Peter Suderman on Why the VA Is Not a Model Health System

A damning report released
by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Inspector General will
likely leave Democrats and their liberal allies clamoring for
reforms to the government run health system for those who have
served in the military. The report found that workers in the
Phoenix VA network systematically manipulated wait time data,
leaving thousands of military veterans waiting for medical
appointments, and some 1,700 stuck in limbo after being left off
the waiting list entirely. The average initial wait time for a
primary care appointment in the Phoenix VA system was 115 days—a
far cry from both the system’s 14-day goal and the 24 days Phoenix
officials had reported. 

Until recently, Democrats have not been shy about expressing
their feelings about the VA health care system. For years they have
been telling us that it’s great—a model system from which the rest
of the nation’s health care systems could learn a thing or two

The ongoing VA scandal over falsified records, and the deadly
long wait times for care that appear to have been the result,
strongly suggests that their praise is misplaced: Veterans are not
safe and sound within the fully government-run system, its quality
control leaves much to be desired, and its lengthy wait times are
not a fictitious prediction but an all-too-grim reality.

In other words, it’s hardly a triumphant, model health care
system, writes Peter Suderman. Even if there were no scandal at
all, the VA wouldn’t be a system worth emulating.

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