[Pharylon]

The VA has gotten a lot of bad headlines, but I work with a vet who absolutely loved the VA. He brags about the quality and speed of his healthcare all the time. This is in Charlotte, NC. Different offices might be different.

[mter]

The thing with the VA isn't that it's all bad. It's that the percentage of completely inept people seems higher than in a normal hospital.

Normal hospitals don't have multiple scandals of reusing insulin pens on different people, reusing colonoscopy bags, killing people, paralyzing people and periodically losing all of our records.

A lot of veterans who are covered by the VA are like me. Technically covered because of service connected disabilities, but I will never use it.

[dnomad]

Again, this is not true. Read the studies comparing VA care to private care. You're actually better off going to a VA hospital than most private hospitals.

[mter]

I've been to a VA hospital. My brother/dad/uncle have been to the same VA hospital. Our experiences have all been poor.

If you were told that you'd get an appointment some time in the future and they sent you a notice randomly in the mail a few months later, you probably wouldn't be happy with the service. If your doctor was over an hour late, you wouldn't be happy. If you had a friend that was paralyzed after a spinal tap (my dad's buddy) then you probably wouldn't hold the VA in high regard.

You are the first veteran I've ever met who had good experiences at the VA and who doesn't know anyone that has been crippled by the VA.

[Clubber]

>If your doctor was over an hour late, you wouldn't be happy.

Doctors aren't on time in privatized offices either. It's always a long wait for me. But you're right about the not being happy about it.

>If you had a friend that was paralyzed after a spinal tap (my dad's buddy) then you probably wouldn't hold the VA in high regard.

Yes, but that happens in private hospitals as well. They aren't all that great in the US either.

>f you were told that you'd get an appointment some time in the future and they sent you a notice randomly in the mail a few months later, you probably wouldn't be happy with the service.

Ya that sucks. Private industry has solved the scheduling problem with DSS and template based schedules. My uncle didn't have a good experience with the VA either. He had dementia and the nurse questioned him about it and he said "I have diabetes," which he did, but he didn't know what was going on. The nurse of course said, "we don't treat diabetes," or something like that and sent him away. All the while his sister was telling her about the dementia, she just didn't want to hear it.

I could tell you horror stories about private hospitals too and how after being admitted, they shipped him to a nursing home an hour away wearing nothing but a gown in winter. No calls, no nothing.

I guess the bottom line is right now, the US sucks at healthcare, period. I'm sure being a highly politicized wedge issue doesn't help matters much. (The VA, universal healthcare, skyrocketing costs in the private industry, etc).

[chimeracoder]

> He brags about the quality and speed of his healthcare all the time. This is in Charlotte, NC. Different offices might be different.

The VA is run in a federated fashion, so there is a massive variation in how well they operate.

The problem with the VA isn't that literally every hospital is terrible. The problem is that:

(1) a lot are bad

(2) the bad ones are really terrible

(3) the bad ones are consistently bad over time, with no success in improving them

Part (3) is the really damning one, because it's not like there haven't been efforts to fix the issues with the VA. But because the US is such a heterogeneous country, the successes of Portland don't translate well to Memphis.