Phoenix VA hospital debacle...

Rachel Maddow shreds House GOP’s ‘shameless lip service’ on bill helping veterans

“Right now, while this crisis is still happening, all of Washington’s flagrant and shameless lip service on veterans’ issues is not being matched at all with action,” she said.

Last month, she explained, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) put together a bill calling for the construction of 26 new Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) clinics in 18 states, as well as the hiring of additional VA medical personnel.

The bill also allowed veterans currently living more than 40 miles away from a VA facility to see a private medical professional. At the time, Sanders referred to it as a step toward mitigating some of the damage uncovered by multiple reports of VA malfeasance regarding handling of patients’ wait times. The bill passed in the Senate in a 93-3 vote.
“Didn’t you think that this was done?” Maddow asked. “Didn’t you think that this was done after that whole crisis and [Gen. Eric] Shinseki resigning? I mean, that’s Bernie Sanders and John McCain, of all people. If they could get together on this, and the Senate agreed 93 to 3 to go with them on this, didn’t you think that this was done? This is not done.”

the bill has not been able to move out of a congressional committee, where House Republicans have complained about the cost of McCain and Sanders’ legislation.

“See, when the attention is there and everybody’s complaining about how something must be done, it’s very easy to demand, in theory, that ‘this must be done, no expense spared, this is a sacred obligation that we’re violating, we have to fix it,’” she argued. “Sounds great. Print it, put it on a campaign ad, right? But when it comes to actually doing it, when it comes to actually putting your money where your mouth is, apparently so far the answer is,

‘No, we don’t actually want to spend the money.’”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/0...e+Raw+Story%29

Republicans don't want to solve the VA healthcare disaster


While Republicans and their billionaire allies are very happy to politicize the crisis in the Veterans Administration medical system, they're not too anxious to do anything to fix it.

A House-Senate conference committee tasked with writing a compromise veterans’ health bill continues to struggle with a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate for what it will take to allow veterans to seek care from private health care providers and avoid notorious treatment delays at veterans’ medical centers.

[The] CBO has reduced its estimate by 15 percent to $38 billion per year, down from $50 billion, but Republicans are still keen on spending offsets while Democrats are urging a non-offset emergency designation for the bill.

Of course they don't want to solve this problem.

Beating up on President Obama is much more important to them than taking care of veterans.

Republicans only want to help veterans if they can take the money away from some other program and make someone else hurt.

Chances are, the programs they would cut to fund the VA fixes would be other programs that veterans rely on, like foodstamps or housing assistance.

Because for Republicans, a veteran's service only counts if she doesn't need any help when she gets home.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...?detail=email#

Wait Lists Grow as Many More Veterans Seek Care and Funding Falls Far Short

One year after outrage about long waiting lists for health care shook theDepartment of Veterans Affairs, the agency is facing a new crisis: The number of veterans on waiting lists of one month or more is now 50 percent higher than it was during the height of last year’s problems, department officials say. The department is also facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall, which could affect care for many veterans.

The agency is considering furloughs, hiring freezes and other significant moves to reduce the gap. A proposal to address a shortage of funds for one drug — a new, more effective but more costly hepatitis C treatment — by possibly rationing new treatments among veterans and excluding certain patients who have advanced terminal diseases or suffer from a “persistent vegetative state or advanced dementia” is stirring bitter debate inside the department.

Agency officials expect to petition Congress this week to allow them to shift money into programs running short of cash. But that may place them at odds with Republican lawmakers who object to removing funds from a new program intended to allow certain veterans on waiting lists and in rural areas to choose taxpayer-paid care from private doctors outside the department’s health system.

“Something has to give,” the department’s deputy secretary, Sloan D. Gibson, said in an interview. “We can’t leave this as the status quo. We are not meeting the needs of veterans, and veterans are signaling that to us by coming in for additional care, and we can’t deliver it as timely as we want to.”

