The reeds they grasp keep getting thinner...
McCamy Taylor (16,464 posts)
Can We "Privatize" the VA Without Jeopardizing National Security?
Serious questions. Appreciate your thoughts. Seems to me that if veterans---especially those with PTSD or other mental or physical problems that occurred as a result of military action-----have their care outsourced to private docs, a lot of sensitive military secrets suddenly will be recorded on less than secure electronic medical records. The insurers who administer the so called "private" VA will also demand access to records. Those insurers will also be vulnerable to hacks.
What if patients tell their non VA docs about secret missions? What if non VA docs learn about secret weapons? All of that information would then be available to the same Russians who hacked the election. Is this the real reason Trump has been so hot to "privatize" the VA? He will not be president long---and Russia will no longer have access to his security briefings. But if the VA is disbanded and the work outsourced to the private medical community, Russia could have an entirely new database to mine for secret information about our national security.
VA mental health records could also be exploited by domestic right wing terrorists who want to recruit. They could use what they learn to target veterans, taking advantage of their illness. Or by threatening to blackmail them. "We'll tell everyone what you did in the war of you don't do what we say."
radical noodle (2,111 posts)
1. Not all veterans use the VA
It isn't mandatory. My father fought in WWII but never used the VA. He always had private doctors... so I assume that this could already have been addressed in some way.
jberryhill (45,683 posts)
4. Did he have a service related injury
The most vulnerable persons would be those with service related injuries (of all kinds).
^ This idiot is supposedly an attorney.
AmericanActivist (606 posts)
2. Good question. nm
If you think it's a good question it's a profoundly idiotic question.
A-Schwarzenegger (14,727 posts)
3. Privatization of the VA is an evil and insane proposition
designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of veterans and veterans' health. If anybody thinks fear of jeopardizing national security will stop the Republicans from trying to privatize the VA and maximize corporate profits, not giving a shit about about veterans in the process, they have not been paying attention.
But you're OK with Obama funneling billions of taxpayers' dollars without congressional appropriation to prop-up corporations in his exchanges.
bearssoapbox (904 posts)
6. Privatization Equals Death for some of the vets
Last edited Fri Dec 30, 2016, 05:16 AM - Edit history (1)
Many are on a fixed income and cannot afford ANY increase in what they pay now.
Many will die because they cannot afford their meds, tests or any kind of care.
How many will give up and kill themselves so as not to be a burden or from depression because they can no longer afford to pay?
The damn reTHUGliCONS/gop and trCHump don't give a rats ass about the vets.
Your president and his waiting lists have killed more American service members than al Qaeda so **** off you hack.
cstanleytech (12,374 posts)
8. To be honest I have wondered why we need the VA at all because can't they get similar care via
Medicare and Medicaid?
denbot (5,440 posts)
9. No, how many GP's have experience with Dioxin.
How many can detect PTSD, from sleeplessness? Malaise, as a precursor to suicide? Believe me, our health care will suffer if many of us are are forced into civilian groups.
It's a 1 hour block of training.
But you would rather make excuses to keep the power.
queentonic (39 posts)
10. Don't Privatize the VA
I was an Army Medic in Vietnam and depend heavily on the VA for my health care that is specifically targeted for my injuries in Vietnam that Medicare Doctors don't have the expertise or even sympathy to understand. Privatization only means profits for the shareholders and insurance companies. That happened locally. A former Republican mayor of my city organized a group of doctors to create a clinic that received public funds to help poor people receive health care. What they did instead was cut services to the poor people way back so they could build up a higher profit margin and then turn around and sell it to a bigger insurance company. So this was public money converted into millions of dollars of profit for Republican business men. That's exactly what would happen if they privatize the VA. The veterans would end up being secondary to the shareholders and insurance companies. And believe it or not, this local profiteering of health care was all legal because the Democratic legislators didn't imagine that anyone would be so cruel as to deny health care to poor people for a higher profit. So they didn't include any penalties for this kind of business activity. WRONG !!!
I'm an Army medic here and now.
Privatize the VA and save lives.
Turbineguy (21,851 posts)
11. Privatizing the VA
is more republican smoke and mirrors to "reduce costs". Veterans who die, save them money. And since life has no value once you are born...
Be sure to stand on your record.
hunter (25,280 posts)
15. I've never understood how extracting profits from a formerly non-profit agency "reduces costs."
It's Orwellian doublespeak.
If a for-profit can increase efficiency, so can a non-profit.
But many of these increases in efficiency, of "productivity," are harmful, especially in medicine. The suffering begins on the front line, with staff who have direct contact with patients. Experienced nurses are replaced with less-experienced, less educated staff. The caseloads of primary care physicians escalates until they can't practice anything but "checkbox" medicine. Administrators award contracts to businesses that don't pay living wages and hire undocumented workers who live in conditions approaching slavery.
They only people making healthcare unworkable are you megalomaniacs.
As for everything in bold...
What?
madokie (48,399 posts)
12. On the other hand
as flawed as the VA is I wish everyone in this country had a system as good as the VA is bad for their health care. Privatizing only means less care for me and more money in a few rich assholes, (who really don't need the extra money,) Pocket. **** that noise.
I wish government healthcare had killed as many Proglodytes as it has killed vets.
Lee-Lee (3,190 posts)
13. Several things here...
First, the VA is a civilian agency and in no way part of the DOD.
Most VA doctors and nurses are not veterans. Virtually none of them hold any sort of security clearance or have any training on how to handle classified information. The only ones who would hold an active clearance would be those also in one of the reserve components of the US military in a position that requires it.
The VA computer system is in no way, shape or form set up for not approved to handle "military secrets". No classified information should ever be on there any more than it should be on the systems of any other typical government agency like HHS or HUD.
There is no indication the VA computer systems are in any way more secure than private health care systems. I can tell you for a fact that in virtually every way the VA computer systems lag about 10 years behind in technology and capabilities compared to what you see in the private sector. Heck, it was only very recently that they actually upgraded the VA system to allow codes for female specific diagnoses it was set up assuming all patients were male long ago and never changed.
So, in short, the idea that VA systems or VA doctors are somehow equipped to or more capable of safeguarding any information a patient wrongly passes to them is pretty much totally without merit or any grounding in reality. Being a VA employee gives them zero clearance or training on the matter and VA computer systems are no safer and in fact, due to how poorly run and constantly out of date they are probably more susceptible to compromise.
Now, as a patient who uses VA services I would very much like to be given the option of using VA doctors and services or choosing to go to a private practice or specialist and having the VA pay for it. When I was uncomfortable with the only choice given of an gynecologist at my old VA facility my only option to get another was to drive a 5 hour round trip to the next closest VA hospital. It would have been so much better to just be able to choose one in town.
The VA kind of tried this with the VA choice program but the screwed it up badly. It said if you were over so many miles you could choose a private doctor. But first they made the arbitrary decision at some facilities that the mileage limit Congress set was to be measured in nautical miles straight line to make it as ft as possible, so your actual drive might be 80 miles to go around rivers or mountains but straight line on a map it was 39 nautical miles making you ineligible. Then they badly, badly bungled paying the private doctors causing most to no longer accept the program after a short while and even causing some vets to have bills sent to collections in their name screwing their credit. They fixed the mileage issue to be driving miles everywhere but the damage from late payments remains with most providers no longer willing to take the system and vets with damaged credit.
^ Not my mole
...or is it?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028413570
