| Aug 25 @ 11:35 AM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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DiamondRain
Posts: 6,354
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8/24/09 CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) About 1,200 veterans have been mistakenly diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease. The Veterans Administration says the letters were sent in error. Some vets put themselves through a battery of painful, expensive and needless exams.
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| Aug 25 @ 11:50 AM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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redhairNfreckles
Posts: 4,694
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Many years ago I used to think the benefits offered to our vets was fantastic and something they could always appreciate after serving our country.
That was before I started hearing of the scary, incompetence of the VA health care. Talk with a vet about what his health care is like......it's shocking and half-assed! Shame! 
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| Aug 25 @ 11:53 AM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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SweetNapaGuy
Posts: 8,516
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Underfunded healthcare leads to mistakes.
I wonder what the level of mistakes are among private insurance-covered healthcare? Getting only two minutes to talk to a doctor certainly allows us to get our entire medical history across, doesn't it?
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| Aug 25 @ 12:00 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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DiamondRain
Posts: 6,354
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That's a liberals answer to everything. Throw more taxpayer money at it.
Never mind that we are already bankrupting the country with the money that is being spent on every wasteful, corrupt government bureaucracy already, let's double down and waste even more.
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| Aug 25 @ 12:03 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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DiamondRain
Posts: 6,354
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Where my father lives he has one of the best VA systems in the country.
My father went there and had such lousy care that he decided to forget about using the VA (even though it was free) and pays whatever he has to so he can use private (non government) doctors and hospitals.*
In some countries where they have Obama style medical systems, that is ILLEGAL. No matter how bad the government care is YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF IT.
That's what the liberal Obamacrat fascists are trying to have happen here.
DON'T LET THEM!
*PS: I hear this same story from the friends that I have in countries with systems like the one the Democrats are trying to impose on US.
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| Aug 25 @ 1:23 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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Nightowl001
Posts: 7,502
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As usual, the thread title is a lie.
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20090825/REG/308259979/1153A computer glitch mistakenly led more than 1,200 veterans to believe they had a fatal illness. According to the National Gulf War Resource Center, the Veterans Affairs Department erroneously sent out letters to veterans telling them they had “a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” or ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
As a result, the Gulf War veterans group was barraged by phone calls from veterans concerned that they had a terminal illness. “Many of these veterans went to private clinicians to get a second opinion. This second opinion outside of the VA is very expensive and can range from $1,000 to $3,000 or more,” the center said in a written statement on its Web site. VA employees are also personally contacting these individuals “to ensure they understand the letter should not be confused with a medical diagnosis of ALS,
They were NOT misdiagnosed. Not that I expect DR to bother understanding the difference. Of course, Moderrn Health Care screwed up the headline too. (They will be getting a complaint.)
[Edited on 8/25/2009 1:32 PM]
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| Aug 25 @ 1:38 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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MotownManiax
Posts: 9,737
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Bottom line is something needs to be done to reform the system, or every American will eventually suffer a fate even worse than the one DR supplied.
Right now, most Americans who are covered by employer-based insurance are happy with the setup, at least according to polls. But they are simply being shielded from the core problem, skyrocketing healthcare costs. It's a hidden monster, like the impending SS bankruptcy. Everybody will think they're safe and happy and still getting checks, until the fund can't cover expense and the government can't issue checks anymore.
Because of rising healthcare costs, more and more employers are cost-shifting to their employees, which means higher deductibles and more co-pays. Not many working Americans are feeling the real pain---paying 100% of their healthcare insurance. But that WILL change if present trends continue, make no mistake. Once too many people get socked with paying hundreds of dollars per "month" for their own, personal healthcare coverage, you will see a howl of protest that will make the present debate look tame in comparison. People will be lining up in the corridors of Congress "demanding" they do something about it.
I'm for healthcare reform but it has to be cost-effective. That means "real" reform, and not simply cost-shifting to another kind of system that's just as bad or worse. The last thing I want to see is some watered-down bill driven by a lobbyist's agenda and influence. Real reform will take guts and dogged determination, the ability to stand up to the myriad interests dedicated to stopping it. This is a question that not only goes to our Congress, but the country as a whole.
[Edited on 8/25/2009 1:44 PM]
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| Aug 25 @ 1:41 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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redhairNfreckles
Posts: 4,694
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I ran into a friend of mine this past weekend who is an Army vet from the Vietnam era.
He showed me the scar across his stomach and abdomen where he had extensive cancer surgery last month at a civilian hospital.
Unfortunately, because the VA farted and farted around forcing him to seek his medical care somewhere else, he now has a prognosis of 6 months or less.
Someone in the "private" industry must have had more than "2 minutes" to listen to him......
skyrocketing healthcare costs
Mo, exactly! 
