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Women Vets Get Worse Care, Review Finds
Submitted by anthony on Sat, 2008-06-14 01:44
Story here. Excerpt:
"Women veterans aren't receiving the same quality of outpatient care as men at many Department of Veterans Affairs' facilities, according to an agency review obtained exclusively by The Associated Press.
The review appears to validate the complaints of advocates and some members of Congress who have said the health care system needs to focus more on women's health.
Women make up about 5 percent of the VA's population, but that number is expected to nearly double in the next two years as more women return home from Iraq and Afghanistan and seek care.
The review of the quality of care at VA facilities, which was mandated by Congress, found that at about one-third of its facilities, the quality of outpatient care given to women wasn't as good as what was offered to men."
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Comments
"Women receive better health care than men"
Will we ever see such a headline? Never. Yet it is true, at least here in "the western world".
I don't think it's possible in the current media climate to imagine such a headline ever existing. Truth be damned, apparently.
R - U Surprised?
If women were the ONLY ones getting health care a report would ALWAYS say they were getting less health care than men even though men were not getting any health care at all.
PS: June is MEN'S HEALTH CARE MONTH.
Didn't know that? No surprise there either!
See: http://www.menshealthmonth.org/
Quality Is?
Nowhere in the article is "quality of care" defined, nor are any of the basic criteria for quality care identified.
If length and intensity of care were included, one would expect that the fact that 98% of severely wounded soldiers are men would skew stats in the direction of "better" care for men.
The returning female G.I. needs a scan for possible lung cancer.
The returning male G.I. needs two artificial legs.
Propaganda!
Matt:
The soviets made a statement to the tune of; The u.s. has the best propaganda system in the world, where thier People didn't belive theirs, our People did. So yes Matt, it obviously is damn the truth!
David A. DeLong
I know this to be fiction
As a veteran I have been using the VA system for a number of years. I can tell you the "one in ten" number is B.S. Based on who is waiting for prescriptions to be filled by the pharmacy (people waiting for their meds while I also am waiting), maybe 1 in 25 are women. And, they're often spouses or widows who get benefits because their husbands served; they themselves are not veterans (the waits are rather lengthy, so it is easy to observe the ratio of men to women). Also some of them are picking up meds for their husbands because he cannot come to the facility due to disability. In sum, although it may be true that 1 in 10 people using the VA are women, most of these women are not veterans themselves.
I do not believe that in all these years I have seen more than two or three severly physically disabled women (i.e. a woman in a wheelchair or with a prosthesis, etc.). Also I used a physical therapy clinic for a few months, and all the people present on all my visits were guys. The VA is not just for retired soldiers but also for those with service-connected disabilities, many of whom are relatively young. Anyone can deduce that since most of those injured will be "front-line" casualties, and since almost all of those are men, men will comprise greater than one in ten of those using the VA who are actual veterans.
And, with all the special "women's clinics" at the facilities, how can they be getting substandard care? Is someone prepared to tell me the VA (or any other entity) would establish special clinics, then give poor care within those clinics?
Finally, in the wake of the Walter Reed scandal, I completely fail to believe that anyone at all is currently getting substandard care from the VA. To the VA's credit, I have almost always gotten good care (that is, from a medical perspective; the staff in general, besides most of the doctors and some of the nurses, are rude condescending pigs, but that's typical of government workers who interface with people).
The "study" results appear to be politically motivated, probably by politicians seeking women's votes and/or who are under pressure from feminist groups.
-ax