CNN.com reports on 5/20/14: For six months, CNN has been reporting on delays in medical appointments suffered by veterans across the country and veterans who died or were seriously injured while waiting for appointments and care.
The VA requires its hospitals to provide care to patients in a timely manner, typically within 14 to 30 days.
The most disturbing and striking problems emerged in Arizona last month as inside sources revealed to CNN details of a secret waiting list for veterans at the Phoenix VA. Charges were leveled that at least 40 American veterans died in Phoenix while waiting for care at the VA there, many of whom were placed on the secret list.
But even as the Phoenix VA’s problems have riveted the nation’s attention, numerous whistle-blowers from other VA hospitals across the country have stepped forward.
Republicans and others are saying that the VA health care scandal is an embarrassment for the Obama Administration, and his officials should resign.
But neither Barack Obama nor his minions are capable of embarrassment. Like most career politicians and bureaucrats, they don’t see themselves as capable of any wrongdoing. According to their ideology and attitude, anything the government does with “good intentions” is automatically good, and anybody who criticizes them is by definition not worth their time.
This is not merely a personal flaw on the part of the narcissistic Obama. It’s the kind of attribute encouraged and rewarded by the very nature of unaccountable government agencies and regimes whose responsibility is not provision of quality, but merely going through the motions fostered by politics-as-usual so they may continue to expand their budgets. And it continues to work for them, because American voters will not (as of yet) demand or permit any significant alternative to government’s present involvement in medical care.
According to Newsmax.com [5/20/14], The Washington Post is saying that the Obama Administration knew about problems in VA facilities during the transition process from the Bush Administration back in 2008-2009. If true, this evidence only shows that the problem with the VA is that it’s a single-payer approach to insurance. Single-payer insurance refers to doctors and nurses who work for one entity — in this case, the VA — and consequently have no real accountability beyond the minimal. The same applies to the people who administer and run VA hospitals and health care service centers.
Whenever an entity cannot go out of business, and does not face the threat of competition, it will tend to act in ways that are, at best, mediocre, and at worst, negligent.
Why is this so shocking? Why is this news?
The VA scandal is not primarily an example of how incompetent and hypocritical the Obama Administration is. It’s primarily an example of why we should not have single-payer insurance in the first place. Instead, we should have a free and open, competitive marketplace where patients bid for the best possible service at the best price. If such a free market in medicine existed, most veterans would probably rush to it in place of the VA. Competition and deregulation would keep costs down and offer maximal choices to intelligent consumers, instead of the passive, ignorant sheep the federal government requires us to be when utilizing single-payer models of health insurance.
The United States is not yet single-payer. That’s the only reason millions of American medical patients are not in the state of veterans and others stuck with government insurance. The “ObamaCare” legislation takes us in the direction of single-payer insurance. By forcing millions of people onto either Medicaid or government-dictated health plans, the legislation imposes a one-size-fits-all approach to the provision of medical services, something at odds with what millions of people with diverse needs and preferences require.
We don’t expect or want one-size-fits-all with most other things. But when we deem something highly important — education or health care — then we tell the legislators, “Get the marketplace out and make it work the right way.” Seriously? In the pure and undiluted form, the VA is what you get: Depravity, negligence and scandal. What else can you expect?
Obama was supposed to be the brilliant politician who could fix everything. When he waved his magic wand, it was supposed to work, even though the same magic wand never worked for any rulers throughout world history attempting the same imperialistic schemes.
This scandal should be the final proof, assuming any more was required, that government-run/command-and-control/single-payer cannot work — not for veterans, and surely not for the entire population. Not if “work” means saving people’s lives and doing so in a competent, rational and humane way.
The health care reform we need more desperately than ever? A complete privatization and deregulation of the medical industry. We’re stuck with Medicare for now, but it should be phased out for younger generations and a free market must be opened up in both health insurance and hospital and medical care. It may take years to accomplish, but this is the only direction we can or should go in, from this point onward.
Stop the insanity. Hit “delete” on Obama’s policies and stop pretending they’re anything remotely new.
Anything less will mean a cloak of despair over the lives of medical patients and their loved ones, not unlike that already enveloping the veterans who languish on waiting lists for subpar care.
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