Originally posted by Mini D
Now you're just pulling numbers out of the air.
I'm wondering how many VA hospitals there are in the U.S. It can't be much more than 200. 1.4 bill translates to 70 mil per in extra. 8.3 billion translates to 415 million per hospital. That's at least 485 million per hospital simply in additional spending since the mid 90's. It's INCREASED since the time you said was optimal.
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The VHA runs a number of outpatient clinics and other facilities outside the traditional inpatient hospital setting. Your guess is probably off by a factor of 4 or so.
9.7 billion divided by 180,000 is $54k per patient per year. That is simply in increases. I don't know what their whole budget is, but if it goes up 9.7 billion and it's still not enough I gotta think it's not because they weren't getting enough money. My money says any private hospital run the same way as a VA would be bankrupt in no time at all.
Well no ****, a private hospital is a business. The mission of the VHA is to provide quality health care for veterans and current members of the armed services. Besides clinical care, the VHA supports a large amount of both basic and clinical research.
Those who served during WWII, the largest population of veterans, are entering the last stages of their lives. I remember the figure that 50% of a patient's health care costs are spent in their last year of life. It should be no surprise that the VA is running into higher costs.