Since the waiting-list scandal broke last year, the department has broadly expanded access to care. Its doctors and nurses have handled 2.7 million more appointments than in any previous year, while authorizing 900,000 additional patients to see outside physicians. In all, agency officials say, they have increased capacity by more than seven million patient visits per year — double what they originally thought they needed to fix shortcomings.

The crisis may come to a head when Mr. Gibson testifies on Thursday on Capitol Hill, where Republicans have already criticized what they see as foot-dragging by the department on starting the Choice Card program. One congressional official briefed on the budget problems also said the agency had been slow to recognize how much demand and costs would soar for hepatitis C treatments. The budding crisis may reopen a partisan debate about veterans’ health care that has paralleled a larger philosophical debate about the size of government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us...s&emc=rss&_r=0

Repugs put their "kill govt" ideology ahead of medical care for vets. Fuck up, under fund the VA, make vets suffer, Repug ideology dictates.

Report: VA Outperforms Private Sector on Key Measures

http://prospect.org/sites/default/fi...?itok=odvDNOUy

A

A little-noticed recent report by three leading research groups found that on critical measures, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) consistently performs as well as and often better than private sector health-care providers. The VHA does this with patients who are sicker, older, and poorer than many of their counterparts seen in the private sector.

Among the key findings of the report, conducted by the consulting firm Grant, Thornton & McKinsey Company and by two nonprofit research companies—the RAND Corp and the MITRE Corporation—were that:

• Postoperative morbidity was lower for VA patients compared with non-veterans receiving non-VA care.
• Inpatient care was more or as effective in VA as in non-VA hospitals.
• VA hospitals were more likely to follow best practices in the use of central venous catheter line infection prevention and rates of mortality declined more quickly in VA over time than in non-VA settings for specific conditions.

The report also found that veterans in nursing homes were less likely to develop pressure ulcers;

that outpatients and those suffering chronic conditions got better follow-up care, and that

VA health providers offered better mental health and obesity counseling and blood pressure control, particularly for African Americans. Importantly, income and educational disparities were smaller at VHA facilities in such areas as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer screenings.

The report confirmed what many fighting for what is known as “right care”—defined as avoiding toxic, unnecessary tests, medications, and procedures—have long understood: that the VHA, contrary to its status as a GOP and media whipping boy, has been a pioneer in providing clinically appropriate care to veterans.

Elderly patients in the VHA were less likely to receive the kinds of medications that can make them sicker and sometimes even kill them, the report found.

VHA patients were more likely to be spared toxic chemotherapy within 14 days of death or be admitted to an ICU 30 days before death.

This was attributed to the VHA’s commitment to palliative and hospice care.

Health care quality expert Charlene Harrington, a professor emeritus the University of California at San Francisco, called the report “really impressive, particularly given the patient mix and chronic underfunding.”

https://calendar.google.com/calendar...c&pli=1#main_7

The right’s campaign to privatize VA care reaches a new level

some of the 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls have included at least partial VA privatization plans in their platforms– Ben Carson went so far as to say, “We don’t need a Department of Veterans Affairs” – despite the VA’s record of excellence, and the fact that the VA system as a whole“outperforms the rest of the health care system by just about every metric. Surveys also show that veterans give VA hospitals and clinics a higher customer satisfaction than patients give private-sector hospitals.”

It’s important to remember, though, that GOP proposals are part of a broader ideological campaign. In their latest issue, my friends at the Washington Monthly published a fascinating investigative report on the effort to privatize the VA launched by Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), a conservative outfit that’s received support from the Kochs’ operation.

Over the last year, every major GOP candidate with the exception of Donald Trump has made a pilgrimage to gatherings put on by Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), a group that had barely formed during the 2012 primary cycle. Whereas candidates back in the day were under pressure from the old-line veterans’ groups to promise undying support for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its nationwide network of hospitals and clinics, the opposite has been true this season. Candidates at CVA rallies have been competing with each other to badmouth the VA and its allegedly shabby treatment of veterans. And all have pledged fealty to the CVA’s goal of moving as many vets as possible out of the VA into private care. Even Trump is calling for more “choice.”

