Playing Politics With Veterans'Health

摘要

Buried beneath the outrage over an alleged coverup of long patient delays at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Phoenix is this bit of counterintuitive good news: When vets actually get in to see a VA doctor, they typically receive decent care. Asked how well their "physical health needs are being met today," 85 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans responded "very well" or "somewhat well," according to an April Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey. The response to a question about "mental or emotional health needs" was almost identical. The split on both sets of answers was roughly 50-50 between "very well" and "somewhat well." "Study after study now confirms the VA system as a whole outperforms the rest of the health-care system on just about every metric that health-care quality can devise," Phillip Longman, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, told the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs at a hearing on May 14.