Any person who has a health issue that can be cured or prevented should want three things related to their medical care.
1. Access to Care which can be defined by in this manner: Your ability to quickly secure an appointment with the physician of your choice and quickly undergo and obtain all tests, regimens, and procedures necessary for treatment.
2. Affordable Care which can be defined in this manner: Your (or your proxy like an insurance policy or a government health care coverage program like Mecdicare, Medicaid, or the VA Health System) ability to afford to pay for you required health care related costs.
3. Quality Care which can be defined in this manner:Your ability to obtain the most appropriate treatment for your medical condition which should be guided by the most current clinical trials and evidence based best practices.
Obviously, in the real world, we have to deal with tradeoffs....The highest quality of care may not always be the most affordable care. That is where people (or societies or the representatives of society who are usually politicians) need to decide how money is allocated towards different necessities (like food, shelter, and healthcare) as opposed to being allocated towards luxuries or optional items (like the newest smart phone, Air Jordan sneakers, Chloe hand bags, or that even that frappuccino at Starbucks...)
Do veterans who obtain their medical care at VA Medical Facilities receive care that balances the above three issues appropriately?
It would seem that a better job can certainly be done.
One major problem with providing high quality,affordable health which can be obtained quickly when needed is that some people in the U.S. view health care as a right which should be able to be obtained for free if necessary while at the same time also wanting the most cutting edge health care treatments on the market which are usually expensive.
People from other countries, specifically European countries, are acutely aware that although they enjoy much easier access to health insurance coverage than their American counterparts (they have socialized medicine to varying extents and people tend to obtain their health care coverage through the government), they generally do not have easier access to medical treatment. Medical treatment includes the most cutting edge screening tests and treatments along with the newest and most expensive pharmaceutical drugs. People who have socialized medicine tend to need to wait very long times to see specialists and undergo procedures compared to their American counterparts.
The VA shares structural similarities to socialized medicine health insurance coverage. The government allocates a fixed amount of money annually to treat all qualifying veterans who need medical care in a given year. The VA is unable to use price as a mechanism to turn away people for treatment because veterans pay either nothing or very low prices for their care. So another mechanism used to lower the amount of health care provided is to use what economists call supply side rationing or what we call long waits for appointments. And people may die as a result from these long waits. Or medical conditions may worsen and become more difficult to treat. America needs to decide if this is the system it wants in place at the VA.
Access to health care coverage (like through the VA or Blue Cross or Medicare or Medicaid) does not automatically mean access to medical care.
People in England have known this for a long time.
People in America are now beginning to wake up to this reality because of the scandal at the VA.