And while that’s certainly of interest when it comes to the 2016 campaign and the scope of the Republican agenda looking ahead, there’s an even more timely aspect to this that matters right now.

Paul Glastris, the Monthly’s editor in chief, had a piece in the Boston Globe yesterday about the debate over veterans’ care unfolding literally as I type.

This enormously important question will be discussed, and perhaps decided, at meetings on Monday and Tuesday of the Commission on Care. That’s a federally chartered group that is writing binding recommendations on the future of the VA.

If you’ve never heard of the Commission on Care, you’re not alone. Virtually none of the mainstream news outlets have covered its public hearings, which have been going on since the fall. […] It just so happens that four of the 15 members of the commission are executives with major medical centers that stand to gain from the outsourcing of veterans’ care. Another works for CVA, the Koch brothers-backed group, and yet another for an organization allied with CVA.

Last month these six commissioners plus a seventh were outed for writing a secret draft of the commission’s recommendations – in which they call for full privatization of the VA by 2035 – in possible violation of the Sunshine and Federal Advisory Committee Acts.

This revelation infuriated the other commission members. It also led prominent veterans’ groups, including the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, to send a letter to the commission chair slamming the secret draft and expressing their united opposition to privatizing the VA.

The Commission on Care was created by Congress in 2014. Both the White House and Congress choose its members, and I’ll let you guess which commissioners were chosen by which branch.

The members are wrapping up a two-day session today, with anti-privatization forces turning out to register their concerns. The commission’s final recommendations are expected to be released in June.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

"GOP proposals are part of a broader ideological campaign."

iow, GOP's ideology is to rape taxpayers by transferring their taxes to for-profit corporations. aka, redistribution upward

John McCain slams key veterans’ advocacy groups

The Republican senator appeared on his daughter’s radio show late last week – just a few days before Memorial Day – and Meghan McCain asked about the need for improvements in the VA system. The GOP lawmaker, facing a tough re-election fight this year, didn’t hold back.

JOHN MCCAIN: I blame some of the old veterans’ service organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans and American Legion. They are against the Choice Card. Why would they be against the Choice Card

MEGHAN MCCAIN: Why are they against it?

JOHN MCCAIN: They have been co-opted by that system. They have this symbiotic relationship with the VA bureaucracy. For them to say they are against a veteran having a choice to me is unconscionable.

After expressing his deep “disappointment” with some of the nation’s largest advocacy groups working on behalf of veterans, the Republican senator added that veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “are best represented by the Concern Veterans of America.”

The CVA, for those unfamiliar with the group, is a far-right organization funded in part by the Koch brothers’ operation, and has been an enthusiastic proponent of privatizing veterans’ care.

So what’s behind John McCain’s broadside?

Military.com reported last week on the senator’s efforts to expand the so-called Veterans Choice Program, which the nation’s largest veterans’ service organizations are skeptical of for an obvious reason: the goal is to “steer vets to private health care providers.”

While advocates see expanding the program as a way to provide veterans with more options, the groups – including The American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans and Paralyzed Veterans of America – say it would lead to a fraying and shrinking of an integrated managed care system they say serves veterans best.

“The American Legion appreciates Senator McCain’s efforts to improve the provision of health care for America’s veterans. However, one of the central, core elements of the bill expands care in the community in a way that is concerning,” Lou Celli, veterans affairs and rehabilitation division director for the Legion, said Tuesday during a hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

Celli said the Legion supported the Choice Program when it was proposed and passed but not as a broad replacement for VA health care. “Veterans should be provided with the option of receiving care in the community as a supplement to VA health care and not to supplant VA care,” he said.

This, evidently, has sparked the senator’s indignation.

Obviously, given McCain’s decorated and heroic service, he can go after groups like the VFW, the DAV, and American Legion in ways most politicians cannot – but that doesn’t mean the senator is correct and the veterans’ service organizations are wrong. McCain appears to be pursuing an ideological agenda and it’s hardly surprising that these veterans’ groups are reluctant to get on board.

