MSNBC is still inviting their favorite "military analyst" Col. Jack Jacobs on the air to push for privatizing the VA, but this Sunday he at least got some push back on the notion that they're not capable of providing quality health care.
Up's Steve Kornacki invited both his weekend fellow host and former Congressman Patrick Murphy and Kayla Williams from the VA’s Advisory Committee on Women Veterans along with Jacobs on his panel this Sunday to discuss the recent problems at the VA, and both Murphy and Williams disagreed with the notion that the Veterans Administration needs to be privatized, although none of them were against some of the partial privatization we've seen already being expanded.
Williams gave one of the better responses I've heard in a while to what Jacobs said in the prior segment, where he was repeating the claim he's been making for the last couple of weeks that the VA isn't capable of providing adequate care for our veterans. Sadly this isn't what he's met with every single time he appears on the air.
WILLIAMS: I do want to push back on something Jack said earlier about VA not providing good quality care, compared to Medicare and Medicaid. That simply isn't true. Independent outside assessments have shown that veterans seeking care within VA are more likely to get evidence based care that meets the standards that have been set than those using the Medicare and Medicaid system.
It is a good system. It provides high quality care. My friends, especially who have prosthetics would not want to get their care anywhere else in the world. My husband gets Tri-Care because he is a disabled combat veteran. He's sought care in the civilian sector in our community. They do not have the type of specialty care available in the civilian sector that he can get access to in the VA. It's a good system. We need to adequately fund it and if we want to expand the ranks of veterans who are able to access that care as we've done, we need to make sure that we also simultaneously ramp up the resources provided so that we can continue to do that.
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