Back in 2009, I wrote a commentary titled “Veterans First on Health Care.” I argued the government must prove it can handle existing obligations before proposing any further takeover of the health care industry. I interviewed former Congressman Gene Taylor (D-Miss), who I once worked for, and among other things, assisted with Veterans Affairs claims and other military constituent services. Taylor made the point then that “We [government] can’t pay for the promises we’ve already made on health care, and it only gets worse for the next fifty years.”
I posed the logical question, “If it cannot handle the challenge of caring for 8 million veterans, how will a government bureaucracy manage a system dealing with 300 million Americans?”
Unfortunately, according to CNN, things have become even worse for American veterans who use VA hospitals:
Military veterans are dying needlessly because of long waits and delayed care at U.S. veterans hospitals, a CNN investigation has found.
What’s worse, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is aware of the problems and has done almost nothing to effectively prevent veterans dying from delays in care, according to documents obtained by CNN and interviews with numerous experts.
The problem has been especially dire at the Williams Jennings Bryan Dorn Veterans Medical Center in Columbia, South Carolina. There, veterans waiting months for simple gastrointestinal procedures — such as a colonoscopy or endoscopy — have been dying because their cancers aren’t caught in time.
The entire piece at CNN is worth reading. It’s a scary glimpse on a smaller scale of just how destructive single-payer health care is and how it leads to rationing of care and death.
