VA: High-Quality Health Care At Low Cost
High-Tech Agency Earns Highest Ratings In U.S., And It's A Boon For Taxpayers, Too
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Play CBS Video Video The VA's Health Care Program In studies, the Veterans Administration has earned the highest health care quality rating and provides it at the lowest cost. Wyatt Andrews explains how this government agency has become so efficient.
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Video Online Medical Shopping Since doctors and hospitals can set their own prices, a procedure that's reasonably priced in one city might be astronomical in another. As Wyatt Andrews reports, the remedy is to surf the Web.
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Video Congress To Lower Drug Prices? The new, Democratic-led Congress says reforming the Medicare drug benefit is at the top of its agenda. Wyatt Andrews reports the key issue is who should negotiate prices.
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Excellent care at low prices keeps patients like 88-year-old George Sack coming back. (CBS)
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Video Archive Eye On Health CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook examines various health issues and treatments.
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Quiz Medical Exam Give your brain a checkup with these health quizzes.
If his choice surprises you, it doesn't surprise health care experts. In studies, including one by Harvard, and in six straight years of patient satisfaction surveys, the VA earned the highest health care quality rating in the country. It's also the least expensive.
It's a remarkable turnaround from the old VA, the uncaring place once derided in movies like "Born on the Fourth of July."
Today's VA looks like the future. It has thrown out the medical paperwork and put everything about its patients in the computer.
During Sack's exam, his medications, his diabetes and blood tests are all electronic records. In the radiology lab, there's no more x-ray film. Futuristic 3-D scans of patients are simply entered electronically. Sack can go to any VA clinic in the country and a computer will tell his doctor everything — from when his shots are due to when he hasn't taken his medicine.
"This computer keeps me honest," Sack says.
The VA is also a bargain for taxpayers, and not just because of the computers. Doctors are salaried employees, which saves on labor. Drugs are cheaper because of negotiated discounts. Even with its older population, VA care overall costs 30 percent less than the national average.
Dr. Ken Kizer, the former VA official who spearheaded the turnaround, says the rest of the health care system should be taking notes.
"What was done there works. Much of it is transferable to the private sector," Kizer says.
This doesn't that mean VA care is perfect. There are often long waits to see specialists, and some veterans just back from Iraq complain of inadequate counseling for war-related stress.
"I've come to grips with the fact that the system has failed me," says Chad Best, an Iraq war veteran. "And either I put up with it, or I shut up."
Still, Sack is pleased. Sixty-two years ago, then-Sgt. Sack risked everything to storm the beach at Normandy. Today, by delivering the most high-tech medical care anywhere, his country is paying him back.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."





How appropriate this article should be in the news, again, this time of the year. Sounds like a perfect snow job...
For 7 years, I have been treated, diagnosed, sent to specialists, with very little improvement of my symptoms as well as my general health conditions. Trying to explain my conditions, as well as attempting to convince the doctors that I am suffering from a chronic ailment for which there is no definitive cure, has been the most difficult thing I've had to cope with, given the facts that seem to indicate that no one is interested in my particular case, or ailment.
Given the great news of such improved care, causes me to wonder just where are these facilities, for I am at the point of moving to wherever one of these facilities are, just to get the proper treatment, in order to enjoy the rest of my life.