“I’m skeptical of the “voucher” option.”
During my two active years in the Navy (Reserve), I was single and never went for any sort of medical care. But I assumed that the military physicians and hospitals just provided full care as needed for active duty personnel and their families.
I’ve since heard about some problems, but active duty families shouldn’t have to put up with the all the hoops and loopholes you describe. It does seem that anyone purportedly receiving medical care reimbursed by the government is subject to getting less care than needed. They should definitely correct the problems faced by active duty families.
The illegal alien thing is beyond unjust. There are so many insanities surrounding our gov’t dealing with illegal aliens, that it would be entirely just if all the presidents and members of Congress who’ve allowed this to develop spent several years in prison. And I’m not joking, but of course they make sure they have immunity for any and everything.
A perfect example of what I describing is that last week-end we had a really big pool party for my daughter’s cheer squad and their parents and siblings came so I met and talked to a lot of people. One of them was an anesthesiologist and since I’m a nurse, we starting talking about the whole health care issue. He said they are getting ready to stop accepting tricare patients because they can’t afford to keep taking such a loss. That tricare pays out less than what it costs to provide care to the patients and it is just killing him because they so want to care for service people and their families. These were his exact words.
There is a lot people don’t realize. They think because a disabled veteran has VA coverage, he or she is taken care of. They think if someone has tricare, they are taken care of.
The worst was when I met a doctor who had worked for a while at a VA hospital and said there used to be a joke there about how to tell how close a patient was to dying. They would count how many unopened orange juice containers were on the bedside table and the more there were, the closer they were to dying. This is because there wasn’t enough staffing to feed the patients that couldn’t feed themselves. If nobody feed them, they laid there day after day not getting fed. I can also promise you that this would NEVER happen to an illegal. I worked in a hospital where our ambulance would go to the international bridge and pick up illegals. Once in our hospital, they could get air evacuated out to San Antonio if needed, surgery, post op care, recovery, every medication needed, and discharge care.
Our govt is complicit in this. They feign compassion for the illegal on the basis of humanity but what about compassion for the vietnam vet going without everything? Nothing makes me more angry.