Civilian Doctors Untrained To Take Care of Veterans, Duh!

Very timely consideirng today is Halloween and for the most part veterans have been finding either great care or walking away as if someone just played a trick on them in exchange for their service. Congress has been playing more of an April Fool's joke on them when they say they will fix the VA but sought to kill it and privatize it instead.

Expert: Most physicians outside VA are untrained to handle vets' issues
The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa. (Tribune News Service)
By Jon O'Connell
Published: October 31, 2016

SCRANTON, Pa. (Tribune News Service) — Most veterans get some health care from private doctors.

But most doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system aren’t trained to identify service-related illness, according to a physician working to educate clinicians on the issues.

“While everybody seems to be mostly focused on the health care that veterans are getting at the VA, it sort of went unnoticed that 80 percent of veterans get most of their health care from civilian providers,” said Jeffrey L. Brown, M.D., a clinical professor of pediatrics at New York Medical College who also teaches at Weill Cornell Medicine.

While about 40 percent of veterans get some health care from the VA, only about 20 percent of all veterans rely totally on the VA, according to a 2015 government survey of health and health care use.

Dr. Brown, a pediatrician and retired U.S. Army medic, carried a .45 pistol and treated wounded and sick soldiers and, at times, local children in Vietnam. Late in his post-military private practice career, a New York Times article alerted him that anyone who served in Vietnam should consider themselves exposed to Agent Orange, a carcinogenic defoliant used to kill thick plant growth and expose hiding Vietnamese fighters. Those veterans risked serious illness like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
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