What’s All This Fuss About Vets and Healthcare?

As Emily Litella would say, "What's all this fuss about about vets and healthcare?"

I made one phone call yesterday and got an appointment with a top neurologist in under 24 hours.  That is incredible service by any standard.  Of course, in this case I paid cash, the provider was in private practice, and the doctor was the vet not the patient.  The patient is expected to make a full recovery and will soon be back to eating voraciously, running around, and wagging his tail.

To those like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama who told us that vets had the best healthcare system available and it should be a model for the whole nation, I say they were looking at the wrong vet system.  Veterinarians are the only doctors working in a totally privatized system today.  Theirs is the best healthcare model in terms of quality and service in the US, and in fact on the entire planet. 

So while our military vets are dying on VA waitlists, while all citizens are now subject to the bureaucratic nightmare that is Obamacare, while the poor suffer on substandard Medicaid, and while the aged are herded into the socialized system that is Medicare, our pets are enjoying state-of-the-art medicine in the best private healthcare system in the world.  Heck-of-a-job America.  

If you like your VA, you can keep your VA. Period.

There seems to be a lot of outrage regarding the VA hospitals death panels.  From the President on down, politicians in both parties are "mad as hell" and will not rest until they get to the bottom of this "unacceptable" situation.  This makes me laugh...and cry at the same time.

The assumption everyone is making is that the VA exists to provide the best healthcare available to our vets.  Ha!   If it was true, the outraged parties might have a shot at fixing it, but it's not true, and that is why the VA is as unfixable as the IRS.  No mortal put in charge of the VA, as currently defined, could ever fix it because it is impossible for a nationalized, unionized, and politicized government agency to provide excellence on any level.  If we really wanted vets to have access to the best healthcare, we would let them choose their own doctors and hospitals.  

And don't tell me our military is an example of a government agency which provides excellence.  The military is an exception only because it is non-union, has it's own code of justice, and usually avoids politicization.  Heck, unlike the VA, you can still get demoted and even fired from the military!  (Well, at least you used to be able to.  Getting fired is almost impossible these days, and it is one reason the military is also sliding downhill.)  

Here're the facts:  The VA exists primarily as a jobs program for (mostly Democrat) unionized political constituents.  The VA is also a slush fund for (mostly Democrat) politicians and a funding source for (mostly Democrat) politicians.   Those are its primary functions.  Treating vets is simply a means to an end, and the end is money for Democrats.

No President, Secretary, or Superhero can squeeze excellence out of a nationalized, unionized, and politicized organization.  Barack Obama is the poster-boy for nationalizing, unionizing, and politicizing everything within his grasp.  Feigning anger and concern for vets is just the latest bald-faced lie from this President.     

  

    

Why The VA Is So Screwed Up, And Why It’s Obama’s Fault

Unless you get your news from NBC, CNN, ABC, New York Times, Comedy Central, CBS, Washington Post, LA Times, MSNBC, or al Jazeera, you probably know that the Veterans Administration has death panels and secret waiting lists which are killing veterans, or more accurately, letting them die rather than doing the hard expensive work of treating them, healing them, and prolonging their lives.  In other words, the VA is performing exactly as designed.  Come to think of it, the entire federal bureaucracy is performing exactly as designed.  The IRS, Fannie and Freddie, The State Department, Obamacare (HHS), The Obama Administration, and all the rest in this “mismanaged carnival of stupidity” (to repurpose Alec Baldwin’s words) are all performing exactly as designed.  What’s more, it’s all Obama’s fault. 

No, I’m not suggesting that President Barack Obama himself is making the day to day decisions at the VA, HHS, IRS, or any one of the alphabet soup exemplars of tragic dysfunction which we call government.  He is far too busy watching college hoops, fundraising, partying with Jay Z, golfing, and dishing one-liners from behind a teleprompter to be involved in running anything.  Running stuff is icky and hard.  Besides, Obama doesn’t ever want to risk having his fingerprints on any part of this travesty.  Yet despite his attempts to float above the mess, his signature is everywhere, for he is the modern ideological leader of totalitarian big government and has been it’s most ardent champion since coming on the national scene. 

Barack Obama is a perversion of King Midas:  everything he touches gets nationalized.   Got a problem with student loans?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with health insurance?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with housing?  Nationalize it.  (Don’t forget: as Senator, Barack Obama was known as the “Senator from Fannie and Freddie”.)  Got a problem with curriculum?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with anything, the answer is always the same: nationalize it.  And when you nationalize it, you politicize it.  Hence, everything becomes political. 

You would think the VA is a healthcare system for veterans.  You would be wrong.  The VA is first and foremost a jobs program for political constituents that was originally set-up to treat veterans but now does so as an afterthought.  You might think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were mortgage companies for the poor.  You would be wrong.  Fannie and Freddie are first and foremost political operations that originally were set-up to provide mortgages for the poor but now do so as an afterthought.  This goes for Obamacare, student loans, the IRS, and every other agency, policy, statute, and corner of the federal government under this President and those before him who shared his philosophy. 

The framers of our constitution knew this could happen.  They knew totalitarianism and all-powerful government would politicize everything and turn it into a horror show.  That’s why they gave us a “charter of negative liberties” which says “what the federal government can’t do to you…” (to borrow Barack Obama’s own derisive words.).  The constitution specifically limited federal power.  It was a check on totalitarianism and a wall against nationalizing and politicizing everything.  Well, it used to do that anyway.  Not so much anymore. 

No president in our history has openly denigrated the concept of limited government and done more to deliberately undermine it than this president.  Dead veterans, dead ambassadors, more than a doubling of dead soldiers in Afghanistan, death panels, a government weaponized for political purposes, and a mismanaged carnival of stupidity from top to bottom are the inevitable result.