Right - except under a sane system the patient (vet) could CHOOSE a different doctor to see within the system if some doctor was giving him the run around. If a doctor tried that crap in the real world his patients would NOT GO ALONG WITH IT BECAUSE WE'RE CUSTOMERS - NOT 'CHARITY CASES'.
That's the problem: incentives.
As long as 'doctors are God' and 'Vets Better Be Grateful' it will never change.
Create change: make the doctor a provider and the vet a customer and most of the VA's problems will go away on their own. The VA has set up a Stockholm Syndrome setting...
“except under a sane system the patient (vet) could choose a different doctor to see within the system if some doctor was giving him the run around.”
At my VA hospital, I have been given the runaround by…torturing my memory…at least five doctors. I had to request yet another doctor on 27MAR. Still waiting. My point is that when all the doctors are despicable scoundrels there is no effective recourse. At this VA hospital, all the doctors are despicable scoundrels, as is the director, and there is no way to make them act right. The veteran has nowhere to turn.
“If a doctor tried that crap in the real world his patients would not go along with it”
True, but ultimately not helpful. It’s not the outside world; it is a bureaucracy and a monopoly, responsible and accountable to no one. There is no way to put a VA hospital on report. The only reply you ever get from the VA is “Fuck off and die, troublemaker.” Your congressman will not help you. Your senator will not help you. The Inspector General will not help you. The VFW will not help you. The American Legion will not help you. The DAV will not help you. If you depend on the VA for your health care, abandon hope. You are a dead man.
“As long as ‘doctors are God’ and ‘Vets Better Be Grateful’ it will never change.”
I’m trying to hold on six more years, until my youngest is 18. When I saw that Trump put an Obamazoid lump of putrid filth in charge of the VA, I knew I wasn’t going to make it.
“Create change: make the doctor a provider and the vet a customer and most of the VA’s problems will go away on their own.”
To do that, the veteran must have some recourse when the bureaucrats (and VA doctors are more bureaucrat than doctor) refuse to do their jobs. There has to be someone who can—and will—punish them for malfeasance, and nothing like that exists in any of our bureaucracies.