Found in a report in the Washington Post from 3/8/13 are two sentences explaining how the Sequester could harm Veteran's ability to get health care in a timely fashion (like before they die) even if the VA itself was supposedly spared the Sequester ax.
This is the kind of reporting that the news media is supposed to be doing and remembering that they've done and our Congress people and the media are supposed to be reading instead of notes from their Koch brother financiers.
Apparently that is not happening in Big News and Congress:
Forty percent of the Defense Department’s medical providers working at military hospitals and clinics are civilians subject to furlough.Wait isn't this supposed Obama administration scandal about sick Veterans facing long waits for evaluation and care during which many are dying or getting too sick to save?
“This may mean a decrease in clinic appointment availability or longer wait times to see providers,” Jonathan Woodson, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for health affairs, wrote Tuesday on the department’s military health system blog.
So that problem in the indented script above is right there in downtown.
But I bet the news system cannot recall this information in their rush to blame everything on the Obama administration, and the Republicans who have Gerrymandered illegal control in the US House of Representatives have no reason to care to inform Americans of reality.
In addition the Bush administration set us up for two massive wars, creating millions of new veterans, many with PTSD and/or catastrophic physical problems without giving the VA the generous amount of money it would need to take care of the new patients. (I've actually checked the VA saw their funding doubled from 2003 to 2012 last year available.) Now consider that amounts of catastrophic injuries created by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the strong blow back from those selfish Iraqis and Afghans that weren't going to just sit there and be dominated by our clearly superior American Christian troops.
Now Republicans like John McCain are claiming that a privatized system would do a better job. That is not what happens. What happens is that privatized systems feel much freer to ignore people's needs and make more money off such a project as long as they are funneling big dollars into the pockets of powerful Republicans. That is a recipe for disaster for ordinary Americans. to force that onto our veterans would be an immense shame,
Picture at top used via Creative Commons License - Share Alike 2.0 Generic thanks to Flickr user Donkey Hotey who has no connection to this blog or blogger.
Shorter URL for this report: http://bit.ly/QOoKKD
