Clue bat

The president boasted that wait-times at the VA have been slashed by 50% in the last year.

But wait, wasn't there some kind of scandal about fudged wait times?  Maybe he hasn't heard about it yet.

I shouldn't blame him too much.  Most of the coverage I've seen lately is depressingly confused, focusing on the wait-times themselves instead of the fraudulent coverup.  The wait-times have been with us for a long time and are unlikely to be fixed as long as we're moving in the direction of socialized medicine instead of away from it; they're also an extremely comfortable issue for the current administration, being one of its many "inherited" problems.  The current scandal is, or should be, about the fraud, the coverup, and the President's refusal even to acknowledge it, let alone to effect a remedy.

Even though, as he says, "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want."  You've got a telephone and a fountain pen, Mr. President.  How about putting your tush in gear to solve a purely executive-department problem?  You may not be able to supply decent medical care to vets (or at least, not until you reform your philosophy), but you can sure address fraud in your own ranks.  It might even be easy to get the voters and Congress behind a solution if the problem isn't deliberately buried.

4 comments:

Grim said...

Wait times are down and costs compare favorably to re-imbursement. As long as you don't care if your patients die, it's not that hard to hit these 'measures of effectiveness.'

Like I said at Cass' place, I suspect that this is really about command climate emphasis on these measures, because the VA is a proxy for Obamacare. It's very important that government health care look like it can bend the cost curve.

So: 'Of course we don't have Death Panels. We just have Inappropriate Scheduling Guidelines.'

MikeD said...

Thankfully, this election cycle, I have a Senator up for re-election. So I've written Lindsey Graham and basically told him my vote depends on his action on this. We'll see if he gives a damn.

E Hines said...

Wait, you just don' unnerstan'.

If the vet dies while he's waiting, his scheduled wait time is cut by 2/3. It's easy to get to an overall reduction of 50%.

Just wait until the Feds starts billing for that missed appointment and wasted wait time.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

I know you think you're kidding.