Government Healthcare Has Already Failed In America

“To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” – VA Motto   

By: The Council for Good Governance

            There has been a lot of talk in America over the past few years about health care, with many people arguing that we have a right to be provided health care, and that the government should be providing this service. Well, America already has a large socialized medical system in place – the military health care system, which includes both the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs health care organizations.

Most Americans probably only have an inkling about the scandals that should be rocking the VA and causing patriotic citizens to riot in the streets. This may be due in some part to scandal-weariness. Americans have endured so much exposure to both government failures and opposition party ‘outrage’ over the past several years, perhaps decades, that most things hardly even blip the radar. We have simply been inoculated to being overly concerned with Benghazi, the use of the IRS as a political tool, etc. But this, this surpasses the bar, America. This is not a partisan issue, this is a national issue – an American issue. This is beyond the pale, and we are in fact outraged, and we hope in time, you will be too.

Let us begin with the premise that you the reader may or may not agree with: the idea that America’s veterans should be treated with dignity and respect by the government that they served. Or that the men and women who gave up years of their lives, have suffered wounds in war, losing limbs, and managed deep psychological wounds, should not be cast aside by the nationalized health care system that was created specifically to serve them. Not only are they being cast aside, this socialized medical organization has apparently been making willful decisions to allow Veterans to languish, to allow their cancer to grow and metastasize until it is inoperable, thus allowing them to die and saving the taxpayer the cost of treatment.

Whistleblower, Dr. Krugman, explained that in 2010, the policy on colonoscopies was changed to require the patient to be literally bleeding out of their rectum, before the tests were scheduled. The VA’s own Inspector General report found that these malicious delays affected thousands of veterans in Texas alone.

No death panels you say? There you have it, America. Your government has, without question, rationed health care to its own Veterans. We know at least 40 Veterans died in Phoenix alone. We’re mad.  Furious, in fact. That’s 40 of our brothers and sisters who defended you, the tax payer, this government of the people and by the people, sentenced to death by that government, and ultimately you, the citizen, voter, and tax payer. You can be assured that as the investigation continues, this number will skyrocket, likely into the tens of thousands.

One might argue that with the recession and budget cuts there simply wasn’t enough money to pay for these tests. Then one might find out that millions of dollars were spent on curtains. Curtains. Not to mention, the millions spent on new office furniture and conference room remodels. Oh, and remember, the Government Services Administration was blowing millions of dollars on conferences they wanted to be, “over the top”. Don’t have $800,000 to fly 300 pencil-pushers to Vegas for the weekend?  No problem just let a few hundred veterans with PTSD and TBI wait until next year.

Congressional Inquiries are not enough. Inspector General Reports are not enough. Resignations and firings are not enough.  Civil words can not begin to express what should happen to these cold and callous bureaucrats. Criminal charges, jail time, and perhaps being drafted to serve on the ground as the last boots in Afghanistan, may only begin to answer for their crimes.

Of course, this medical system, which engages in fraud to mask its wait times, destroys records to eliminate evidence of back logs, and prefers to allow patients to die than to treat them, only affects a fraction of the American population. It is never characterized as nationalized, it is never referenced by the universal health care advocates as what their utopia will look like. Ask yourself this – if America (and this means you) is willing to treat those who bore its flag into battle, this way, how will it treat the average citizen, the one who isn’t bleeding out of the rectum (yet)? Or, is this course of care reserved just for us Veterans?