Back when the left ♥ed the VA health care system
There was a time, and not so very long ago, when the left sang the praises of the VA health care system.
Take Paul Krugman, economist extraordinaire, back in 2006:
I know about a health care system that has been highly successful in containing costs, yet provides excellent care. And the story of this system’s success provides a helpful corrective to anti-government ideology. For the government doesn’t just pay the bills in this system–it runs the hospitals and clinics.
…The system in question is our very own Veterans Health Administration, whose success story is one of the best-kept secrets in the American policy debate.
Krugman was hardly alone. In his column, Taranto mentions many others who said similar things.
Do not—I repeat, do NOT—sit on a hot stove waiting for their retractions. If they say anything to try to address the disparity, it will be that of course what’s going on now is somehow the fault of Republicans, or perhaps Shinseki, or some random sport occurrence, or isn’t really happening, and that they were generally correct when they first praised the VA. However, that would put them in the awkward position—as Taranto also points out—of saying that things in the VA were better under Bush.
But never fear. One of the hallmarks of being a liberal pundit is never, never ever, having to say you’re sorry or answer for your errors. You just go forward saying new stuff.
It’s obvious why the left needed to praise the VA back then, despite the fact that (as I wrote yesterday) anyone who knows people who’ve actually used the system has heard horror stories that go back fifty years or more. The left needed the VA to be a great system because it was trying to push health care reform, and it wanted the new law to set up a system that put the federal government firmly in charge. In fact, Obamacare was a compromise due to the fact that Democrats couldn’t get the public option (thank you, Joe Lieberman) or single payer past Congress. But the public option or single payer is what they actually wanted, so “VA=good” had to be their mantra.
And of course, “Bush=bad” went along with it. From Krugman in 2006:
…[F]arsighted thinkers are already suggesting that the Veterans Health Administration, not President Bush’s unrealistic vision of a system in which people go ”comparative shopping” for medical care the way they do when buying tile (his example, not mine), represents the true future of American health care.
Unfortunately, I think he’s right about that. It’s a vision that should make every thinking person shudder. That’s one of the many things about the VA scandal that scares Democrats—that people will make that linkage in their minds between the VA system and Obamacare and where it’s heading.
“If they say anything to try to address the disparity, it will be that of course what’s going on now is somehow the fault of Republicans…”
How right you are, neo. I just looked at Drudge before coming over here and his Banner headline (the big one at top ceneter, right below a large photo of Nancy Pelosi) reads” BLAME BUSH” and links to a Washington Examiner story here.
The minions of evil, the LEft’s cannonfodder, and those who sold their souls for an EBT card and some socialist peanut gallery, will Obey whatever they are told to think and do.
Blame Bush? Yes.
Support Islamic rape and carving up of females? Yes
Benefit from sex slave and slave trafficking? Yes
carl in Atlanta: “BLAME BUSH” and links to a Washington Examiner story here.”
Wow, the talking points are being acted on very quickly. There was a letter to the editor in my morning paper (the local paper that covers Skagit County) which contained almost exactly the same words and phrases that Pelosi used.
They do know how to sell a narrative.
I said in the earlier VA thread that the problems at the VA reminded me of the whole mess that our healthcare system has become. and that Obamacare is not an improvement. I’m pretty sure that many people are getting that connection.
So let be sure I understand this correctly. W. Bush is responsible for the mess at the VA. After 5+ years of an Obama administration. But Bush is also solely responsible for the tragedy of 9/11 after he’d been in office for only 8 months?
I need to think about this one for a time.
The American people able to put two and two together and come up with four? They proved they were incapable of that in 2012.
Lefty time distortion thinking in its purest form.
Don’t hurt your head thinking about it, you’ll only set off smoke alarms and locking up like Norman 1 on Star Trek.
The only thing Krugster is good for is being buried as fertilizer for Gaia growth.
In today’s Washington Examiner on the Honorable Pelosi:
“She(Pelosi) suggested that Obamacare might hold the key to solving the problem. “We have the Affordable Care Act that is out there that is providing resources for more federally-qualified health clinics around the country,” Pelosi said. “Maybe we should take a look at how we deal with our veterans’ needs in a way that says let’s help them closer to home, whether that’s a federally qualified health clinic or in some other institution that provides health care closer to home. [It’s] especially important for our veterans who live in rural areas.”
She really makes me want to move to San Francisco right now.
Some prescient people have said that Obama does not scare them; the fact that there are enough American voters to elect him twice scares them.
I agree with the statement. I would extend it to say that if the Statist tendency continues among the voters after the examples of: IRS miscounduct, VA incompetency, Behnghazi dishonesty, Fast and Furious unintended consequences, and on and on–then our situation is truly hopeless.
oldflyer,
I very much agree. And like the young GI currently jailed in Mexico for possessing firearms; we may well have passed the last turnaround from self-destruction in 2012.
It may sound perverse but if it need happen I want it to happen soon. At least I still have the strength and resources to help my kids for a while longer.
Mexico sends armed gangs and their military across the border all the time. I don’t see them in our jails. Reid getting 20% of the cut, of course.
Vouchers.
Don’t forget that he was responsible for the recession that official began one month in and was the end result of the dotcom collapse in mid 2000. Or how he originally fired Shinseki for Shinseki’s testimony in March of 2003. He covered that firing by announce Shinseki’s retirement,…….In April of 2002. If I didn’t know better I’d think the left thinks Bush has a time machine to pull this off. (And that he probably stole it from Al Gore.)
Zombie detected. Time for a TSA body check to see if it is authorized by the Regime to exist.
Well, looks like the scanners evaporated the evidence. So sad.