The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Fret Not: The Clinton/Warren 2016 Ticket Will Fix The VA Health Care Problem

Posted on | May 17, 2014 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has long touted the VA system as the epitome of government-run healthcare. “Exhibit A for the advantages of government provision [of healthcare] is the veterans administration, which runs its own hospitals and clinics, and provides some of the best-quality healthcare in America at far lower cost than the private sector,” Krugman claims.


It’s just kinda zany how all of these Socialized programs seem to effect the opposite of their stated intent, shifting from health care to the War on Poverty:

Between 1959 and 1966 — before the War on Poverty was implemented — the percentage of Americans living in poverty plunged by about one-third, from 22.4 to 14.7, slightly lower than in 2012. But, Eberstadt cautions, the poverty rate is “incorrigibly misleading” because government transfer payments have made income levels and consumption levels significantly different. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, disability payments, heating assistance and other entitlements have, Eberstadt says, made income “a poor predictor of spending power for lower-income groups.” Stark material deprivation is now rare:

“By 2011 .?.?. average per capita housing space for people in poverty was higher than the U.S. average for 1980. .?.?. [Many] appliances were more common in officially impoverished homes in 2011 than in the typical American home of 1980. .?.?. DVD players, personal computers, and home Internet access are now typical in them — amenities not even the richest U.S. households could avail themselves of at the start of the War on Poverty.”

But the institutionalization of anti-poverty policy has been, Eberstadt says carefully, “attended” by the dramatic spread of a “tangle of pathologies.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined that phrase in his 1965 report calling attention to family disintegration among African Americans. The tangle, which now ensnares all races and ethnicities, includes welfare dependency and “flight from work.”

So, clearly we need MOAR Programs, until the remaining conservative deadweight falls off and the sun can stagger the Progressive Dawn fully over the horizon.

via Hot Air headlines

Category: Democrats, Health Care, Hillary Clinton, New York Times

Comments

7 Responses to “Fret Not: The Clinton/Warren 2016 Ticket Will Fix The VA Health Care Problem”

  1. Political Rift » Fret Not: The Clinton/Warren 2016 Ticket Will Fix The VA Health Care Problem
    May 17th, 2014 @ 9:05 pm

    […] Read more here: Fret Not: The Clinton/Warren 2016 Ticket Will Fix The VA Health Care Problem […]

  2. Atari 2600
    May 17th, 2014 @ 9:09 pm

    Hey, Smitty, if his books show up at the local library, then borrow them. Never buy pieces of crap, though, to be fair, you’ll first have to read them to be sure them are crap.

  3. Atari 2600
    May 17th, 2014 @ 9:11 pm

    *[…]that they are crap[…]*

  4. Clinton and Warren: Dumb and Dumber… | Batshit Crazy News
    May 17th, 2014 @ 10:56 pm

    […] Smitty: Clinton and Warren to the rescue on ObamaCare… (NOT) […]

  5. Mike G.
    May 18th, 2014 @ 8:20 am

    Has Krugman ever been to a VA hospital? The bureaucracy of the VA is slow and sometimes inept.

    That being said, I wonder if a lot of it has to do with the regional directors. The S. Carolina region VA has been pretty good to me. Kidney Stone taken care of in a timely manner. Treatment of HepC took two years to get started, but part of that was me waiting for the new treatment regimen to be okay-ed by the FDA.

    But I agree with what a lot of other Vets are calling for, which is a card that can be used at the local medical facility instead of having to drive sometimes several hours to get treatment. My drive was three hours one way. It would save a lot of money in travel reimbursements. I was getting $135 every time I drove to the hospital…320 mile round trip, and $35 when I drove to the nearest clinic for lab work, which was an 80 mile RT.*

    * Not all Vets get a travel reimbursement, depends on yearly adjusted income and disability status.

  6. Wombat_socho
    May 18th, 2014 @ 4:24 pm

    I think it does have to do with the regional directors. The DC and Baltimore VAMC are both very good, as are the Minneapolis and Tucson centers. Unfortunately, a lot of the other suck major-league ass, and the bureaucracy in DC is badly in need of a thorough purge. I’d like to see all the chair-warming slime not working in clinics and hospitals fired and replaced by unemployed vets – they couldn’t possibly do a worse job.

  7. Mike G.
    May 18th, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

    In the Dorn system, which encompasses the Midlands and Upstate of South Carolina, some of the people who make appointments and other services, are volunteers…most of whom are Vets.

    I’ve only run into one asshole at the Columbia hospital. Most of the people are polite and as helpful as can be.

    One of my doctors called me,( I think he called all of his patients) to wish me good luck when he left this region for another.