As for the underlying policy matter, the Washington Monthly reported earlier this year on the results of the “Choice Card” system championed by McCain and other congressional Republicans.

The basic idea of the VA partnering more with private providers was not flawed in principle. Indeed, the agency already had programs through which it contracted private doctors to perform certain kinds of specialty care or care in remote regions where it lacked facilities. The VA also had an extensive history of collaborating with academic medical centers. Done right, closer collaboration between VA and non-VA providers could improve care for everyone in many areas.

But the new legislation set in motion a “choice” program in which the government would be paying for bills submitted by private providers for care that was unmanaged, uncoordinated, and, to the extent that it replicated the performance of the private health care system, often unneeded. This is the very opposite of the integration and adherence to evidence-based protocols that has long made VA care a model of safety and effectiveness.

Worse, implementation of the Choice Card was a disaster from every point of view. Congress gave the VA only 90 days to stand up the program.

Largely because of that insane time line, the VA was able to attract bids from only two companies.

Each of these has a sole contract that gives it a monopoly wherever it operates,

and each put together networks that were so narrow and poorly administered that that for many months vets who received Choice Cards typically could not find a single doctor who would accept them.
Over the course of 2015, many of these problems of implementation were at least partially sorted out, but the basic flaw in the model remains.

This is precisely what John McCain is so desperate to expand – even if that means condemning some of the country’s largest veterans’ service organizations in the process.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

summary: privatize govt (ie, taxpayers weatlh), with tons of proof that privatization either more expensive or less productive, and many times BOTH.

iow, privatization is a VRWC/Repug strategy to loot taxpayers.

same story with privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Repugs FUCK UP everything they touch while enriching BigCorp.

Campaign to privatize VA care moving in the wrong direction

After controversy erupted a couple of years ago surrounding the Veterans Administration, Congress created something called the Commission on Care, whose members would write recommendations that would help shape the future of the VA. For conservatives, this created an opportunity to pursue a long-sought goal: privatization of veterans’ care.

In April, the Washington Monthly’s Paul Glastris wrote a piece for the Boston Globe, noting that several conservative Commission members quietly put together a recommendation calling for full privatization of the VA by 2035, prompting renewed lobbying from prominent veterans’ groups, including the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, strongly opposing the far-right push.

Last week, the veterans’ advocates prevailed. Glastris published a report on the end of the fight, at least for now.

On Wednesday, the Commission released its final report. To the surprise of most observers, the commission rejected privatization as the solution. While detailing a host of serious failings with the VA, the report notes that

“care delivered by VA is in many ways comparable or better in clinical quality to that generally available in the private sector.” :lol

It concludes that thenew Choice Program was “flawed” in both its design and execution, adding that “the program has aggravated wait times and frustrated veterans, private-sector health care providers participating in networks, and V.H.A. alike.” :lol

Rather than wholesale outsourcing, the report recommends addressing issues of access by “standing up integrated veteran-centric, community-based delivery networks,” a plan roughly similar to the one Hillary Clinton had called for.

The editorial board of the New York Times added, “The V.A. is troubled, no question. But the commission properly stops short of recommending a solution dear to ideologues on the right, which is to dismantle one of the largest bureaucracies in American government – one with a critically important mission – and hand the wreckage to the private sector.”

The editorial’s reference to “ideologues on the right” was not a throwaway line. Congressional Republicans appointed several members to the Commission on Care with very conservative backgrounds, including one who works for Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), a conservative outfit that’s received support from the Koch brothers’ operation.

The right saw this as an important opportunity, but in this case, conservatives failed. Glastris called it a“stunning defeat of conservative anti-government ideology and … an important victory for evidence-based good government.”

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

Religion and ideology makes you one stupid, ignorant, destructive, retrograde mofo.

Any government run health care system will have problems. The VA system is a good reason not to want single payer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wild Cobra

Any government run health care system will have problems. The VA system is a good reason not to want single payer.

