The Price Is Far Too High

Anyone who thinks government-run healthcare is a good thing, that it's just what we need, should take a very close look at the scandal rocking the Veteran's Administration right now, as well as other socialized medicine programs around the world. Believe it or not, liberals, those of us who speak out against government-run healthcare have our reasons.

Just today, the Inspector General's report on the VA scandal was released, which confirmed that veterans were made to wait ridiculously long times for appointments at the Phoenix VA hospital for an average of 115 days. The “official” VA data, by the way, showed that those vets waited an average of just twenty-four days. I don't know how you look at it, but my non-Common Core math says 115 days is over four times more than 24 days. Some veterans waited for an appointment as long as 155 days!!! The IG's report also said that the problems are “systemic” throughout the entirety of the VA.

The veterans of the United States military have been treated abysmally. The men and women who have written a blank check to the nation they love should be the first to receive healthcare: Before welfare recipients, before government bureaucrats, before anyone in either house of Congress, before anyone in the White House or the Supreme Court. I cannot emphasize that enough. Yet, as the IG report states, at the Phoenix VA alone there are as many as 1700 veterans in danger of being lost to the system due to not being on the Electronic Waiting List, or EWL, as well as up to 1400 veterans who are on the EWL but not yet received an appointment for their primary care physician.

Our veterans have left parts of themselves all over this planet. My own grandfather lost a leg fighting Nazi Germany. My father left a part of his soul in Vietnam fighting the spread of communism, not to mention the health issues he's had from being exposed to Agent Orange. Veterans having to wait for the care they were promised is disgraceful and reprehensible in the extreme. And for veterans to be basically denied care, most likely because the “official” EWL is the standard for VA worker's bonuses, it's unconscionable.

I understand that the problems at the VA didn't start with this administration, but King DingleBarry made multiple campaign promises to fix the issue during the 2008 campaign. He didn't “find out through media reports” as they've recently claimed, yet the majority of the mainstream media remains silent on this aspect of the story. It's true that the VA's budget has been essentially doubled over the last few years, but the VA also rolls over any unused funds from one year to the next. Approximately $450 million was rolled over from last year to this. Why was this money not used to get the waiting vets the healthcare they needed and deserved?

This scandal is stunning in its depth and breadth. The VA system is socialized medicine, and the problems inherent in the VA system will be multiplied, and amplified, across this country once Obamacare is fully and completely implemented. All one needs to do is look at nations with government-run healthcare to see that.

We're heading down a path that has already been trod upon, and right now, our veterans are paying a price they should never had been made to pay, and soon, we will all be paying that price. ~ Hunter