For those that need a clearer picture of what’s said above: The VA as all know is Veterans organization. It provides healthcare via it’s clinics and hospitals scattered all over America. If you live far from a VA clinic you can go to a private clinic and the VA will pay. If you need major care they will provide transportation to a VA facility.
TRICARE ( a conglomeration of military hospitals and civilians that provide care for active duty military ) is for active duty personal and their dependents although some retiree’s use it. Since those folks live around military bases and forts that’s where the facilities for TRICARE are found. There are not near as many as there are VA clinics and hospitals. Nor are they as densely scattered.
If you’re a veteran in need of qualifying heath care and live a long distance from a base or fort you’d have to use the civilian pay option if the VA’s go. Since there are far less military posts than there are VA’s that would cause a burden on a lot of veterans and the tax payer.
There is nothing wrong with the VA heath care. I left my left lung in a rice paddy 40 years ago, my left testicle in the forest 40 years ago and broke more bones than an anatomist can name in a helo crash but the VA has kept me around all this time. I never had “long waits” or bad care. It was always very good. This is another example of fixing something that’s not broken because the post fix version is what you want and saying that outright isn’t palatable.
I’m retired military on TRICARE and I pay for my insurance. The Fed govt may subsidize it, I haven’t researched that, but considering how cheap the insurance is, I’m sure it does, but it doesn’t pay for the entire program for retirees.
The merger would be a shotgun wedding. Vets are older and sicker. Active duty soldiers are younger and healthier. They have different healthcare needs. It gets worse because of the differing missions of the VA and the DOD.
Yup, my dad (who managed to stay a bit more intact than you during his service!) loved his VA care. The right’s been exploiting the problems that do exist to push their privatization fantasy in the one part of our health-care system that can literally be called socialized medicine, even though the folks who served our country – the folks the right is oh, so supportive of, and ready to use as sword and shield against any critic – overwhelmingly want it to remain as is, with the necessary fixes to the problem areas (which I understand has been happening). There’s literally no part of our lives today’s GOP isn’t hellbent on destroying in the name of lunatic Randian “freedom” – and in the service of their cartoonishly greedy donors.
This is another back-door attempt to kill VA. Let’s not forget that the horrific Walter Reed Hospital scandal took place in a DoD facility, NOT a VAMC. Active-duty service members would love to get the kind of care veterans get from VA. You’d have a hard time finding a veteran who’d trade VA for private-contractor-infested DoD.
“This is part of the president’s efforts to transform how government works and is precisely the type of businesslike, commonsense approach that rarely exists in Washington,” Cashour said.
Uhmmmmmmm…Have you seen the latest reports of money laundering going on at T rump Panama Tower? Are you really exemplifying the President’s business acumen as a model for the Federal Government and our military health care system? Really? And how, exactly, did you rise to your current rank?
Some groups have drawn political battle lines, with the left-leaning
VoteVets and the American Federation of Government Employees warning of
privatization and astroturf front group Concerned Veterans for America, backed by the
billionaire conservative Koch brothers, pledging a well-funded campaign
to give force veterans wide freedom to see private doctors.
And this is why the AP sucks. FIFY
Same here, still carry 3 rounds in my right leg.
Just recently used VA Choice for brain surgery as the VA hospital is 2 1/2 hours away. They asked me if I wanted Choice or Tricare to cover the expense, my answer was Choice all they way. Total out of pocket $0.
Why use Choice instead of Tricare, simple, I used a private Endocrinologist in the spring and was foolish enough to say Tricare, that ended up costing me $153, if I would have used Choice cost would have been $0.
The patient load carried by military medicine is mostly not active duty, it’s mostly retirees. That’s true in numbers, but even more true in the amount of medical intervention required. You can’t be chronically sick and stay on active duty. Retirees are not at all necessarily younger and healthier than veterans, because they are covered for their entire lives as a retirement benefit, into their 80s and 90s if that’s how long they live. And no matter what the age and prior medical condition structure of the covered population, the work of medical intervention a system is called on to provide isn’t determined by the whole population, but only that minority of the population that needs medical interventions.
While it is certainly true that consolidating military medicine with the VA would be a complicated affair that could easily be harmful if done badly – and the fact that this administration has a hand in it is almost a guarantee that it will be done badly – in principle it is an excellent idea. Even more excellent if done by means of expanding the role of govt employees providing the care, but even if we are stuck with a privatization mania, consolidation makes sense, in principle.
By any chance is ending our war an option for reducing expenses?