Fisher House Michigan and the Good News About the VA - November 2018
Fisher House Michigan and the 2018 “Stories of Service” Evening
Kate Melcher, former Apache Helicopter pilot and 2018 Michigan Veteran of the Year, joins Dale as co-host at the Fisher House Michigan “Stories of Service” on November 5, 2018 at Hill Auditorium.
Distinguished professor of German Literature and Cultural History, Guy Stern of “The Ritchie Boys”, tells of his US Army training and deployment in 1943 as a special military intelligence agent on D-Day+3. On the shores of Normandy, he acquired tactical info and as his tour progressed his team provided strategic info. The details for the methods to acquire information will be shared at the “Stories of Service” event. Mr. Stern notes that they always adhered to the Geneva Convention – “Never touch a prisoner.”
SUZANNE GORDON, A FRESH VOICE FOR THE HEALTH CARE OF VETERANS
How the VA Delivers Health, Healing and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans
U.S. military conflicts abroad have left nine million Americans dependent on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for medical care. Their “wounds of war” are treated by the largest hospital system in the country—one that has come under fire from critics in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the nation’s media. The resulting public debate about the future of veterans’ health care has pitted VHA patients and their care-givers against politicians and policy-makers who believe that former military personnel would be better served by private health care providers.
This high stakes controversy led Suzanne Gordon, award-winning health care journalist and author, to seek insight from veterans and their families, VHA staff and administrators, advocates for veterans, and proponents of privatization. Gordon spent five years closely observing the VHA’s treatment of patients suffering from service related injuries, physical and mental.
In Wounds of War (Oct. 15, 2018, Cornell University Press), Gordon describes how the VHA—tasked with a challenging patient population—does a better job than private sector institutions offering primary and geriatric care, mental health and home care services, and support for patients nearing the end of life. The VHA, Gordon argues, is an integrated health care system worthy of wider emulation, rather than piece-meal dismantling for the benefit of private contractors. In the unusual culture of solidarity between patients and providers that the VHA has fostered, the author finds a working model for higher quality health care and a much-needed alternative to the practice of for-profit medicine.
SUZANNE GORDON is co-editor of a Cornell University Press series on The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work. She has written or co-authored many books, most recently The Battle for Veterans’ Healthcare and Beyond The Checklist. For more information, visit Suzanne’s website.
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Dale,
Your political ideology is showing, my bet is that you are a democract. The timing of your interview with Suzanne Gordon and your soft ball questions were disgraceful. You having someone ,on this close to midterms ,asking to vote against Republican was less than professional. I know you known one of the “threads” as MS Gordon puts it, being pulled away from the VA, was to allow VETS to see private sector ,this was due to the fact it was taking, in some cases several months to get an appointment with the VA. VETS were actually dying wanting for appointment, you failed to bring this point up. Thank you for your service,but from one Vietnam vet to another keep your political ideology to your self when scheduling guess.