Admittedly, this is rather a bold policy change. We have the Veterans Administration Hospital System and we have Medicaid. My proposal is simple but not easy.
Swap the two systems. Expand and use the current VA clinics and hospitals to treat all citizens without health insurance and provide service-connected veterans with private health insurance.
- Every veteran has a well documented history going back to their time of enlistment. We know who they are, where they served and a history of illnesses and injuries.
- The veteran population is limited in numbers and is much smaller than the general population currently covered through Medicaid.
- Wounded veterans deserve and have earned the right to choose their own path of medical treatment.
- There is absolutely no need to have a middle man, insurance companies, coming between the general population on Medicaid and their health care considering it is the tax payers who are footing the bill.
- I think the expanded treatment of wounded veterans and insurance costs would be less expensive in the long run over the corruption and fraud in the Medicaid system.
My belief in simply proposing this solution would create a major backlash from the private citizenry thinking they would receive inferior care at the current VA system. Ironically, they currently have no issues with our veterans receiving their care at the same hospitals however.