No Amount of Money Will Fix the V.A.

https://goo.gl/qLO4M0

The Department of Veterans Affairs is the largest health care provider in the United States. The V.A. runs more than 1,700 locations, provides care to nine million vets and spends an annual budget of around $200 billion. It runs 163 hospitals and employs more than 200,000 people. By contrast, the next largest health care company employs just over 100,000.

That’s a lot of people, a lot of buildings and a lot of cash for what is — by all accounts — a substandard level of care for American veterans. Everyone agrees that the V.A. is broken and everyone seems to think that the best option for fixing it is to pour more money into the broken system.

But it won’t. No amount of money will fix the problem. Digging deep into government reports on the V.A. paints a picture of a systemically broken system, one that can’t build new facilities let alone care for wounded warriors.