Price for Immunity
We can’t do that much about that part, but I think it’s important to
understand.
But a lot of people are also struggling with the cost of getting
healthcare in their life.
And so there’s all kinds of reasons people have the kind of
relationship that they do with health care providers. I think
sometimes, I think it’s easy to blame people for it, but I think it’s
more important to understand the barriers that people have, that keep
people from getting their needs met.
I do know that we’ve had a lot of discussion about whether, the
other reason people don’t always go for care, and they go when it’s
too late, that care is just too expensive.
Many of the families that have had a loved one that has been
injured at Walter Reed or Bethesda Naval Hospital have said that
there’s been a financial cost. And that the family has had to change
its own financial situation to pay for that kind of care.
I think the fact that we’re asking people to pay more to help
sustain these two kinds of bills, I don’t think it’s totally that
easy, but I do think that we are in a position to figure out ways to
address both of those problems.
It’s going to take all of us.
We’re in a position to be able to work on both, both front-end
and back-end.
Funders’ Role in the Problem
Let me tell you a little bit about what the military and VA have
done to try to deal with these kinds of problems.
So a lot of what you think of as the military is the individual
troops, but actually most of it is paid for by the government. So
that includes health care. And, as we all know, health care is not a
solved problem. But it’s one of the hardest things to fix because it
takes so much out of the budget.
And so as I said, we have so many of these people coming back with
disabilities. And this is a huge cost to both of these health care
programs, military health care and VA health care. And so the
military and the VA and us, the government, are in a position where
we have these two different health care systems, each with different
kinds of systems. And each have worked to try to meet this challenge.
So what we have done, both at the military side and at the VA side,
is tried to make some adjustments to try to deal with these rising
costs. We know that as the number of injured troops and veterans grows
we’re going to have to do more and more because we’re going to be
caught short. We’re going to be caught short when it comes to
supporting them with this kind of care.
But what we’ve been trying to do is, we’ve been trying to look
for ways to, first of all, manage these cost increases. But we’re
trying to make it sustainable so that we can keep doing this. We’ve
been using some things like bundled payments, which we’re seeing in
the civilian world as a way to try to reduce costs. We’ve seen it in
the past with other things, but we’ve been working with Congress on a
variety of proposals.
We have been looking at other approaches, some of them we’ve seen
in the civilian world, but we’re trying to use them to reduce the cost
for the care in the civilian world, and for the military side to try
to manage this. So, that we’re able to do this.
We’ve also used the fact that we get these large payments from the
government to help support us in having the capacity to make these
payments for the services we need. And what this means is we’re also
trying to develop a kind of system that can keep up with our
production as well.
And as we’ve continued to have people that are wounded, and having
other needs in their lives, and we’ve had all these people
transitioning out, it’s still being a challenge for us.
So let me explain what we’re doing in terms of addressing this.
We’re trying to look at different kinds of things. Again, some of
these are things we’ve seen in the civilian world and how other parts
of our health care system try to respond to this. But we think that
there are lessons that we can learn from them.
For example, one of the things that we are trying to do is
actually make these payments more efficient. So we can use them to
provide the kinds of care that we need. And make them more efficient.
In other words, they’re not being used in ways that are as productive
as they could be.
So we’re looking at different ways to do that. For example, we have
a different kind of payment system that makes it less costly for us
to pay for this care. And so we’re trying to change that to, make
more money to help offset some of the costs.
Another thing we’re doing is, we’re actually also looking at a
kind of program that would look to deal with some of the unmet needs
and that’s particularly where we’re looking at the problems we have
with people that are more severely injured, and their special
needs.
And so part of that program is looking at a kind of triage of care,
so that we can help to figure out, when a patient needs more care,
that we’ll be able to provide that more effectively.
This is a kind of system where we’re thinking about how we can
improve care. And so one of the things that we’re looking at right
now is looking at how we can try to address some of these unmet needs
in other ways. Like, making it a little bit easier for people to go
for care. And also to find ways to have some kind of early support
for people before they get their injuries that would prevent them from
having those problems. So trying to address that.
There are a lot of challenges. We know that we have a huge need for
this kind of help. And we think that, again, it’s our obligation to
help with that. And we think it’s important for us to be able to do
that in a way that’s sustainable. And we think that we can do that in
a way that’s also fair to both the country and our wounded warriors.
And, again, our wounded warriors, people who are injured.
What’s the Problem?
There is another thing that people want to know about. This has
been a question for a long time. The question is, why is the VA more
expensive than military health care? And why is it such a big problem?
We don’t know the answer to that.
I can tell you that, for example, we have one of the largest numbers
of people serving in the military than ever before. And so I think
that we have, of course, an even bigger population to take care of.
And we have some different kind of systems. For example, we don’t
do triage the same way that military health care does. That is
another challenge.
But I think one thing that is clear is that we’ve always tried to
treat every single one of our wounded, because we want them all back,
you know, we want them to get out of here healthy. And so if someone
has a problem, they want them to get help. And we try to deal with
that with compassion and with, what we call being patient-centered. So
that we can get them in for the care that they need.
But I think we also know that we have a lot of different kinds of
ways of doing things. And a lot of those ways may not make sense
in the civilian world. But the system we use for medical care has a
way of dealing with that, and I think those kinds of things are also
making it a more complex system.
And that’s one of the challenges we’re facing.
For example, I’m not just talking about the way we have systems to
treat people, but what I’m talking about also are the people that we
work with. So there are a lot of people involved in taking care of
these people, and those kinds of things. And, in order for the system
to work, there are people that you have to have in order to, to get
the right kind of care. So it’s kind of a complicated system. And we
try to think through those kinds of challenges and work on solutions
for them.
The other thing that we know is that we do have some of the
greatest warriors that we have seen. And what the president said is
very true. And one of the things that we need to do is make sure that
we’re getting the care that they need. And we’ve been focusing a lot
on the quality of the
