Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
This question is difficult to answer. In many countries with government provided health care, wait times are long. For the Veterans Affairs (VA) beneficiaries, this does not seem to be much of an issue according to a Penn et al. (2019) study covering wait times between 2014 and 2019: Although wait times in the VA…
How is President Trump planning to keep his campaign promise to improve health care for Veterans? One pathways is through his VA Mission Act of 2018. As the Washington Post reports, this bill would include $55 billion in additional funding for veterans. A key part of this legislation is that it allows for more veterans…
Background Do pay-for-performance (P4P) programs work? P4P programs pay paying providers (or health plans) more if they have better outcomes or follow specific best practices. Whether or not they lead to better outcomes has been much debated. However, many P4P programs implemented in the real world have been evaluated using a pre-post design which could…
The VA has been at the forefront of innovation in integrated care delivery. ViSTA is the VA’s award winning IT system. The VA has been aggresive in making sure veterans use generic drugs when these are available. Even if the VA provides high quality care, veterans are having increasing problems accessing this care. The issue…
Just before Memorial Day, a Maryland congressman recently proposed shrinking the scope of services the VA provides to veterans. How would he do this? He proposes a model: …where the VA is not the place of general health care for the veterans, but the place of highly-specialized care where skilled professionals are particularly well-equipped to…
The VA scandal of long wait times is now well-known. Part of the reason why patients were left off official wait lists–ironically–was because VA senior staffers wanted to reduce wait times. Senior VA staff monitored wait times closely to check for any upticks. Some of the VA management at the Phoenix hospital believed the only…
Memorial Day is a day to remember those who have served the country. However, it is also important to remember the veterans who currently living and address their needs. The issue receiving the most press is the long VA wait times. I discuss the issue below. According to Vox.com, the VA rules aim to “ensure patients…
This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend. It is a time to celebrate the service of current and former members of the military. Although military veterans garner a lot of attention around Memorial Day, some veterans are not having their needs met the rest of the year. A recent study, for instance, finds that many veterans…
Reducing Medicare and Medicaid spending is not only America’s number one health care goal, it should also be its top overall budget priority. Finding ways to cut Medicare costs is vital. Although the CBO projects that Medicare and Medicaid spending will top $850 billion in 2011, we should not forget about another federal health care…
Veterans Affairs is is responsible for administering programs of veterans’ benefits for veterans, their families, and survivors. In 2009, the VA had a budget of $87.6 billion and employed nearly 280,000 people at hundreds of Veterans Affairs medical facilities, clinics, and benefits offices. The VA is often held up a the model for integrated care.…