Ditch the system and hand out vouchers to vets...Some of these guys have to drive 30, 40 miles and often much further just to get to the VA hospital.
Our VA is 1 hr 1 way, has that bad VA rep. Then you run into the VA $$ cap $38K per Veteran. When you add in spouse’s income or SS, his SS and Pension, they are over that $38K cap.
Only other route is disability. And if you didn’t check it off on sign out, they won’t even look at that. Or didn’t see the right doc in the right field.
If you need a transplant only about 8 facilities do it. So they expect you to move there and wait until an organ becomes available.
They are already farming out a lot of services, hubby’s hearing aids they did, Flight Deck hearing loss. Teeth which were knocked out and repaired repeatedly finally were down to 5 needing extensive work, so they sent him to the family Dentist for dentures after they pulled the 5 remaining teeth.
We’ve been on Medicare/Tricare Live since he turned 65. 20 yr Career Navy, Ret. SCPO, he will be 77 in July. 99% of healthcare is private docs and hospital. Our Navy base has NO Medical but Pharmacy so even active duty see private docs/hospitals.
We exceed the $38K per year cap. His new 2 month old partial knee was done by a private Ortho in a private hospital with a over night stay which is Mandatory. Given 14 low dose NORCO and a Ice Pack which they charged for it’s not under the Co-pay. NORCO was gotten at the Navy Base Pharmacy. Medicare paid $43K out of $63K, Tricare has yet to kick in, nor have they paid the doc yet. But it won’t be 20% of what is left.
Check on recent knews about the distance factor. I believe there has been an extension for being able to go to a closer hospital.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/04/19/trump-signs-bill-extend-veterans-choice-program.html