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May 20, 2014 at 11:19 AM
Of course, the government entity now known as the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has always had a hard time getting veterans appropriate, high-quality treatment in a timely fashion.
The country has hardly ever done a great job of providing “wounded warriors” with the kind of care that the country has promised to provide.
It’s great to see political opponents of the Obama administration channeling their loathing into the admirable, useful activity of trying to help veterans get VA hospital appointments before they die — or at least to force VA hospital personnel to record the adverse outcomes correlated with failures to provide timely care in an honest, complete fashion.
The VA system is not the commercial health insurance system. The agents and brokers who read this website can’t sell VA care plans to consumers who walk in off the street.
But I think the VA system is something anyone who promotes government intervention in health care finance needs to think about.
The first health care programs the U.S. government paid for were health care programs for soldiers and disabled veterans. My understanding is that even most fervent Objectivists think that, if the country ever were in a necessary, truly defensive war, the defense force should somehow provide care for wounded fighters.
My wild guess would be that everyone involved in providing poor or delayed care for veterans sincerely wants veterans to get great care in a timely fashion.
But, even though just about everyone supports the VA health care system, and everyone involved wants it to work, it tends to work poorly.
One reason may just be that it’s big. Another reason may be that many veterans are elderly or poor and aren’t great at speaking up for their own interests.
But, to me, it seems as if some of the other reasons may have to do with the difficulties involved in having the government involved in running a big, complicated, time-sensitive organization that’s supposed to provide a great deal of person-to-person service day in and day out, in a humdrum, non-obviously emergency situation.
The government is pretty good at collecting taxes, because that’s largely a high-tech activity. The government can get computers to do much of the work, and have the taxpayer services help line advisors sit in an easily supervised call center.
The government is pretty good at fighting wars and dealing with catastrophes, because the people involved with those activities have adrenaline flowing through their blood.
