The VA scandal expands with new report
Coming to a hospital near you! A new report indicates that as many as 1,000 veterans might have died because of corruption and incompetence at the VA.
The report also alleges that the VA routinely performs unnecessary preventative care, cannot process claims in a timely fashion, employs health care providers who have lost their medical licenses, and – as has been widely reported – maintains secret waiting lists in order to create the impression that the department is meeting performance goals set in Washington.
The report further alleges that some VA staff have been implicated in criminal activities, including drug dealing, sexual abuse, attempted kidnapping, theft, and conspiracy. “Earlier this year, one former staffer at the Tampa, Florida, VA was sentenced to six years in federal prison for trading veterans’ personal information for crack cocaine,” CNN reported on Tuesday.
In spite of these failures, VA senior managers are still receiving bonuses.
I want to emphasize again that this is exactly the kind of mess we can expect to occur with our private healthcare system as Obamacare forces the government to interfere with it more and more.
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Coming to a hospital near you! A new report indicates that as many as 1,000 veterans might have died because of corruption and incompetence at the VA.
The report also alleges that the VA routinely performs unnecessary preventative care, cannot process claims in a timely fashion, employs health care providers who have lost their medical licenses, and – as has been widely reported – maintains secret waiting lists in order to create the impression that the department is meeting performance goals set in Washington.
The report further alleges that some VA staff have been implicated in criminal activities, including drug dealing, sexual abuse, attempted kidnapping, theft, and conspiracy. “Earlier this year, one former staffer at the Tampa, Florida, VA was sentenced to six years in federal prison for trading veterans’ personal information for crack cocaine,” CNN reported on Tuesday.
In spite of these failures, VA senior managers are still receiving bonuses.
I want to emphasize again that this is exactly the kind of mess we can expect to occur with our private healthcare system as Obamacare forces the government to interfere with it more and more.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Didn’t Obamacare acolytes hold up the VA system as an example of how well socialized medicine could work? Aside from cherry-picked references to the Canadian system, it’s curious that none of them held up other socialized health care systems as paragons of State efficiency.
For socialized medicine to work a total remake of the WHOLE medical industry needs to happen.
From the manufacturing of medical goods to the education of medical professionals.
The government just can’t pay the asked for price for everything, they need to control the costs of everything first. Like education and so on.
The Washington Times article, linked in the Hot Air posting, says, “But Mr. Coburn traced the problem to bad management and lax working standards, not to lack of money.”
This is not a price problem. As with Canadian and UK healthcare, this is a management problem.
When healthcare, or almost anything, is centrally controlled and centrally financed then the consumer’s needs are hardly considered. Notice how students are still hungry after eating an “Obama Lunch” (to coin a phrase).
Medicare “controls costs” but end up driving providers away from treating Medicare patients. Sure, the cost was controlled, but the treatment is hard to get.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the patient was allowed to decide whether an expensive treatment was worth the cost. Now the government is allowed to say that the treatment is never worth the cost, and the patient is left to pound sand, or when government does think it may be worth the cost then you are stuck on a (secret?) waiting list, and care is delayed — possibly until it is too late for the treatment to work.
So, which would you prefer? Sell your house and live, or pass your house to your heirs.
Oops, the government does not give you that choice; you have to pass your house to your heirs. And all because of centralized control.