> First off, the VA isn't as bad as you're making it out to be.
From your own link, which is a press release by the firm which sponsored the research:
> Researchers say there were few studies [included in this meta-analyis] to evaluate equity, efficiency and patient-centeredness, and that the quality of the available studies vary.
Incidentally, those are three of the four main issues for which people typically criticize the VA.
In other words, that meta-analysis more or less confirms that the VA probably does well at the things people already knew it was good at doing, without looking into any of the areas where it's known to have problems.
> From your own link, which is a press release by the firm which sponsored the research:
I mean, it's the Rand Corporation. It's not like it's some fly by night 'you pay us and we'll say whatever you want' firm. The link to the real study is right there.
> Incidentally, those are three of the four main issues for which people typically criticize the VA.
That statement was for the whole study, including the private side. Once again, the VA publishes quite a bit of this information, when was the last time you saw average wait times for the private side?
> I mean, it's the Rand Corporation. It's not like it's some fly by night 'you pay us and we'll say whatever you want' firm.
...okay? The point is that the primary reference itself shows that the study isn't relevant to this conversation at all: by its own account, it doesn't attempt to investigate the issues that we're talking about. It doesn't attempt to study the issues that make the VA a bad model for healthcare (and have since the 60s).
From your own link, which is a press release by the firm which sponsored the research:
> Researchers say there were few studies [included in this meta-analyis] to evaluate equity, efficiency and patient-centeredness, and that the quality of the available studies vary.
Incidentally, those are three of the four main issues for which people typically criticize the VA.
In other words, that meta-analysis more or less confirms that the VA probably does well at the things people already knew it was good at doing, without looking into any of the areas where it's known to have problems.