What are your feelings regarding the VA?

From what I heard, it depends on the city/region. Some of the VA medical centers and hospitals have top notch doctors and top quality care, are well managed. People get seen quickly. Others are second rate – poorer doctors and lousy patient relations.

The best ones are the ones where there is an active and creative medical community – like Cleveland, Ohio, for example. (The VA there is 10 minutes from the University Hospital and 10 minutes from Cleveland Clinic, so they get really good docs and med students in Cleveland).

Sadly, not all VA facilities are as good.

My Dad got great service from them but sadly I think they are overwhelmed and underfunded now. Still as @elbanditoroso says, I’m sure there are some great clinics still.

I think some of them are staph breeding grounds and too many vets are dying in them, and no one much seems to care.

I put up with military healthcare for several years. Basically, I took care of myself because the care you go was substandard. I have not been to a VA facility, though friends that have say they aren’t much of a change.

I’m surprised at these responses. I thought VA healthcare was first rate.

@flutherother No. Didnt you hear the huge scandal like two years ago? Really bad collusion and hidden files etc…

I only know what I read on Wikipedia 10 minutes ago.

@flutherother It did have a great reputation for quite a while as far as I knew.

Yes, it used to be held up as a shining example of what health care should be. Caring for those who are physically and mentally scarred by war is always going to be challenging to say the least but I thought they were making a pretty good job of it.

Vets were never given appointments and died waiting. VA staff were told to hide the files since they were literally allowing vets to die. Some got better after, some did not.

^^ Not excusing that but I think most of that occurred after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars left so many veterans to care for.

@Janbb I agree, that’s no excuse.

No feelings either way.

If the VA is so bad why not just buy private insurance like I do?

JP, Seriously? Have you any idea how many homeless vets there are? Many are searching for work, but lots are in no shape to work. The whole point of the VA is to provide care for vets who can’t afford it.
I will have to answer OP later. I had my answer nearly finished and the page disappeared.

I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about the VA and how the nurses don’t actually watch the patients like they should and some end up dying or killing themselves even because they didn’t get the care needed.

and @johnpowell Not how it works.

@johnpowell as a veteran myself, I could go to VA clinics/hospitals. But thankfully I have a good job that allows me private insurance. Not all vets are in the same boat. I think the VA is a demonstration for how universal healthcare would work. Those that have money or position would get good treatment. Those that are needy would take what they can get. Even in places like England, those that can, buy health insurance to ensure they get the treatment they will need, in a time frame they will need it.

I guess my point is maybe everyone should have access to quality healthcare. I don’t see what makes veterans so special. You get the anthem during the football games, that should be enough.

Are you serious?

@SergeantQueen You should not be surprised on this site at comments like that, and @johnpowell is far from alone in those sentiments I’m sure. I was told once HERE that our military is just a bunch of uneducated poor people undeserving of any honors, reverence or hero worship. Sad right?

The view of the VA as the probable model of universal healthcare in the country is flawed. Medicare is almost certainly a more accurate and likely result. Simply put, the explanation for the shortcomings of the VA is no mystery, and all of the answers here point to it. All that is required to appreciate the truth is a quick look at the system’s clientele. The VA is allowed to sink to the standards it exhibits because it is a service for LOSERS with no political clout or leverage to otherwise influence those standards. As seawulf so elegantly put it, only those FORCED to use it would be caught roaming the corridors.

Sure we all think we’re proud of our soldiers and support the troops. The VA is there to demonstrate the truth about such sentiments.

As non-military I have zero firsthand knowledge. However, I hang with a number of ex-military and some active duty, and very few of them have anything good to say. They don’t like the treatment options, the waiting lists, the general standards of facilities maintenance in the hospitals, or the fact that there are no options if the patient disagrees with a diagnosis or prescribed treatment.

Some of that can certainly be confirmation bias: If you start reading a thread regarding “complaints about the VA system” then you won’t often find the “it’s good and getting better” stories there. Still this is what I hear.

As an Air Force enlisted person with a broken ankle as of two weeks ago, my son is dealing with them now. I’m looking forward to his opinion.

@stanleybmanly Unfortunately I know many oldsters who still take pride in their country, not realizing some of the country could give a rats about them. Not all of them go because they’re poor, but because they served and they trusted their country to provide the service promised.

My friends grandfather is in Arkansas now and had many surgeries before they found the real problem. He was layed open, got staph, treated like dirt and called names, then when he tried to transfer to our good hospital here, they said his VA insurance wouldn’t cover it. Yet my FIL got permission beforehand and got treated here locally (non VA) for the same thing and got out in a few weeks. The other has been in Arkansas for over six months! Talk about deplorable.

Is anyone else receiving multiple duplicates of answers on this thread?

No

Not me.

