According to Paul Krugman “this is socialized medicine, and it works.”
Via National Journal:
At least 1,700 veterans were kept off of waiting lists at the Phoenix Health Care System, a preliminary report from the Veterans Affairs Department’s inspector general confirmed Wednesday.
“While our work is not complete, we have substantiated that significant delays in access to care negatively impacted the quality of care at [the Phoenix] medical facility,” acting Inspector General Robert Griffin wrote in the new report.
And the issues there are not unique. “We are finding that inappropriate scheduling practices are a systemic problem nationwide,” he wrote.
Using a sample of 226 veterans at the Phoenix facilities, Griffin’s team found that veterans waited 115 days on average before receiving their first primary care appointment, far more than the 14 days recommended by the Veterans Affairs Department. Phoenix had reported its average wait was 24 days. Of those same veterans, 85 percent of them waited more than 14 days on average to receive care, while Phoenix officials reported that just 43 percent of veterans waited that long.
Nothing to worry about, Obama’s on the case:
