The VHA Scandal Is Almost an Act Of Divine Intervention

The magnitude of the incompetence of this administration is almost impossible to comprehend. Fast and Furious, the NSA, the IRS, Benghazi, and the most recent kerfuffle, the mess at the Veteran’s Health Administration. But this is much more than a failure of management – i.e. a good idea poorly implemented – it is merely another failure of left-wing ideology -- a bad idea badly implemented. In short, it is not just a routine failure of a bad idea; it is a routine failure of an ideology badly out of touch with reality. And that is due to the fact that the left lives in a world of virtual reality, where facts, logic, common sense, and judgment never have to enter the equation of shaping policy. When things go wrong -- as more often than not they do -- they are excused (rationalized, if you will) as the triumph of good intentions over bad results. And, to our possible existential regret, we keep letting them get away with it. And, to be fair, when they own every established vehicle of communication -- i.e. the media, our universities, and the entertainment community -- it is difficult to stop them. But to our discredit, the right is so pathetically weak and incompetent, that they barely make the effort. That’s what you get with career politicians -- hacks and whores, and hardly a public servant among them. By now, everyone has heard of the disgraceful mess at the Veteran’s Health Administration (VHA) where the VHA not only failed to treat our veterans but let them die on waiting lists and then cooked the books to cover up their scandalous mismanagement. And, to be fair, blame cannot be laid entirely at the feet of the Obama administration, although, after calling attention to the aforesaid mismanagement while in campaign mode, Obama did nothing to fix it once installed in office. The VHA has been in disgraceful shape for decades, with our politicians doing nothing more than kicking the can down the road at which time it would be the problem of succeeding administrations.

But this scandal is a gift! Why? Because it shines a light on what by now we should have fully realized -- government is almost never the solution; it is the problem. And the timing of this fiasco could not have been more providentially arranged. Why? Because Obamacare is the VHA scandal writ large. If Obamacare is implemented we will all be veterans having our health care rationed, with many of us left to die on government waiting lists. And I must urge the reader to look at this situation -- and every other governmental scandal that we are now addressing -- in a nonpolitical light, i.e. not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American looking at not only his or her future, but that of his or her children and grandchildren. It is worth noting in passing that, as Paul Krugman -- left-wing public intellectual and guru -- observed, in praise of the V.H.A., it is “socialized medicine.” See Krugman, "Vouchers for Veterans", and "Health Care Confidential". In his 2011 piece, Krugman makes this statement regarding Republican opposition to socializing our healthcare system: “So what lies behind the Republican obsession with privatization and voucherization? Ideology of course. It’s literally a fundamental article of faith in the G.O.P. that the private sector is always better than the government, and no amount of evidence can shake that credo.” Krugman is right about the issue being one of ideology; the problem is that he pins that label on the wrong party and, as a consequence, the wrong ideology. It is the Democrats who are always trying to shove government down our throats, despite the fact that “the evidence” almost always shows that government cannot do the job efficiently or economically - if at all. With the left, it is always ideology, and when that ideology takes root and fails it is okay because, as noted, to the left, good intentions always trump bad results. Socialized medicine is the ultimate goal for the left; in pursuit of that goal they are willing to stop to pause at a “single payer” way station. The current VHA mess should be enough to prick the socialized-medicine balloon, but it won’t be. With the left, failure may define them, but it never deters them. It’s always we had the right idea -- we just had the wrong people, the wrong effort, the wrong capitalization, the wrong location, the wrong timing etc., etc. No -- invariably they have had the wrong idea. In this regard, a lot more needs to be said about the concept of government as the tool for our deliverance (in any context), Krugman and the rest of our intellectual elite, and the very ineffectual opposition to left-wing encroachment on our democracy that the right musters up. Regarding the timing of the current VHA scandal, it could not have happened at a more appropriate moment insofar as Obamacare is concerned; it almost causes one, regardless of his or her religious beliefs, to give serious thought to the notion of Divine Intervention.