No

Funny, these sentiments I see about military vets.
Our thoughts were how sheeplike civilians are, and clueless. We knew they were fortunate that so many of us cared about preserving the security of our country and presenting a strong opposition to would be brutal opportunists.

It is thanks to the dull, day to day routine motions of military personnel that keeps us voting every four years for who we desire to represent us, and manage the details of our government. It is those people who sign away their time, their skills, and their safety, who allow civilians the pleasure of monotonous peaceful lives.
Things have gotten brutal and insane in places because civilians have become so cozy in the security we provide, they become blasé about safety, and ignorant to brutality within their own neighborhoods.
If it were not for the military, and its numbers and show of might, all sorts of deranged beings would come here to make victims of one and all.
Yes, even now attempts are made, and these complacent citizens want to welcome the brutal masses with open, ready embrace.
Just as small children can relax, and enjoy the comfort of their home because their parents keep potential threats away, so it is with our military forces.
When your parents get old and feeble, do you belittle them, and tell them they should have insurance to cover home care, so you don’t have bother with their needs?

Sigh. Why bother? Sheep don’t get convinced, only hearded. They remain unaware of the wolves kept at bay by the shepherd until one sneaks in and gets them by the neck.

@Patty_Melt I was waiting for you to answer, because I knew you’d set them straight! Bravo!

I currently have a good VA facility nearby, but I have been to some awful places.

For those veterans who do avail themselves of services
from the VA, I shudder to think where they might be if the Veterans Administration did not exist, and God only knows (or cares) what happens to the millions of others who fall on hard times but are not veterans. The legions of people who needlessly suffer and die in a country as wealthy as ours is scandalous.

Luckily, my scare with cancer turned out to be a false alarm.
Luckily, thanks to the VA, I am being seen there, and a local hospital, and several diligent doctors have worked me over in many ways to insure my survival.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine who does have cancer, is facing all those bills. She is married, has small children, and sons on the military.
It is tough all the way around for her. A cancer foundation has contacted her, and she can receive some help from them. Other than that, she, her little ones, and the medical bills must be covered by her husband’s one job.

Before I moved, the VA facility I depended on for care stank.
I fall a lot, and one fall was pretty bad. I might have been unconscious for a few minutes. It was after dark, on a sidewalk, nobody around. I had to fumble for my cell and call for someone to come get me. He took me to the VA emergency where I waited for at least a couple of hours, with a throbbing head and a neck in terrible pain. Finally a nurse called me back to get my vitals. She put on a neckbrace. It hurt more than before. I told her, and asked her to take it off. She told me to leave it be. I was then sent back to the waiting area until a doctor could see me. After an hour, the pain was so bad, I could not hold back loud moans. They finally put me in a cubicle just to muffle the noise. When finally another nurse saw me, I told her how much worse the brace made my pain. She took a look and laughed. She took it off as she explained it was on upside down. She then left to laugh with the stupid nurse who put it on wrong.
The doctor told me to take Tylenol for the pain, and sent me home.
That was typical of the “care” I could expect there.
I spent some time there as a volunteer. I couldn’t push any wheelchairs, so I went room to room to see if any patients wanted to play cards, or have me read that sort of thing.
That hospital had inpatient care only for the terminal patients.
I visited one man who was very pleased to have me visit. I read a letter he’d had a few days and couldn’t see.
He nearly squirmed with delight when I asked if he played Cribbage. I told him when I came back I’d have a deck of cards with the big print numbers, and a cribbage board.
When I visited a few days later, he was gone.
I really hated that the last place those men would see was that damn hole.
They were sweet. All of them.
AND, they all served during a time when the draft was the in thing.

There is no doubt in my mind that we should be serving our veteran’s medical needs better than we are. I don’t see the will in Congress or the government, both in this and prior administrations, to fully fund an overall of the VA. I see this as bipartisan issue.

@Patty_Melt that’s the type of care I received in the military hospital I was in, in Colorado Springs. If my mother had not shown up they would have killed me.

@janbb I would love to see it as a bipartisan issue, but the liberals seem so opposed to the military and everything to do with funding the military, that I don’t think things will change.

@KNOWITALL I think there is a difference between funding a massive build up of weaponry and supporting vets who have served. I don’t see all Democrats voting against that and now that the Republicans are in power, I’m not hearing them saying anything about improving the VA either. I think it is maybe a bipartisan non-issue.

@KNOWITALL The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t come under the Department of Defense it is an independent agency that reports directly to the president.

@janbb Unfortunately you’re probably correct.

@flutherother Correct. I’m just saying liberals don’t seem to have much love for anything to do with the military, even if this is actually a social/ healthcare issue.

^^ true, @KNOWITALL.

I think most people have respect for the military though we might disagree on how big it should be.