#FullRepeal Daily Digest

Politico: The VA's Socialist Paradise

• For the left, the Department of Veterans Affairs is how health care is ideally supposed to work. No insurance companies, no private doctors, no competition — just the government and the patient.
• Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist, has held up the VA as a model for the entire country [a "huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform…yes, this is 'socialized medicine."] The Washington Monthly ran a famous article in 2005 arguing that the VA was leading the way for U.S. health care. The socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, is such a reflexive defender that in an instantly notorious interview on CNN he pooh-poohed the burgeoning scandal that may involve fatalities with the undeniable observation that “people die every day.”
• The VA is an island of socialism in American health care. It generally provides adequate care — to a limited universe of people and for only certain conditions — but has been plagued by scandal for decades. It is perhaps the worst bureaucracy in the federal government. As with all such single-payer-type systems, the cost of the notionally free health care is in the rationing, in this case the wait times that have had desperately ill vets hung out to dry for months.
• The existence of the VA isn’t politically controversial. No one is trying to repeal it, or “sabotage” it. It hasn’t lacked for funds. Its budget has been increasing at a rapid clip. What we’re seeing is simply unaccountable bureaucracy in action.
• Of course, the problem with wait times and the trustworthiness of the VA’s own reporting should have been news to no one. The Government Accountability Office has been warning of it since 2000. It headlined a report published in December 2012, “VA HEALTH CARE: Reliability of Reported Outpatient Medical Appointment Wait Times and Scheduling Oversight Need Improvement.”
• [RELATED] Reason: The Veterans Health Administration Really Does Offer 'Lessons' in 'Socialized Medicine'
  • … a letter touted by Physicians for a National Health Program trumpeted"the success of 22 wealthy countries and our own Department of Veterans Affairs, which use single-payer systems to provide better care for more people at far less cost." How could a bloated government bureaucracy achieve such low-cost success? As we found out recently, it's by quietly sticking veterans on a waiting list and putting off their treatment for months—sometimes until the patients are far too dead to need much in the way of expensive care…
  • It's like that sign you see in car repair shops owned by wiseasses: "Fast. Good. Cheap. Pick Any Two."
  • Advanced medical care costs a lot of money. Delivering it quickly costs more. To the increasingly limited extent that it's allowed, American private medicine recognizes the compromises that have to be made and offers a variety of coverage at different price points—that is, you have some choice in which two you get. The British NHS also recognizes the need to compromise—and there goes "fast." (The NHS is known for holding back on "good," too, when further cost controls are needed.)
• [RELATED] Cleveland Plain Dealer: Where VA has taken veterans, Obamacare is leading all Americans
  • The VA system revelations are a scandal. But it isn't a scandal attributable to Barack Obama, nor to George W. Bush, nor to any specific administration. It is the scandal of a promise that will not be kept because it cannot be kept — the promise that a government bureaucracy will find a way to stretch limited resources far enough to meet infinite demand.
  • Americans who watch this story play out and fail to make the clear and obvious connection to Obamacare will be guilty of willful ignorance. The systemic flaw is identical. It's just magnified on a massive scale. Rather than making a false promise to treat all of the ills of a relatively few sick and injured military veterans, Obamacare has put the federal government on the path to taking responsibility for the medical needs — and the attendant costs — of the entire U.S. Population.
• [RELATED] Video: Obama 2009: We're Keeping Our Promises [to veterans]
  • Video: Sen Durbin: VA Is Government Health Care; Concerns About Delays and Rationing are Fictitious
  • Video: Sen Durbin: McConnell Totally Wrong About Government Health Care, Because the VA
  • Video: White House Reality Check: Vets' health care is safe and sound

Politico: Nevada latest state to scrap its Obamacare exchange

• But the Nevada exchange board decided Tuesday that its effort couldn’t be salvaged in time for the 2015 enrollment season that starts in November. Nevada becomes the fourth state to admit its enrollment system, which cost tens of millions of dollars, is beyond repair and move to replace it with a substantially new one.
• Nevada initially set out to enroll 118,000 people by March 31, but severe tech problems forced state officials in January to slash the projection to 50,000. The exchange spewed out inaccurate information to people signing up, including incorrect subsidy amounts for low-income people. As of May 10, just 35,000 had officially enrolled.

Washington Free Beacon: S.C. Woman Denied Vital Medicine Due to Obamacare Glitch

• Shelby Higdon needs her medication, but has been repeatedly denied it because the information in her BlueCross BlueShield health insurance account lists her as a male, not a female.
• Each time Kris calls healthcare.gov, the website promises her that the problem has been solved, but when the mother and daughter call their insurance company, they receive the same response.
• They have painstakingly battled healthcare.gov for over three weeks to have Shelby’s gender changed on her account, but healthcare.gov won’t budge and have been rude to the Higdons. “They’ve hung up on me, I’ve been put on hold and transferred to somebody who had no clue what I was calling for,” Kris said.

Washington Examiner: Emergency room visits up after Obamacare implementation, survey says [Recall President Obama explained that expanded coverage would reduce ER visits because people would get treated on the front end; yet it appears that more insurance means greater demand and more ER visits because the supply hasn't been increased or made more efficient because of Obamacare]

• On July 4, 2010, the Boston Globe ran a story on the Massachusettshealth care law that began: "The number of people visiting hospital emergency rooms has climbed inMassachusetts, despite the enactment of nearly universal health insurance that some hoped would reduce expensive emergency department use."
• On Wednesday, a Wall Street Journal story stated:"Early evidence suggests that emergency rooms have become busier since theAffordable Care Act expanded insurance coverage this year, despite the law's goal of reducing unnecessary care in ERs."
• The Journal story is based on online survey of emergency room doctors prepared for the American College of Emergency Physicians and conducted in early April. The headline finding was that 46 percent of respondents said that the volume of emergency patients in their departments had increased since Jan. 1, when Americans began receiving coverage throughPresident Obama's health care law, compared with 23 percent who said it decreased. Another 27 percent said volume remained the same. Looking forward, 86 percent expect visits to increase over the next three years.

The Wall Street Journal: The Bureaucrat Sitting on Your Doctor's Shoulder When I'm operating on a child, I shouldn't have to wonder if Medicaid will OK a change in the surgical plan [there are some very telling examples in this column]

• Every surgeon must have the option to modify and change a surgical plan according to actual anatomical findings that only become apparent during surgery. For example, if a general surgeon operates on a patient with a suspected acute appendicitis and finds that the patient is actually suffering from an ovarian cyst, that doctor must be free to change the plan and do what is best for the patient. The physician should not be denied payment simply because of a rigid government requirement to follow only the pre-approved plan.
• We all expect that doctors will do what is best for us according to their best judgment. This is part of the oath that doctors take when they graduate from medical school. When the government interferes with the doctor's right to select the treatment course and perform a necessary procedure, the integrity of the entire health-delivery system is compromised.