VA Health Care: Obamacare Preview

Don’t we have a government run health care system already in place?  The Veterans Administration operates a health care system that is funded and run by our United States federal government.  Should we expect a government run health care system for the rest of us to be run as efficiently as the VA health care system?

Of course, the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act doesn’t set up a government run health care system that employs doctors and owns and operates clinics and hospitals.  Many believe it is a first step toward some larger goal like this.  Maybe that goal is to have a single payer system.  When Barack Obama was secretly recorded in a fund raiser during his first election campaign, he could be heard saying that ultimately he wants a single payer system of health care.  That is a government takeover of the health insurance industry.  The President and probably many other progressives and socialists and communists believe that the reason we have high health care costs is because of the profits earned by insurance companies and the salaries of their top management.

If the progressives ever reach their goal of a single payer health care system, what will it look like?  How will it operate?  Will there be any problems?  Will everyone get the health care they need, just like the upper and middle economic classes have today?  Will our health care cost less?  Will the health care services we need be available in a timely fashion?

Let’s take a look at the Veterans Affairs health care system for some answers to the questions above.  On November 20^th of last year, CNN ran a report about veterans dying needlessly.  They reported that these folks were dying because of delays in getting preventative care like colonoscopies or endoscopies or other tests that check for cancer in the early stages.  With regard to cancer, CNN reported that a number of veterans are dying due to delays in diagnosis and in receiving treatment.  The report focused on the Williams Jennings Bryan Dorn Veterans Medical Center in Columbia, South Carolina.  That hospital had a wait time in summer of 2011 of eight months for gastrointestinal appointments.

Stars and Stripes reported on their website in April of 2012 “that veterans on average have to wait nearly two months” for mental health care.  The Washington Examiner reported that “thousands of orders for diagnostic medical tests have been purged en masse by the Department of Veterans Affairs to make it appear its decade-long backlog is being eliminated.”  On March 15^th of last year, www.armytimes.com reported that “according to VA, about 49 percent of new patients and 90 percent of established patients are able to see a primary care doctor or specialist within VA’s goal of 14 days, a metric established in 2011.  But the first-time patients who weren’t seen within 14 days waited an average 50 days to schedule initial appointments.”

I have an individual health insurance policy for myself, my wife, and my daughter.  We utilize private physicians and hospitals for our medical care.  When I read things like these above, it is unacceptable.  All of us that have access to private health care know that we can call and get an appointment to see a doctor later today if it’s early, and tomorrow if it is late in the day.  When I call, it is very unusual to have a wait time or to be put on hold.  If we call for a check-up, mammogram, colonoscopy, or other preventative care, we are given an appointment at a time that fits our schedule and within a few weeks.  Is this what we will have in our future if the liberals get their wish and we have a complete government takeover of the health care industry?

I suspect that the upheaval in health care has only just begun.  If Obamacare was shut off today, what would happen to all of the folks with pre-existing conditions that have lost their health insurance?  The further we go down this road, the harder it will be to turn back.  If doctors can’t charge enough for their services to cover the costs of providing it and meeting the regulations laid down by the PPACA, will they quit or retire?  Will they go to work for the government on salary?  If enough of them quit, where will we get the health care we need and want?

The MessAPolitico has already done damage to the American health care system.  I’m not sure why my health care had to be touched in order to provide better care for someone else.  I don’t understand why this PPACA was supposed to insure tens of millions that had no insurance, but it seems to have done poorly at that.  Instead, more or as many people lost their insurance coverage as gained it.

The sooner this gets stopped, the better.  Please go to the primaries to vote for new blood in the Senate.  Get rid of anyone that voted to fund the PPACA last fall.  I don’t care if your Senator or Representative is a Democrat or a Republican.  If they didn’t do everything in their power to stop the PPACA at every opportunity, they should be replaced.