[revwardoc]

This problem isn't limited to VA hospital. It includes hospitals all over the country. My wife is a nurse and she has seen over the past several years conditions where she works deterioriate because "we don't have the money". Patients are denied necessary medical procedures and are routinely discharged too early mainly due to budget cuts. Hospital administrators have to come to the conclusion that you can't run a hospital like a regular business. They're not dealing with commodities; they're dealing with lives but the continue to treat people like they're just numbers on a page. A huge part of the budget drain comes from illegal aliens who don't have any sort of health insurance. If they're not insured somebody has to pay for their care and guess who it is! That's right, it's passed along to us in the form of "other" expenses on the bill which raises OUR insurance costs. Compassion for those without must be tempered with rationality.