Word: va
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Ghosh's "Baghdad Diary" put me in mind of a famous World War II saying: We sure liberated the hell out of that place. Connie Chapman Woodbridge, Va...
...Margaret Engel, managing editor of the Newseum, an Arlington, Va.-based interactive news museum said there are more important things to consider, like images that seemingly cast a divide between black and white survivors. Two in particular were now-infamous captions placed with Agence France-Presse and Associated Press photos. The AFP photo caption described two whites as "finding" food, while the AP caption described a black youth as "looting" a store...
...reforms produced results, veterans began "voting with their feet," says Dr. Jonathan Perlin, who just resigned as the VA's health under secretary. Hundreds of thousands abandoned private physicians and enrolled in the lower-cost and higher-quality VA care. But that created a new problem. The VA's budget from Congress (currently about $30 billion annually) couldn't cover the influx. By January 2003, with hundreds of thousands waiting six months or more for their first appointment, the VA began limiting access to only vets with service-related injuries or illness or those with low income...
Veterans' groups understandably want the health-care system expanded to accommodate vets with higher incomes and no service-related ailments. Tom Bock, commander of the American Legion, has another idea: allow elderly vets not in the system who are drawing Medicare payments to spend those benefits at a VA facility instead of going to a private doctor, as is now required by Medicare. "It's a win-win-win situation," he argues. Medicare, which pays more than $6,500 per patient annually for care by private doctors, could save with the VA's less expensive care, which costs about...
...system serving nonvets. But it's becoming more and more "ideologically inconvenient for some to have such a stellar health-delivery system being run by the government," says Margaret O'Kane, president of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, which rates health plans for businesses and individuals. If VA health care continues to be the industry leader, it may become more difficult to argue that the market can do better...