Posted on 04/24/2019 10:41:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
As a follow-up to our post yesterday about the extreme recklessness of trying to expand a healthcare program that's already staring insolvency in the face, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is touting an infamously flawed government healthcare program -- the VA -- as another model for expansion. 'VA for all,' is the idea, apparently, with its mouthpiece evidently unaware of what a dreadful idea and message this is. Extraordinary:
Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claims that the VA provides the "highest quality of [health]care" to veterans, says: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" pic.twitter.com/bYFEprdYRS— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 22, 2019
As we've learned from scandal after scandal, the VA has been systemically broken and dysfunctional for years. It has been rife with long wait lists, corrupt cover-ups, substandard care, and lack of accountability. Noah Rothman makes the case that AOC's ignorance on this issue should disqualify her as a remotely serious policy voice on healthcare matters, pointing to multiple devastating examples of entrenched failures at the agency she's fulsomely praised:
VA hospitals around the country have been implicated in scandals involving rationed services and unresponsive administrators. In Washington D.C., patients were given “prolonged or unnecessary anesthesia” while medical staff searched for missing medical equipment. Care is routinely delayed or denied, and incompetence in at least one facility resulted in “unnecessary risk” for patients “and resulted in a breakdown of core services.” In Texas, former VA doctors have accused the department of denying colonoscopies for cancer patients, jeopardizing veterans’ access to non-VA specialists by slow-walking reimbursements, and engaging in precisely the same manipulation of data relating to wait times that plagued the Phoenix facility (where 40 veterans died while awaiting medical appointments). Another effort to falsify the wait times veterans faced was uncovered in Colorado.
In Illinois, a culture deemed dismissive toward patient safety was blamed for unnecessary deaths. In New Hampshire, dangerous conditions, including a fly-ridden operating room, resulted in canceled surgeries. And in Tennessee, tissue was mishandled, unnecessary amputations were performed, and patients with life-threatening and acute conditions were forced to leave the premises to find emergency care at private facilities that actually functioned like hospitals. From Kansas to Missouri, the wait-time scandal cost veterans the care they needed at non-VA facilities to which veterans who face wait times over 30 days are legally allowed to appeal. When the Phoenix VA scandal broke, it engulfed Barack Obama’s government and eventually took VA Sec. Eric Shinseki down with it.
A 2018 Inspector General's report was damning, and veterans have continued to be victimized by chronic "lapses in patient care and dangerous conditions," while formal complaints from VA employees about problems at their facilities doubled between 2013 and 2016. Under fire for her cavalier and uninformed "if it ain't broke" hot take, AOC is predictably pretending that the VA is woefully under-funded:
It's budget is $200B. It's not the money that's the problem. Its what a government that answers to no one does with it. https://t.co/BSg6CuVV5x— Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) April 23, 2019
But as we've repeatedly discovered, throwing money at a problem -- at this exact problem, in fact -- does not necessarily improve outcomes:
A commission tasked by Congress with trying to fix the troubled Veterans Health Administration has just concluded a damning report, finding that "many profound deficiencies" at the troubled agency "require urgent reform." The commissioners conclude, "America's veterans deserve a better organized, high-performing health care system." The report indicates the billions pumped into the VA since the wait-list scandal erupted two years ago have failed to relieve many of the problems in delivering health care to veterans. In some cases, the report points out where so-called improvements to the VA system may have actually made things worse.
The VA's abuses are not a product of being "starved." The VA's budget nearly tripled between 2000 and 2012. They're a product of government waste and ineptitude. 'VA for all,' indeed. How does this sound to you, America?
More than 300,000 American military veterans likely died while waiting for health care -- and nearly twice as many are still waiting -- according to a new Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general report. The IG report says “serious” problems with enrollment data are making it impossible to determine exactly how many veterans are actively seeking health care from the VA, and how many were.
I'll leave you with the following question: As a policy-driving thought leader on the New Left, what might AOC (and her pal Ilhan Omar) think of this idea?
WATCH: @BernieSanders says convicted criminals – and even terrorists like the Boston Marathon bomber – should be allowed to vote.
The socialist lost even CNN with this one... pic.twitter.com/8q7AGKMOj9— BlazeTV (@BlazeTV) April 23, 2019
She actually said that? VA is socialized medicine, and it doesn’t work!
How bout AOC get her health care through the VA? Just sayin.
At the rate she’s going she will have pissed off every one of the 710,000 people in her district by re-election time.
I look forward to seeing Alexandria enlist in the US military.
She could possibly be of some use as a stick to probe for land mines.
That is why she said it. . . .
One way to fix the VA: force members of Congress to use it, and only it.
Lol
Says the 20 something with no family, no military background, no ties to real work issues other then being hispanic
She’s an idiot
This ... Twit ... makes Barbara Boxer look like a friggin genius.
Holy crap... I just realize something...
AOC is Hank Johnson with t*ts!!!!
I held onto this pic for 5 years just for this reason
This is her idea of a good healthcare system. To her, everything is donkey-whory at the VA.
This time they got 1 of my CRITICAL meds Linzess that dumps a Paralyzed Colon. No alternatives given. What few Google turns up are for Diarrhea for Opioid Dependent patients. I don't take Opioids. Colon Quit WORKING PERIOD. Gastropresis is a GASTRO disease. If it doesn't empty it will RUPTURE, not to mention the PAIN it will cause before it does or the Bacterial infections that could cost you your Colon and put you on a Freaking Feeding Tube if it doesn't kill you.
Nor as a Senior on SS could I afford over $400 a month for a 30 day script. The newer ones are More expensive and for those who have diarrhea from Opioid withdrawals. I have a FREAKING GASTRO DISEASE that Paralyzes the colon, that can't digest many foods, the Colon doses NOT WORK, Don't have a Opioid caused Diarrhea.
VA is the example why socialized medicine never works and one of the reforms is to PRIVATIZE. AOC is a complete dipsh*t a-hole.
Unfortunately the VA is in many places a “jobs” programs as much as a service for veterans.
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