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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.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • 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.

  • Pzatchok

    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.

  • Edward

    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.

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