Let's face it folks; the Secretary of the VA should have been fired today (or the President should have accepted his resignation). But the fact is, the President and his liberal supporters simply cannot have a scandal that points to the historic pattern of inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the nation's Veteran's hospitals. This is because they have for five years now, held up the VA system as a shining light about how effective single payer systems in general are, and specifically as an example of how more government intrusion into the health care system is a good thing.
To fire Shinseki would make it seem like the President thinks that there is anything other than the actions of a few bad actors at play here. What he hasn't figured out, or better yet, what he does not want YOU to figure out, is that the problems in the VA hospitals are not a "bug" or an aberration; this IS the system. This is what you get with single payer systems. Waits, claims stacking up, rationing. Inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Where he wants to take America's health care system is TOWARD the VA model, and that model CANNOT be shown to be ineffective. Which is why Eric Shinseki still has a job.
Hmmmm . . . so what you're saying, is that Republicans have a PERFECT example they can point to and say, "This is why Obama Care is a problem."
ReplyDeleteYet a news commentator recently played a clip of Rush Limbaugh from earlier in the week where Rush made this exact point. Yet when the commentator teed it up for Ed Rollins (Republican strategist) he completely whiffed! - "Blah, blah, not the same thing, blah, blah, bi-partisan effort to fund the VA, blah, blah". It's worth noting that the Democrat strategist turned around and agreed on bi-partisanship, then proceeded to blamed it on a glut of veterans caused by (wait for it) Bush's 2 wars!
To say that Republicans have a message problem is a severe understatement.