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The US health care system is a FANTASTIC reason to have Medicare for all, just like other industrial countries.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TeyshaBlue

Your linkdumps suck.

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Only time it bothers me is when he hijacks other people's threads and it's not topical with it.

Given all the Breitbart stupidity that gets posted here I cannot really get too mad at his hyperpartisan sources from the other side.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TeyshaBlue

Your linkdumps suck.

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Poor little dickless TB :lol , just hates when my linkdumps bitch slap him and his Repug heros silly with their own words and actions.

His megalomania is kinda funny like a Jerry Lewis movie. You really cannot take him seriously. He's a caricature.

A seriously disturbed caricature.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by boutons_deux

Poor little dickless TB :lol , just hates when my linkdumps bitch slap him and his Repug heros silly with their own words and actions.

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Cept you can't.
lol repug heroes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wild Cobra

Any government run health care system will have problems. The VA system is a good reason not to want single payer.

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It's actually a good reason to have single payor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TeyshaBlue

It's actually a good reason to have single payor.

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Huh?

What did I miss?

single payor isn't the solution. Medicare for all is. Taken out of everybody's incomes, including unearned income.

Ummm.... That's single payor.

ok, I saw an article that defined single payer as not exactly the same as medicare for all, but there is a probably more definition of single payer that is Medicare for all.

I pretty much base my description from this...

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/what-is-single-payer

VA disability backlog tops 70,000 — 7 months after it was supposed to be zero

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/v...airs/86862716/

Cure To Some VA Waits Creates New Ills

We who oppose calls to privatize the work of the Veterans Affairs Department are sorely tested at times.

Complaints two years ago of unreasonably long waits for care at VA health facilities led to “reforms” in several VA programs.

In 2013, applications for VA disability benefits were piling up, with some claims languishing for over a year. The remedy — streamlining the process for judging disability claims — was not done carefully.

The new computerized system demanded less evidence to prove disability.

Examiners were given less time to spend with the applicants, forcing them to make rushed evaluations.

It was inevitable that some veterans would exploit these weaknesses to obtain unwarranted disability payments or pad their checks.

As a result, the plan to unclog the pipeline for disability claims has ended up re-clogging it with fraudulent ones.

Veterans with great needs are bumped out of appointments by fakers. And money that could go to those too disabled to work a regular job gets diverted to the well-bodied.

Veterans themselves are complaining about the scams.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/cure-va-...ates-new-ills/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by boutons_deux

single payor isn't the solution. Medicare for all is. Taken out of everybody's incomes, including unearned income.

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:lmao

What would Trash/Repugs have done? fuck 'em, "americ'a broke" $2.2B instead goes to capitalists tax cuts

Veterans Exposed To Contaminated Water At Marine Base To Receive Disability Benefits

Veterans, former reservists and former National Guard members who served Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and have been diagnosed with one of eight diseases are eligible.

The Obama administration has agreed to provide disability benefits to military veterans exposed to contaminated drinking water while at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, according to an official notice published on Thursday.

Veterans, former reservists and former National Guard members who served for at least 30 days at the U.S. Marine Corps Base from 1953 to 1987 and have been diagnosed with one of eight diseases are eligible, according to the document published in the Federal Register, the government’s official journal.

The Associated Press, which first reported the story, said the estimated cost to taxpayers of the added benefits would total $2.2 billion over five years.

The department has estimated that up to 900,000 service members were potentially exposed to the tainted water at the base, the AP reported.

Contaminants included the volatile organic compounds trichloroethylene, perchloroethylene, benzene and vinyl chloride.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/..._term=Reuters&

Obviously, just being in the military is very dangerous, without ever seeing combat. WTF wrong with the military life?

I lost a friend killed by jet engine cleaning fluid when he was in the Marines. Several in his platoon died from the same bizarre lung disease.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by boutons_deux

I lost a friend killed by jet engine cleaning fluid when he was in the Marines. Several in his platoon died from the same bizarre lung disease.

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Who was POTUS at the time(s) of their deaths?

tee, hee.