Despite the temptation to base this entry on the recent disqualification of the only finishing entrant in the annual
St Petersburg Sex Doll Rafting Race - for sexual abuse of rafting equipment, something even stranger came across my radar.
For years VA hospitals have been shunned as bureaucratic death traps, and for good reason. The standard of care was poor, and they appeared to offer good reason why government run healthcare facilities were a bad idea.
To answer congressional calls for the VA healthcare system to be shelved (and replaced with medical vouchers?!?) in 1994 Bill Clinton appointed Kenneth Kizer as the VA's under secretary for health.
Saying the system has been transformed is possibly the understatement of the century.
Most private hospitals can only dream of the futuristic medicine Dr. Divya Shroff practices today. Outside an elderly patient's room, the attending physician gathers her residents around a wireless laptop propped on a mobile cart. Shroff accesses the patient's entire medical history--a stack of paper in most private hospitals. And instead of trekking to the radiology lab to view the latest X-ray, she brings it up on her computer screen. While Shroff is visiting the patient, a resident types in a request for pain medication, then punches the SEND button. Seconds later, the printer in the hospital pharmacy spits out the order. The druggist stuffs a plastic bag of pills into what looks like a tiny space capsule, then shoots it up to the ward in a vacuum tube. By the time Shroff wheels away her computer, a nurse walks up with the drugs.
Life in a big-name institution like the Mayo Clinic? Not hardly. Shroff, 31, a specialist in internal medicine, works at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Washington, where the vets who come for the cutting-edge treatment are mostly poor.
Due to their computerization of medical records, utilization of matching bar-codes between patients and prescriptions, instant computer access to recent medical tests - and the fact the VA system now employs 10,000 less staff to treat roughly twice as many patients, currently around 5.3 million per year - not only have costs held steady over the last 10 years (as opposed to an average increase of 40% in the private sector), but patients are 40% more likely to survive treatment than those enrolled in programs such as Medicare Advantage.
The Government's Dirty Little Secret - and why they want to keep it that way.
Unfortunately for the Right, the VA health system is proof that a government run healthcare system can work, and not only can it work, but operate at cost per patient that's lower than the current annual Medicare premium.
Annual Medicare premiums currently run in the region of $6500 - the average cost per patient per annum in the VA system is about $5000. Patient satisfaction in the VA system runs at 83% - 12% better than the average private hospital.
One of the many reasons for such cost efficiency is due to the fundamental difference in thinking between private and social medicine. In the private system you operate on a need for profit basis. If the hospital doesn't generate a profit, it can't invest in new technology, better doctors and in theory could eventually go out of business. Because of this there's no incentive to push preventative care.
In a government run system, preventative care is essential to keep costs down - as well as a change in attitude from American patients. Guess what, you probably don't need 2/3rds of the treatment you receive. In fact you're significantly better off if you limit your exposure to hospital treatment to as little as possible. Every time you stay in a hospital you reduce your life expectancy - because of medical errors due to old fashioned systems, prescription errors or simply the statistical likelihood of dying under anesthesia.
So the VA decided to start a regime of preventative care, saving the system money and mitigating the increases the private sector has seen over the last decade.
Unfortunately what also happened was that patients began to prefer the VA system to private care, and too many vets abandoned private insurance to enroll with the VA.
The VA was forced to limit access to only vets with service-related injuries or illness or those with low income. Their budget couldn't cope with the increases - it was simply too popular and overloaded the system.
So here is their secret - we already have a small scale government run healthcare system - it operates at a cost lower than Medicare premiums, has better patient satisfaction than private medicine, has better patient life expectancy than private hospitals, has all but eliminated hospital prescription errors, has all but eliminated the costly repeat of medical tests and whichever hospital you find yourself in has quick access to all of your medical records, prescription requirements and recent tests such as blood work or x-rays.
Now who's going to let the cat out the bag - we have the best socialized medicine in the world, but we've kept it a secret for the sake of private medicine, whose needs are apparently more important than the welfare of Americans.
Source
How VA Hospitals Became The Best - by Douglas Waller of Time Magazine