Posted on 12/29/2016 7:58:46 AM PST by rktman
President-elect Donald Trump met with health care executives on Wednesday to begin a serious reform of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“I’ve been saying we have to take care of our vets,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago after the meetings. “We are working on something to make it great for our veterans, because they are treated very, very unfairly.”
Trump met with John Noseworthy, the President and CEO of Mayo Clinic, Paul Rothman, the CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine as well as Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, Dr. David Torchiana of Partners HealthCare and Toby Cosgrove of Cleveland Clinic, according to the press pool. He also met with Marc Sherman of restructuring firm Alvarez & Marsal.
According to a Trump transition official speaking to the press, the president-elect wanted to know more about giving more options to veterans and allowing them to go to any hospital of their choice.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Exactly so..................
I figure the reason Trump is taking his time on the VA appointment is to make sure it is tightly linked with the plans for overhauling/repealing Obamacare. Nothing should be a higher priority for the federal government than taking care of our vets. (In other words, it should be right up there with Congressional perks /s)
Get rid of it and sell of the assets..
Go to regular hospitals
He’s talking to the people who handle large scale operations
It’s not a horrible idea
“As far as I’m concerned, if you served, you get covered.”
Not so, and it’s never been that way and that intent was never there.
The VA has 8 priority levels. Anyone who is 50% or greater disabled with a service connected disability is Priority 1. A vet with no service connected disability is Priority 8. And yes, they would have to be indigent, or nearly so, to receive VA care.
Does COBRA still exist? Is it any good?
Just a thought...I think we need MANY small community hospitals, serviced totally by military docs and nurses...and with access to major hospitals for extraordinary treatments. Or something along this line.
yep, give vets a “Cadillac” health care plan paid for by the Feds and it will cost a fraction of what the VA costs now and be 100% more efficient.
$182.3 BILLION we pay for the VA annually could buy the Vets one heck of a private insurance plan.
Tricare for active duty and retirees.
Tricare for life for retirees over 65.
Start up a new offshoot:
Tricare for veterans.
Structures, contracts and processes already exist and work.
The good news is that they are NOT discussing full privatization.
There are some things only the VA does well.
TBI, PTSD and advanced prosthetics are 3.
Costs a lot every month depending on the state and your income.
Well you probably need the assets, just for capacity reasons. So sell them (or give them) to private hospital operators as part of the restructuring of the VA. No more separate facilities makes sense to me. It’s not needed.
Then change it. I barely squeeked in to the Level 8 position. I didn’t need much just a break on a med that without outside insurance was going to be $4,000.00/mth. With insurance, a measly $1,400/mth. At level 8 it costs me $8.00/mth. Even if I liquidated all my meager assets, I’d have been able to sustain the med for a few months. One caveat of course is an honorable discharge.
It's been so long since I've had to worry about med insurance. After leaving active duty, I had my own company with Blue Cross. Since retired, been on the Wife's Blue Cross plan.
When I got laid off/retired there was a COBRA transition available but YUGELY expensive for limited coverage and not for long term.
The military does not staff enough military physicians for their own needs, let alone staffing hospitals across the nation.
Why can’t veterans simply be issued a health care card, good anywhere, for anything, and be done with it?
Free health care for “immigrants,” felony trash of every sort, trannies, psychos and scoundrel congressmen (but I repeat myself), yet nothing but paper and delays and f-ups for vets?
B.S.!!!
As I’ve said on other threads, the government unions will fight this privatization tooth and nail. Already are...
If they are using the term “public-private” the way it is typically used, read the fine print and more than once. Politically, “public-private” is fascism with a smile. Economically, it is crony capitalism pure and simple.
The terms and conditions for “public-private partnerships” between business and government need to be rethought. If you want to see the abuses on full display, just take a closer look at common core and SBAC. Talk about revolving doors and conflict of interest! - In one respect, “public private” is just another layer of legal protection against the public harm they can cause. Accountability to taxpaying citizens must be taken seriously. And it starts with a radical rethink.
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