Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized

[Lakhota]

By Michael McAuliff

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney floated an eyebrow-raising suggestion on Veterans Day: privatize veterans' health care.

Speaking with a dozen vets in an occasionally emotional roundtable discussion in South Carolina Friday, the GOP presidential contender sympathized with the service members' difficulties obtaining treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which one vet described as "adversarial."

Romney, who has already proposed privatizing Medicare, suggested that maybe giving wounded warriors an outside option would force VA health bureaucrats to be a little more responsive.

"When you work in the private sector and you have a competitor, you know if I don't treat this customer right, they're going to leave me and go somewhere else, so I'd better treat them right," Romney said. "Whereas if you're the government, they know there's nowhere else you guys can go. You're stuck.

More: Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized

 

[Lakhota]

I have mixed emotions about this. I also question Romney's motives since he also wants to privatize Medicare.

 

[Lakhota]

Romney Spit-Balls His Way To Privatizing Veteran’s Benefits | TPM 2012

 

[Greenbeard]

I have mixed emotions about this. I also question Romney's motives since he also wants to privatize Medicare.

Given the vagueness of what Romney has "proposed" (I'm using the word generously here), it's not clear what he wants to do with Medicare. The key phrase he uses on his website is: "Give future seniors a choice between traditional Medicare and many other healthcare plans offering at least the same benefits." That's how things already work so it's not particularly clear what new ideas he's offering.

Eliminating the VHA, on the other hand, would be new.

 

[rdean]

VA Hospital Care is considered to be among the best in the world. Of course, nothing is perfect. You can find horror stories everywhere. But the VA spends around 94cents of every dollar on the patients. For health care companies, it's much less. Just the fact that health care CEO's can make paychecks of over a hundred million dollars. How many people are denied care and policies skimmed to make a single one hundred million dollar paycheck? Republicans call that "good". It's their version of capitalism. Wonder what their Jesus would call it?

 

[Lakhota]

Oh well, he's probably flip-flopped by now.

 

[FactFinder]

Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized

Maybe we should look at how much private contractors cost us in Iraq. and...how much they still are.

 

[Lakhota]

The private sector can't wait to get its hands on Social Security, Medicare, and veterans health care.

 

[rdean]

The private sector can't wait to get its hands on Social Security, Medicare, and veterans health care.

It's why they are buying up every Republican politician they can.

 

[007]

Maybe VA health care needs an overhaul. Privatize it... mmmm... not sure about how that would make it better.

 

[WatertheTree]

Romney Spit-Balls His Way To Privatizing Veteran’s Benefits | TPM 2012

Ya thats what the government needs, more mandatory spending to a crony businessman so he can deliver substandard services at twice the price while driving down wages.

No fucking thank you.

 

[WatertheTree]

The private sector can't wait to get its hands on Social Security, Medicare, and veterans health care.

It's why they are buying up every Republican politician they can.

And you suggest that they have less interest in democrats for some reason?? My ass your leaders are bought by the Oligarchy to.

 

[WatertheTree]

The private sector can't wait to get its hands on Social Security, Medicare, and veterans health care.

Its called business conservative. They think government should exist only to give corporations money.

 

[Luissa]

Maybe VA health care needs an overhaul. Privatize it... mmmm... not sure about how that would make it better.

Why would it need an overhaul? Why fix something that isn't broken?

 

[Amelia]

"Spit-balls" versus "brainstorming"?


Kinda depends which side the spitballer is on, huh?



Obama spitballing is brilliance.

Romney tossing out ideas is a reason for multiple threads criticizing him.

 

[Luissa]

Mitt is an idiot for suggesting this on veterans day.

 

[Lakhota]

Veterans already have enough problems! Unemployment and banks trying to fuck them!

Wounded Veterans Struggle To Find Civilian Jobs Amid Downturn, Bureaucracy

House VA Committee Investigating Mortgage Fraud by Banks

 

[Luissa]

If 94 cents on the dollar goes to patient care, I am wondering why it needs to be overhauled or privatized? So less goes to care and more goes to the private sector?

 

[Luissa]

Can't post link, but if you google patient satisfaction and the VA one article from 2006 states that satisfaction is higher for patients of the VA than among Americans and private sector care. It also stated that had been higher for the last six years. Unless this has had a dramatic change, why should we change their health care?

 

[Greenbeard]

To build on that point:

Not only does the Veterans Health Administration score better on quality measures than virtually any other area of the American health care system (RAND, CBO), it rates considerably higher in patient satisfaction than do other payers or providers. In 2010, the VHA had an American Consumer Satisfaction Index score of 85 for inpatients at VA medical centers and 82 for outpatients at VA clinics. Hospitals nationwide had a rating of 73 that year and health insurance also had a rating of 73 (the highest scoring individual big name insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, scored a 70).

Regarding their costs, that CBO report cites research showing that "if the federal government had tried to buy from providers in the private sector the same array of services and products delivered to veterans by the VHA in 1999, the cost to taxpayers would have been $3 billion more in that year. (That higher cost represents an increase of about 17 percent over VHA’s total budget of $18 billion for that year.)"

Indeed, the VHA's cost growth has been relatively tame compared to the rest of the health system:

Adjusting for the changing mix of patients (using data on reliance and relative costs by priority group), CBO estimates that VHA’s budget authority per enrollee grew by 30 percent in nominal terms from 1999 to 2007. Although that estimate is not as low as the growth rate suggested by the unadjusted figures, it still indicates a substantial degree of cost control when compared with Medicare’s nominal rate of growth in costs per capita over that same period.

For comparison, private insurance premiums grew by an average of more than 9 percent per year over that 8-year period (and national health expenditures grew by more than 7 percent per year).

So to sum up: the VHA is associated with higher quality, higher customer satisfaction scores, and lower cost growth than the rest of the American health sector. They also remain ahead of the game on factors like care integration and use of electronic health records.