Why Does Donald Trump Hate the Veterans Health Administration (VA)?
Trick question. Donald hates whatever or whomever he has been paid to hate.
Why do the Koch Brothers and a members of the Medical Industrial Complex who sponsor Trump hate the VA? Because the VA is the closest thing this country has to a single payer cradle to grave health insurance program like the National Health in the U.K. Indeed, the VA is the world’s second largest health care system after Britain’s National Health. And the VA’s success proves that Americans want what their cousins on the other side of the Atlantic already enjoy---preventive, proven care and financial peace of mind.
No one should have to weigh their child's college education versus the surgery that will save his or her own life. When sickness strikes, “How am I going to pay for this?” should not be the number one question.
No one should have to question their health care provider. “Do I really need a hysterectomy or does my GYN need to make a Porsche payment?” “Is chemotherapy really going to improve my survival or does my oncologist make money pushing chemo?” “Is having the same toenail taken out time after time truly the best treatment for my chronic ingrown toenail?”
The VA is not cradle to grave. However, it is honorable discharge from a branch of the United States military to grave, meaning that for many Americans it kicks in at the prime of life and covers everything that happens until death, including burial in a veterans cemetery. That gives the VA a financial incentive to keep its clients healthy---healthier vets help the VA stretch its budget.
And then there is the VA’s mission---- to honor the men and woman who have served their country. Step into a Veteran’s Administration health care center and you will be amazed at what you see. The closest analogy is a children’s hospital. We love our children and therefore we go an extra mile to make them feel happy and comfortable when they receive health care, providing them with toys, playgrounds, bright colors, dedicated providers. We love and honor our veterans, and so we go an extra mile to make them feel happy and comfortable, providing them with recreation areas where they can sit and socialize with other veterans, where they can see a social worker about their housing issues in the same place where they get their diabetic shoes fitted---at no cost, the VA knows the value of preventing diabetic foot ulcers. At VA hospitals, the staff smiles, the staff asks “Can I help you?” The staff is there to serve. And service is what people need when they are ill. They do not need a receptionist asking them up front “How do you intend to pay your bill?”
The VA covers over the counter preventive medications like aspirin. It will mail them to your house to make it easier for you to remember to take them. Why? Because many years ago, the VA proved that an aspirin a day can prevent heart attacks—the kind of study that saves lives but does not make the researchers any money, so no private pharmaceutical company would ever bother. The VA pays for nicotine replacement patches and gum, and there is no limit to the number of times it will pay to try to help its clients quit smoking—unlike most commercial insurance plans. The VA invented nicotine patches, at a time when the health care industry as a whole was more interested in finding new and more costly ways to treat the effects of years of smoking.
We have heard horror stories about long waits to get in to see a doctor. These happen all the time in America, which suffers a shortage of primary care doctors since medical school training is so costly that graduates tend to flock to high paying specialties in order to pay off their loans.
Long waits to see a primary doctor are as common under certain Affordable Care Act insurers as they are—or were at the VA. The difference is that while Affordable Care Act insurers responded with “damage control”, the VA responded to the needs of our veterans. If the wait to see a VA specialist will be too long or if the veteran lives too far away from a VA center, the VA will pay for medical care outside the system---unlike many private insurers who will use the excuse “If you want specialty care in your area that we do not cover, too bad. Maybe you should take your (costly) cancer to another health insurer.”
The VA will never, ever try to force sick people to switch to another insurance provider by limiting the number of specialists available to treat certain, costly diseases. The VA may decline to pay for ineffective or unproven therapies, but if the treatment has been shown to work, they will cover it. And the VA conducts lots of research and when it finds a new, effective treatment, it does not charge consumers an arm and a leg the way that pharmaceutical companies do. The list is too long to copy here so I will provide a link:
http://www.research.va.gov/about/history.cfm
Note how many of the health care therapies we take for granted were discovered and proven effective at the VA. Meaning that single payer, patient centered health care does not just benefit those who are enrolled, it also reaps public health benefits-—
Now, imagine how much better our country could be, how much more productive our work force, how much happier our families if Americans knew that their health is more important to their political leaders than their sickness.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of money to be made from treating the effect of decades of medical neglect. Tom Price, our new director of Health and Human Services and an orthopedic surgeon knows first hand how profitable years of smoking, obesity and lack of exercise can be----for those who make and install artificial joints. He is not about to let the VA’s form of single payer health insurance mess with his “good thing.”
Which is why the Koch Brothers and their political allies want to shut the VA down.
Is the VA perfect? Of course not. The needs of our nation’s veterans keep changing, and like any large organization, the Veterans Administration can be slow to keep up with the change. Here is a reference.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/06/disarray-at-the-va/
But ask yourself, is the private health care sector administrated by private insurers all that much better? Or, do they just spend a lot more money on public relations?
I have seen the health care world from all sides—private practice as well as public sponsored community health for the uninsured. And the VA has both of them beat, hands down.
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Republicans are always waving their tin, made-in-china flag pins, pretending to be patriotic and then crapping on America's veterans and making sleazy deals with the Evil Empire Russian Mob.
Disgustipating.
