The American Spectator

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Hillary's Oriental Mysteries

9.7.07 @ 12:01AM

SCANDALOUS CARE
Re: David Hogberg's VHA Is No Guarantee:

As a physician I trained and worked in VA hospitals. For me, these were the worst places to work of any hospitals, county, community, private, bar none. As a physician in practice I see a lot of VA patients who avoid the VA. They'll go there for their meds and their labs, but the formulary is abysmal, basically a quarter of a century out of date. Fortunately, a lot of these vets also have Medicare with part D. The VA is highly uncooperative in providing records, lab results, etc., but if the Vet will go personally to the clinic and demand the records, they can hand carry the records to us. Otherwise, I can't get the records.

The physician quality at the VA is spotty, to be kind, and there is no continuity of care, and little if any doctor-patient relationship. There are no specialists available, and specialty care, if it gets done, is done by the local private physicians primarily, for those who have Medicare or other options. Otherwise, patients are sent to facilities several hours away for specialty care, almost all of which is available locally and of much higher quality.

I recently saw a patient admitted through the emergency room of a local community hospital who had gone to the VA with typical angina. He had had a cardiolyte stress test at the VA a couple of hours away, and was told that it was entirely normal, and no treatment was given. The patient came to the ER with recurring chest pain (unstable angina), was admitted, had a cardiac catheterization and proved to have severe multivessel coronary disease with a critical (greater than 90%) stenosis of the Left Anterior Descending coronary artery, that supplies blood to most of the heart muscle. He underwent emergency bypass surgery. How the VA got a normal study is beyond explanation. As the VA hospitals are often connected with Medical Schools and residency programs, he perhaps was under the care of a physician-in-training. (Of course a lot of research is done in VA hospitals as well, on Vets). Whatever was done in this case almost killed the Vet. The patient's wife was furious, to say the least, at the care provided at the VA facility.

I, for one, would be apoplectic at the idea of extending VA healthcare to everyone. I would, in contrast, suggest that all Vets eligible for VA healthcare benefits be placed on the Federal Employees' Health Benefit system instead, and eliminate the VA altogether. It's enough that we send these people into battle. To bring them home and subject them to VA healthcare and do medical experiments on them is unconscionable. In my experience, the VA is the worst healthcare system in the country aside from the Indian Health Service, which is simply a slightly kinder, gentler and less direct approach to genocide (compared to the more direct approaches employed in prior centuries). The recent fiascos at Walter Reed and the recognition of the incapacity of the VA system to deal with the returning Iraq Vets, and the hubbub about traumatic brain injury, which the VA will not have the resources to deal with adequately, are all indications that another approach is required for adequate medical care for Vets.

The billions just appropriated to the VA system will help get a lot of Congressmen re-elected, but are unlikely to help many Vets. The money would be better spent just paying for private (or Federal Employees) health insurance coverage. The private facilities available across this country would do a marvelous job caring for these Vets, more conveniently and more cost effectively. And they'd be proud to do it. Our Vets deserve better. Much better.
-- Kent Lyon
College Station, Texas

Praise should be heaped on AmSpec with an industrial sized front-loader for running frequent commentaries on our dysfunctional federal government. Your piece on the VHA is the latest installment. Those righteous citizens who've memorized every jot and comma in the Constitution will readily admit the Founders never promised us a rose garden or a competent government either. In fact, the surest road to success in government is to foul-up big time -- bigger budgets, more employees and highly creative excuses for past failures will descend on those in Washington with the worst track record.

Ironically, this formula of fail your way to success is embraced wholeheartedly by voters as how a proper government operation should be run. Take the aftermath of 9/11 for instance. CIA, the agency with the least responsibility for controlling domestic terrorism, was designated as the official "fall-guy" for the foul-up -- they failed to predict the disaster, although we were never told beforehand that an accurate intelligence prediction was the one vital factor needed to ensure the massive security apparatus would actually work. A new, powerful mega-agency was then created to fail on an even larger scale, complete with a budget exceeding the annual GDP of most countries.

So far it seems to work, but what if there were another successful terrorist operation against the Big Apple, the preferred target of working fanatics? After numerous congressional hearings to showcase our leaders at work, the usual prescription would be written -- more employees, more money and more power offered up to solve every real or imagined shortcoming. It's like medieval physicians always bleeding the patient to release foul humors, only Congress does it in reverse and pumps in more blood resulting in a very bloated patient.

It's no surprise our Washington mandarins lust after universal health care; opportunities for failure would be legion and, in Washington, with failure comes success.
-- Patrick Skurka
San Ramon, California

MR. EXCITEMENT
Re: John Tabin's The Man Who Wasn't There:

Although I was a supporter of Fred Thompson several months ago, I've never been a fan of "cherry pickers." The sum of all of last night's TV action for me is to confirm that Ron Paul is my guy, given that, realistically, we have only the two dominant parties' candidates to choose between.

In this age of focus group and polling driven governance, I'm inclined to back the guy who's the most bedrock in his views, and that guy is Ron Paul, longer and louder than any of the others. He may not have the TV presence to trade quips with Jay Leno, but I think he's the least likely to go "New World Order" on us after being elected, like another President I could name. Thompson, in my opinion, has been too clever for his own good, and revealed himself to be a mere politician rather than a man of principle.
-- Mark Fallert
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Fred Thompson is being criticized for skipping the "presidential" debate. Didn't he declare his candidacy after the debate? If that is true, then he should not have been included in that debate. Unless they are saying he should have announced sooner just so he could be in that particular debate? Also, it is interesting that he got more coverage than all of the other contenders combined who were on the same platform. That sounds like a smart move, and one that may be hard to repeat.
-- Jack A. Summers
Detroit, Michigan

Because Fred Thompson has some catching up to do and might be less enthusiastic about campaigning than some, he should consider hiring look-alike Joe Don Baker to serve as his surrogate to appear at some rallies. The star of the Standing Tall movies could stand in and stand tall for Fred. Extra advantages are: he is slightly better-looking, he has much more hair, he looks slightly younger though he's older, he, too, has played law-and-order type roles quite effectively and reinforces the Southern angle because of the roles he played. Some theme could be developed in connection with an ax (budget-cutting?), not to mention Fred's old plaid shirt and pick-up.
-- Richard L.A. Schaefer
Dubuque, Iowa

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