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Thursday, September 05, 2002More than 300,000 veterans cannot get appointments within six months of their requests, and thousands cannot get appointments at all, according to the department. The backlog stems largely from a decision in 1996 to open eligibility to veterans who were not disabled while in service, Mr. Principi said. Those veterans now make up about 33 percent of the patients enrolled in the veterans health care system. Robert F. Norton, a deputy director at the Retired Officers Association, said, "The severely disabled are now competing with all other veterans for appointments." The VA wants to stop advertising their services to the able-bodied and to give priority in appointments to the disabled. John Kerry thinks this represents a broken promise on behalf of the VA system and that Congress should appropriate more money to care for each and every veteran equally, but that seems a misguided use of resources. There are a lot of veterans out there who use the VA system to make themselves richer. They use it because it’s a few bucks cheaper than their private health plans. I have a significant number of patients who use both their very generous insurance packages from Ford and GM and their veterans benefits. If the drugs they take are five dollars cheaper at the VA, they go to the VA, but they use their private health insurance for convenience medicine - acute problems like injuries or sinus infections. They’re gaming the system, and we’re paying for their healthcare twice. Once in the price of our cars to cover their employer-financed insurance, and again in our taxes to cover their government-financed care. posted by Sydney on 9/05/2002 05:45:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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