26 NEWSWEEK.COM MARCH 27, 2020
bureaucracy that fails to serve its constituents ad-
equately. In recent years, there have been stories
of fatally long waits for surgeries, filthy facilities,
sexual assault and suspicious deaths. That creates
an image of the VA as a cold, clueless, lumbering,
third-rate bureaucracy—the kind that awaits Amer-
icans if plans to increase the government’s role in
health care are enacted. “Every one of these plans
involves rationing care, restricting access, denying
coverage, slashing quality and massively raising tax-
es,” said President Donald Trump in October.
To be sure, the VA is neither perfect nor immune
from the challenges of providing health care at a
time of rising costs and aging populations. But by
focusing on the problems, critics ignore the contrary
evidence: by most measures, the VA and its DOD
counterpart, Walter Reed, make up arguably the
best-run health care operation in the United States.Comparison Tests
scrutiny can have an upside. as a public institution,
the VA has been subject to many in-depth, indepen-
dent studies that show how well it stacks up againstboth private and public health care systems in the U.S.
Quality of care, these studies show, is high in VA
hospitals and clinics. In 2018, researchers at Dart-
mouth College’s Institute for Health Policy and Clin-
ical Practice concluded that VA hospitals “outper-
form private hospitals in most health care markets
throughout the country” when it comes to quality of
care. The study’s lead author, Dartmouth Institute Pro-
fessor and physician William Weeks, added at the time
that “the VA generally provides truly excellent care.”
The Rand Corporation, a respected think tank,
came to the same conclusion in 2018. And in a sec-
ond study, Rand analyzed previous studies of the
VA and determined that the VA compares favor-
ably with the private sector. “When you see consis-
tent findings like these, it gives us confidence that
they’re real,” says Rebecca Anhang Price, the seniorpolicy researcher at Rand who led the studies.
Perhaps that’s why Senate majority leader Mitch
McConnell chose a government hospital—the Bethes-
da National Naval Medical Center, now known as
Walter Reed—in which to have a triple-bypass oper-
ation in 2003. That hasn’t stopped McConnell from
referring to government-sponsored care as a “far-left
social experiment” and vowing that legislation to en-
large government’s role in health care would never
pass while he was speaker.
Comparing VA health care directly against Medi-
care-Medicaid and private insurance is difficult be-
cause the systems are so different. Where compar-
isons can be made, the results usually suggest that
the VA is as good or better than private care, private
health insurance and Medicare-Medicaid. A 2015 Gal-
lup poll found that 78 percent of those receiving VA“VA HOSPITALS OUTPERFORM PRIVATE HOSPITALS IN
MOST HEALTH CARE MARKETS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.
IT PROVIDES TRULY EXCELLENT CARE.”
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