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Tag: Art Kellermann

Socialized or Not, We Can Learn from the VA

Art Kellerman RAND optimizedIn a post on the New York Times’ Economix blog not long ago, Princeton economics professor Uwe E. Reinhardt addresses the common characterization of the British health care system as “socialized medicine.” The label is most often used pejoratively in the United States to suggest that if anything resembling Great Britain’s National Health System (NHS) were adopted in the U.S., it would invariably deliver low-quality health care and produce poor health outcomes.

Ironically, Reinhardt notes, the U.S. already has a close cousin to the NHS within our borders. It’s the national network of VA Hospitals, clinics and skilled nursing facilities operated by our Veterans Healthcare Administration, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. By almost every measure, the VA is recognized as delivering consistently high-quality care to its patients.

Among the evidence Reinhardt cites is an “eye-opening” (his words) 2004 RAND study from in the Annals of Internal Medicine that examined the quality of VA care, comparing the medical records of VA patients with a national sample and evaluating how effectively health care is delivered to each group (see a summary of that study).

RAND’s study, led by Dr. Steven Asch, found that the VA system delivered higher-quality care than the national sample of private hospitals on all measures except acute care (on which the two samples performed comparably). In nearly every other respect, VA patients received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, and access to follow-up.

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Health Care Shibboleth

“We spend far more on health care than other peer countries yet have worse outcomes. Why is U.S. health care so expensive?” I’m sure you’ve encountered similar statements, maybe even expressed it yourself. It occurs often, including by knowledgeable people and health-related institutions. However, it’s a fallacy because it confuses health care with population health.

Health care is a proper subset of population health. For example, longevity is determined by more than just health care. Using a specific recent estimate (Appendix Exhibit A6 – gated), an average 20-year old U.S. white male who did not graduate high school will live 10.5 fewer years than a similar man with a college degree. That’s over ten years of life related to educational attainment. Sure, there are many reasons for the difference, and health care or the lack of it is only one of them.

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