EDITORIAL: Health care worker shortage another reason to privatize VA

There's a powerful reason to fully privatize the health care delivered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, a reason with far more urgency than the incompetence, inefficiency and absence of accountability that continue to plague the federal agency.

As reported last week by USA Today, the system has 41,500 open positions for doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, meaning nearly one-fifth of its medical jobs are vacant.

The VA would have Congress and taxpayers believe that the agency's inability to fully staff its budget-busting hospitals is largely responsible for delays in care that are driving more veterans to seek treatment outside the VA system at VA expense. But the shortage of health care workers is not exclusive to the VA. Every corner of the country is coping with a worsening shortage of health care workers — thousands of physicians and nurses are retiring every year as an aging population requires more health care — yet people can see a doctor much sooner outside the VA. No, the centralized nature of the behemoth VA and its politicized bureaucracy have more to do with delayed care than vacant positions.

But, for argument's sake, let's say the VA would become more responsive and efficient if it got much closer to full staffing. The only way to poach that many workers is to pay above-market wages and benefits. Is there an agency less worthy of a bumped-up salary structure than the VA? And every medical professional hired by the VA to care for veterans is one fewer worker available to care for the larger nonveteran population.

It makes no sense to have a government-run system competing for workers with the country's far-superior, taxpaying, privately operated health care system. There won't be enough health care workers for either system in the decade ahead and beyond; some studies project a shortage of more than 700,000 workers by 2025.

But if Congress privatizes VA services, which would allow veterans to get their care anywhere through Medicare-style reimbursement and allow VA health care workers to care for nonveterans, the pain of reduced access to care would be less acute for everyone.

Congress should ignore the VA's increasingly desperate pleas for a new multibillion-dollar bailout and instead start the process of unwinding the entire agency. Privatize the VA now.