“Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglas
Not one single veteran’s life will be saved nor any veteran be brought back to life by Shineski falling on his sword, or, perhaps more accurately, shoved onto his sword by Obama, hoping to cool the scandal. The problem with the Veterans Administration is the system, a single-payer system, controlled by government bureaucrats, a single payer system where government holds the purse string and creates the regulations that run the system.
And regardless of all the hand wringing and verbal moans coming out of Congress and the White House, it’s an on-going scandal that D.C. chose to ignore. It suits the agenda of the “make love, not war” crowd that now control our government; the very crowd that spat upon Vietnam returning vets, a crowd that includes none other than Secretary of State John Kerry, following in the foot-steps of the likes of Hanoi Jane.
A single-payer healthcare system is, at its most basic, a government run monopoly, the same type of monopoly that will soon be imposed on American citizens. Already liberals are bemoaning the problems associated with ObamaCare, but instead of blaming the system they created and voted into law, they are openly calling for a single-payer system similar to that of Canada or the UK, neither of which have been a success.
If you think veterans waiting six months or more to see a VA doctor is bad, what do you think is going to happen under ObamaCare or worse, a government run single-payer VA system for the American people? As Robert Moffitt of Heritage Foundation testified to Congress, “you can’t get more of something by paying less for it.”
Did the Democrats who forced ObamaCare upon us think that cutting reimbursements by $716 billion over the next ten years was going to have U.S. doctors clamoring to work more hours for less pay? The answer to that is, of course, they didn’t really care. ObamaCare wasn’t about providing better health care or cutting heath care costs – it was about control.
Bloated bureaucracy, gross inefficiency, overwhelming regulatory burdens and cost over-runs have plagued government and government run programs since their inception. The need of the end user is never as important as that of government or individual power.
Fifteen years ago, the UK’s socialized health care system was rocked by a scandal similar to the current VA debacle. There, it was children with congenital heart disease. The British blue ribbon panel report concluded that government controlled health care created a culture of complacency, rationalization and justification, with cover-up utilized when necessary. The Panel specifically cited a bureaucratic mentality that was inappropriate in a heath care setting. When following government regulations and pricing schedules are more important than individual patient care, guess who loses?
The VA scandal should provide a cold shower wakeup call to any who still want a government controlled healthcare system. Advocates of single payer option and Kool-Aid drinkers everywhere, beware! There are rising costs, fewer doctors and nurses, less care, poorer health and premature death in your future.
Source: Dr. Deane Waldman, holar for the Rio Grande Foundation, and emeritus professor of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science
