makingmusic476 said:
Ah, so for 2012, you took the total budget ($132 billion) and multiplied it by the percent spent on medical programs to get $54.4 billion? I did the same for 2006 (data can be found in the report on the right hand side here) and got $6236 per patient per year, which is much higher than the $5000 reported by numerous news sites. I wonder how they're calculating the figure compared to how we're calculating it. And honestly, this makes me wonder how people are calculating the cost per person for private care as well.And I can't find any data detailing cost of care for veterans vs regular citizens, but I don't think it'd be dangerous to assume that veterans are more likely to have physical handicaps or suffer from mental conditions such as PTSD than the average US citizen, given many of our veterans have spent time in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Any such people would, theoretically, require more care than the average person, thus raising their total costs for the year. It doesn't change the current data we have available, but it's something to keep in mind. |
The problem is, everyone is quoting the CBO number.
The CBO number isn't "Spending per patienet" it's spending per enrollee.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8892/maintext.3.1.shtml
A few things to consider about VA Healthcare
Reason's it's cheaper then it looks
1) Like you said, people are more likely to be injured in the wars and such, though oddly the largest expendeutre per patient is actually. "Major disability not caused by/during service.
Reasons it's more exepnsive then it looks.
1) Cheap to No Copay. The Most expensive Copay for some priority groups is $15... and it's even waived in many cases... and all VA plans have Copays
Which means someone could have a cold and go in for that cold just for some antihistimines or something, spend 1 time at the doctors office and then basically that's "1 patient" while a lot of private insureres have straight "No Copay" plans because they're cheaper. As such people are less likely to bother the doctor over trivial things
2) VA bills other insurance companies. When you enroll in VA health insurance coverage you've got to submit your other health insurance needs. So if my Dad were to use a VA hospital, they would bill his Blue Cross insurance for anything non combat related. As such, for a lot of people, the VA is doing nothing but paying off the Copay's Deductables of other inusrance.
For example If my dad was hospitlized and it cost him $100,000 dollars, he had a 5,000 deductable and a 5,000 50% shared plan after that... his Private Insurance total treatment cost would be $99,000 and his VA total treatment cost would be $10,000
3) The VA doesn't count management, nor legal nor anything else really, while when it comes to health insurance I believe they straight count EVERYTHING it cost, right down to lawyers. (Which the VA also gets for free.)
Reason VA coverage isn't as good as you'd think.
1) The VA is only currently good because it was previously awful, in like, the most horrifying ghastly way possible. Like around 1994, they found 3 dead bodies of patients who were aloud to wander outside of a VA hospital... two had been missing for months.
One had been missing for 15 years.
They were stuck between major reforms and shutting down the VA all together, and what fixed up the VA? Well they union busted, and got the right to fire doctors they viewed as incompetant, they decentralized the system because the overall federal bueraucracy was costing all kinds of money, they instituted performance based market incentives for executives.
Which generally is the problem with government run programs... they're happy to roll with slowly declining mediocrity (Or in this case, rat infested pure awfulness) until their jobs are at stake.
EDIT: Which can be seen by the fact that Kizer, the guy who made the changes ended up getting blocked from recomfirmation because he redistributed funding based on veteran populations. Those states losing VA funding were pissed even though they had less veterans then they did previously, and made him pay.