[Edited on 8/25/2009 1:44 PM]
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| Aug 25 @ 1:41 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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SweetNapaGuy
Posts: 8,516
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We could always take the conservatives' approach to healthcare: "let the weak, frail, sick, and elderly die; once the public has been purged of its 'deadbeats,' we'll be a better country for it."
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| Aug 25 @ 2:16 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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lacyvsq
Posts: 6,171
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Underfunded healthcare leads to mistakes.
Why is it underfunded? The congress has shown a willingness to borrow or create the funds it wants for anything else -- including and especially their salaries, medical and retirement accounts.
I wonder what the level of mistakes are among private insurance-covered healthcare? Getting only two minutes to talk to a doctor certainly allows us to get our entire medical history across, doesn't it?
Death by hospital/doctor is the second leading cause of death in the US. This is small potatoes...
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| Aug 25 @ 2:26 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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SweetNapaGuy
Posts: 8,516
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Why is it underfunded?
It's traditional. Governments tend to care more about active-duty military than retired or disabled.
Of course, if we limited our role to only just wars, or worked to create stable genuinely democratic governments throughout the world, or formed international coalitions to seek to improve conditions, we'd probably have much less need of a military (maybe even down to the level of our allies?), and would have a less overburdened federal budget.
But that's just crazy talk...
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| Aug 25 @ 2:29 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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CowboyX
Posts: 613
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DR propaganda at work: Making false claims in order to promote his own political views and agenda.
Nothing new here... 
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| Aug 25 @ 2:41 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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SweetNapaGuy
Posts: 8,516
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To be fair to DR, for once he DIDN'T make it into a blog. For once, he had the intellectual integrity to post somewhere people could express dissenting opinions. I mean, how often does THAT happen? DR, risking his vaunted ego against the possibility he might be contradicted...?
It happens about once a month. Celebrate! 
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| Aug 25 @ 2:45 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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Gallows_Humor
Posts: 13,662
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so....these 1,200 vets.....out of the blue ...get a letter from the VA saying that they have
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Initial symptoms
The onset of ALS may be so subtle that the symptoms are frequently overlooked. The earliest symptoms are obvious weakness and/or muscle atrophy. This is followed by twitching, cramping, or stiffness of affected muscles; muscle weakness affecting an arm or a leg; and/or slurred and nasal speech. The twitching, cramping, etc. associated with ALS is a result of the dying motor neurons, therefore these symptoms without clinical weakness or atrophy of affected muscle is likely not ALS.
The parts of the body affected by early symptoms of ALS depend on which motor neurons in the body are damaged first. About 75% of people experience "limb onset" ALS. In some of these cases, symptoms initially affect one of the legs, and patients experience awkwardness when walking or running or they notice that they are tripping or stumbling more often. Other limb onset patients first see the effects of the disease on a hand or arm as they experience difficulty with simple tasks requiring manual dexterity such as buttoning a shirt, writing, or turning a key in a lock. Occasionally the symptoms remain confined to one limb; this is known as monomelic amyotrophy.
About 25% of cases are "bulbar onset" ALS. These patients first notice difficulty speaking clearly. Speech becomes garbled and slurred. Nasality and loss of volume are frequently the first symptoms. Difficulty swallowing, and loss of tongue mobility follow. Eventually total loss of speech and the inability to protect the airway when swallowing are experienced.
Regardless of the part of the body first affected by the disease, muscle weakness and atrophy spread to other parts of the body as the disease progresses. Patients experience increasing difficulty moving, swallowing (dysphagia), and speaking or forming words (dysarthria). Symptoms of upper motor neuron involvement include tight and stiff muscles (spasticity) and exaggerated reflexes (hyperreflexia) including an overactive gag reflex. An abnormal reflex commonly called Babinski's sign (the big toe extends upward and other toes spread out) also indicates upper motor neuron damage. Symptoms of lower motor neuron degeneration include muscle weakness and atrophy, muscle cramps, and fleeting twitches of muscles that can be seen under the skin (fasciculations). Around 15–45% of patients experience pseudobulbar affect, also known as "emotional lability", which consists of uncontrollable laughter, crying or smiling, attributable to degeneration of bulbar upper motor neurons resulting in exaggeration of motor expressions of emotion.
To be diagnosed with ALS, patients must have signs and symptoms of both upper and lower motor neuron damage that cannot be attributed to other causes.
[edit] Emerging symptoms
Although the sequence of emerging symptoms and the rate of disease progression vary from person to person, eventually patients will not be able to stand or walk, get in or out of bed on their own, or use their hands and arms. Difficulty swallowing and chewing impair the patient's ability to eat normally and increase the risk of choking. Maintaining weight will then become a problem. Because the disease usually does not affect cognitive abilities, patients are aware of their progressive loss of function and may become anxious and depressed..
and have to run to another doctor outside the VA to see what is what?? 
sounds like a planted story to me.. started by some low level computer tech.... who has an axe to grind...
