Now if you want a sneak preview of
America’s healthcare future, look at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This is socialized medicine at its finest – government-run,
single-payer style healthcare. If President
Obama and his fellow socialists are correct, VA ought to be a medical paradise
on earth. But of course it’s not. Every day more news arrives of patient deaths
due to delayed access to treatment, mounting waiting lists, fraudulent
jiggering of the numbers to conceal failure to treat, and the list goes on.
Here’s the latest, from the Washington Examiner :
When (Eric) Shinseki took office (as Secretary of Veterans
Affairs), he vowed that every disability claim would be processed within 125-days
with 98% accuracy. But the backlogs only
got worse. [It took about 4-months for VA
to process a disability compensation claim when Shinseki was sworn in 2009. By 2012, the average wait time was about 9-months.]
In February 2013, the Examiner
published a five-part series, “Making America’s Heroes Wait,” showing more than
1.1 million veterans with disability claims and appeals were trapped in
bureaucratic limbo in VA.
About 70% of the 900,000 claims for initial benefits were
considered backlogged, meaning they were older than 125-days.
The Examiner
series also showed how agency statistics were manipulated to hide mistakes that
doomed veterans into appeals that could drag on for years.
Pressure from Congress, veterans
groups and the media prompted VA to launch an initiative to reduce the claims
backlog. Claims processors were required
to work overtime and the oldest claims — some of which were more than 2-years
old — were given top priority. The
backlog slowly declined. Today, about half
of the nearly 600,000 benefits claims are backlogged. [There are about 275,000 appeals, an increase
of 25,000 from a year ago.]
VA is the poster child for ‘death
panels,’ an inevitable outcome when government … which decomposes everything it
touches … is placed in charge of healthcare:
An
outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease was reported in Pittsburgh, PA in November
2012. Subsequent investigations by the
inspector general and area media eventually linked a half-dozen patient deaths
from the disease to faulty maintenance and poor management. Reports of other deaths followed.
Four patients under VA’s care in Atlanta, GA died of a drug
overdose or suicides.
In Columbia, S.C., at least six patient deaths from
colorectal cancers were linked to delays in receiving colonoscopies at veterans’
medical facilities.
VA eventually acknowledged that delays in providing care was
linked to the deaths of 23-patients who died of gastrointestinal cancers at
veterans’ health facilities. Deaths from
other conditions were not disclosed.
As with disability claims there are indications that VA has
been hiding long backlogs in delivering health care by manipulating its
statistics.
The
Examiner reported in February 2014
that back-logged orders for medical care were being massively purged at
hospitals in Los Angeles, CA and Dallas, TX.
Citing congressional testimony and VA’s own internal documents, the Examiner found as many as 40,000 medical
tests and other procedures were cancelled in Los Angeles and another 13,000 in
Dallas.
Earlier this month, the Examiner disclosed a nation-wide purge
in the past year that cleared 1.5- million backlogged medical orders with no
guarantee the patients got the care they needed.
ObamaCare is simply VA on steroids. Whatever the problems are with VA, they will
be multiplied under ObamaCare. We have
all read stories of restricted access, doctors and hospitals that are out of
the network, and seriously ill patients with no place to go. And we’re just getting started. This is all before the system has to
incorporate the estimated 144-million who will get dumped onto ‘HumptyDumptyCare’
by businesses that can’t afford the premiums and don’t want the hassle of
trying to conform to ObamaCare’s regulations. In other words, we’ve not seen anything yet.
ObamaCare must be totally repealed,
not partially. There is nothing
redeemable here; nothing to save. If the
government can’t provide healthcare to the 1% (our veterans), then how will it
service the other 99% of Americans? The
bottom line: We should get the government out healthcare, period!
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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