year, then providing the VA the funding and staffing to deal with the casualties of a war of choice is the moral thing to do.

Why Veterans Still Love The VA

By Igor Volsky

Controversy is swirling around the excessive wait times for medical appointments at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), where some veterans may have died waiting for health services on secret lists that clinics maintained to hide long delays. The revelations sparked bipartisan outrage, embarrassed the White House, and have led some lawmakers to argue that the government can never effectively deliver health care services...a closer examination of the problems plaguing VHA, along with interviews with veterans and their advocates, reveals a far more nuanced and complicated picture of the successes and failures of the nation’s largest integrated health care network. While veterans have struggled to gain adequate access to care since the Kennedy administration, plagued by staffing shortages, delays and funding shortfalls, the health services they do receive are the best in the nation...“Most veterans are very pleased with the care they receive, but when it comes to standing in line, they do and should rightfully expect to be seen as quickly as possible, especially if the wound, illness or injury could worsen,” Joe Davis, Public Affairs Director for Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), said.

He pointed to the annual Independent Budget, a dream budget published by four leading veteran organizations. It has consistently found that the VA serves as “a model health-care provider that has led the way in various areas of medical research, specialized services, and health-care technology.” It provides “quality and expertise on veterans’ health care” that “cannot be adequately duplicated in the private sector” and has become “the most efficient and cost-effective health-care system in the nation,” the document notes. A 2005 survey from the RAND Corporation similarly found that “VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care” and “received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up.” The VA also outperforms the nation’s health care system in delivering chronic and preventive care, treating diabetes.

A 2013 survey released by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found that 93 percent of veterans who use the VA health care system have a favorable impression of it. A forthcoming independent survey of veterans scheduled to be released next month by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) will echo that sense, a spokesperson for the organization confirmed to ThinkProgress.

- more -

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/05/23/3440585/va-access-issues/

The piece continues hightlighting conservative lip service.

In fact, even lawmakers who are traditionally hostile to government sponsored health care recognize the importance of the VA’s health benefit.

Though he shut down the government in October in an effort to derail the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) proudly supported piecemeal legislation to fully fund the VA, arguing during his talkathon that “the VA is a vital government system, it is a promise we have made and it is unrelated to Obamacare.” That same sentiment has been echoed by the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol — all of whom have championed the VA health care system.

Republicans know the VA is the best health care system. They know Veterans love it. They know these things, and so they praise it. The minute a problem comes into focus, they become opportunists, slamming the system they intentionally undermine.

The Veterans Affairs Scandal Was Decades in the Making
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024989270

Program for veterans with traumatic brain injuries endangered because Republicans and funding
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024986699

REPUBLICAN MEDICAID REFUSAL Leaves Over 250,000 Veterans UNINSURED
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024985890

Here Are the Enemies of America's Veterans...It's not Eric Shinseki..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024984325

[jwirr]

1. The system is good - it is the people who mess it up. And that can be said about many things in

this world. I have used Medicaid for many years and that is the system that I would like to be our single payer system but then along comes some greedy dishonest provider and everyone blames the system.

We need to wise up. Because there is one rotten apple in the barrel it does not mean the whole barrel needs to be thrown out.

[ProSense]

2. Exactly! n/t