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VA Survey Discovers "Vets Distrust VA"

By VVAW

Recently a couple of surveys were conducted about VA hospitals and its healthcare. In Washington DC 52% of Vietnam-era veterans were dissatisfied with the VA while in Cleveland 65% of the vets interviewed had negative reactions. A professor at Cleveland State University said, "Many Vietnam veterans viewed it (the VA) as another government authority like the one that got them into the war."

In a VA conducted survey they found that of the inpatient veterans most believed that they were getting the best medical care possible although only 35% thought they were getting sufficient information on their conditions. But 85% of the vets interviewed thought the doctors were genuinely concerned and were competent and thorough.

This apparent contradiction is because the doctor-patient ratio is the worst of any hospital systems. The doctors, while they are concerned with the patients are unable to attend to them adequately. As far as a majority of the patients thinking they are getting the best medical care possible they're probably right, because people who go to the CA can't afford the incredibly high cost of private healthcare.

In Congressional testimony the chief surgeon of the Bronx Veterans Administration hospital said that morale among VA doctors was so bad because of low salaries. He called the VA "a halfway home for doctors approaching retirement." Doctors at the VA make between $16-20,000 less than active duty medical officers.

So what kind of solution does a Congressional commission come up with? According to the National Academy of Sciences, the VA hospitals should be done away with and the services provided by the VA should be swallowed up by local hospitals. As one concrete reason they cite that the VA has 27,000 long-term beds with 44,000 patients in need of them. They also say that this number will triple in 20 years. It's no wonder the doctors can't spend enough time with the patients.

Doing away with the VA hospitals is no answer to our problems. City hospitals face the same neglect and they are victims of cutbacks too. In Philadelphia the only city hospital is being closed down. In other cities services are slashed to ribbons. If they try to cut out the VA hospitals they'll have some fight on their hands.

The ruling class in this country can come up with all the surveys they want, but the naked truth is that there's no profit in healthcare, so when conditions worsen the only solution they ever come up with is to pass the buck off on someone else. One way they can improve healthcare is to cut out the goddamn millions of dollars they spend on surveys to tell veterans what they already know--that the VA medical system is critically ill.