The Future of the Department of Veterans Affairs
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
To the Editor. —The recent article by Drs Fisher and Welsh1 and the Editorial by Dr Pittman2 illustrate that the future of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is no less than the future of academic medicine. The future of both relies on solving the health care crisis, which itself is due to the following three main problems: escalating costs, lack of preventive health care for 40 million uninsured Americans, and the impending bankruptcy of academic medical centers.3
The VA's future is grim because of both demographic and financial considerations. The VA will soon lose its major patient base for the past 50 years—World War II and Korean War veterans now in their 60s and older. Even if the VA could lure more veterans and their families away from the private health care sector, it still faces the impossible task of competing with private health maintenance organizations
Footnotes
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Edited by Margaret A. Winker, MD, Senior Editor, and Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, Senior Editor.