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| Aug 25 @ 3:27 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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Loren62
Posts: 384
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We could always take the conservatives' approach to healthcare: "let the weak, frail, sick, and elderly die; once the public has been purged of its 'deadbeats,' we'll be a better country for it."
I couldn't have said it ANY better!!
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| Aug 25 @ 4:10 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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DiamondRain
Posts: 6,354
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My father just turned 88.
He is a WWII Navy combat veteran.
He recently developed a heart condition and went to the VA for treatment. Fortunately, on the brink of death, as a retired physician himself, he had the wisdom to realize how abysmal the care he was getting was. He would be dead now if he had relied on the VA government health care.
He checked himself out of the VA system and never went back. He's been seeing private physicians and is finally doing very well.
You'll never convince him that a government run health system is anything but a disaster.
Underfunded my ass. Liberals can never get enough of other people's money. It's never enough for them.
Take your bureaucratic dictatorship and shove it.
BTW... I'm sick of the phony charges that conservatives don't have any answers.
All you have to do is take a look a John McCain's town hall meeting today. You'll see all the answers we need. NOT A SINGLE ONE of the proposals he is promoting has even been MENTIONED in the Obamacrat's plan. These are proposals that have been around a long time such as tort reform so that doctors don't have to practice wasteful defensive medicine, deregulation of insurance companies to allow insurance to be sold across states to increase pool size and drive down costs and a many others that show proven cost savings instead of the phony cooked book accounting the Democrats are trying to sell.
The Obamacrats not only don't want you to discuss these ideas, they don't even want you to know these ideas exist. Why?
Because they don't benefit THEIR special interest groups (like trial lawyers) and they don't advance their REAL agenda, which is not to make the health care system better, but to take control of your rights by forcing you to rely on THEM for your health care needs.
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| Aug 25 @ 4:23 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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SweetNapaGuy
Posts: 8,516
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Yes, underfunded. The hospitals are understaffed and overloaded. Throughout most of our history, we've only raised armies when there was a war to be fought. A large standing army was almost unheard of. With the almost constant warfare and large standing armies from 1941 on, we've got a HELL of a lot more ex-military than we had at any other time in our history (i.e., prior to WW2).
But leave it to DR to feel that we don't have to fund our obligation to our nation's heroes. They fought and bled and often returned home maimed and mangled. But to hell with them, right, DR? They deserved it, for not ducking, or for being in the wrong place, or simply for not obtaining a deferment. It's all their fault, right?  
It's so much easier to send someone off to fight, than to deal with the consequences of that person's return to civilian life. Republicans have been neglecting our veterans for decades--they're not in uniform, so why should the conservatives give a damn about them?
***********
(And did anyone notice? DR hasn't yet acknowledged that he passed on a fear-mongering assessment of a computer error... Tsk tsk tsk... Still intellectually dishonest, and still pissed off that people disagree with him and he can't block their responses...)
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| Aug 25 @ 4:35 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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MotownManiax
Posts: 9,737
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DR does us a service by highlighting the horrors of the VA system. Napa does us a bigger favor by stating the obvious. You want quality healthcare for our vets, you pay for it. It's like anything else in society. You pay for cheap garbage, you get it. You pay for quality, you have a right to demand it. We have no problem spending gazillions on the infrastructure and hardware of defense, but pennies in comparison to paying our soldiers and caring for our vets. Maybe these priorities need to change.
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| Aug 25 @ 4:46 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease
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Gallows_Humor
Posts: 13,662
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He recently developed a heart condition and went to the VA for treatment. Fortunately, on the brink of death, as a retired physician himself, he had the wisdom to realize how abysmal the care he was getting was. He would be dead now if he had relied on the VA government health care.
He checked himself out of the VA system and never went back. He's been seeing private physicians and is finally doing very well.
sad that this is personal..as any attack on the post would/will be misconstrued as a personal attack..which it is not..
..but anyway..
what heart condition.. 
brink of death is so...dramatic..
as a retired doctor he knows what is what... so.. how close to death was he?? was he transported to an emergency room and then after being stabilized shipped over to the VA hospital?
what operations did he have... and what if anything...did the private health care doctors do that the VA doctors did not want to ..??
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| Aug 25 @ 4:59 PM |
Government Health Care At Work: 1,200 Veterans Misdiagnosed With Fatal Disease |
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DiamondRain
Posts: 6,354
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It's none of your business, or the government's business what heart condition my father has.
All I will tell you is that he almost died needlessly under the government's VA health care system.
They made one nearly fatal mistake after another and if my father had not been knowledgeable about medicine, he would probably have ended up dead.
It is a system full of bureaucrats and self serving government automatons. I witnessed it myself and I can only imagine how much worse yet it would become if EVERYONE was in that system.
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