Reply #53: VA healthcare sucks!

[DollyM]

I know this is hindsite, but I would have checked my son into the nearest emergency room and had the bill sent to VA! We have actually done this before, since our VA hospital is 70 miles away, and VA paid it. They reduced a 4500 dollar ER bill to about half that in what they paid to the hospital but they did pay the bill and the hospital had to accept it. BTW, VA doesn not volunteer this information, we found out because a VA nurse whispered this to us during a VA hospital stay.
But, I still say that the answer is to allow veterans to use any hosptial for their care, just like a medicare or medicaid recipient can do.
When my husband had blood in his urine last year, we went to the closest VA clinic and were told that Dr was gone and would not be back that week and we would have to come back the next week. We knew what would happen then, he would be prescribed a cheap antibiotic that would be mailed and could take a week to get here, plus the time it took just to get to see a Dr. No thanks, we went home, contacted a local urologist, got in the next day and found my hubby had a bladder infection. We ended up with paying about 2000 dollars out of pocket for the Dr., hosptial for an MRI and a high powered antibiotic. But he got good treatment and got rid of the infection. I shudder to think how much damage this could have done if it was left until VA got around to seeing he got appropriate treatment for the condition.
My husband now has a good job with great health insurance, we will never use crappy VA health care system again if I can help it!