-By Warner Todd Huston
After several weeks of scandalous failure to provide timely healthcare to our military veterans, some dying waiting for care that would never come, the Veteran’s Administration has now decided to allow veterans to pursue more private healthcare options to improve their treatment. But isn’t government turning to the private sector in stark contrast to the theme of the age of Obama, one that holds that private business “didn’t build that” and that we need to further empower government?
On May 24, the Associated Press reported that VA chief Eric Shinseki has announced a new plan for VA hospitals and healthcare providers to work more with private doctors. Shinseki told the press that the VA is “increasing the care we acquire in the community through non-VA care.”
Shinseki makes this concession as 26 VA facilities thus far have come under investigation for forcing sick veterans to wait for months to receive medical care. Up to 40 or more veterans died waiting for care on these lists.
The VA reportedly spent $4.8 billion on medical care given to veterans at non-VA facilities. That amounts to about 10 percent of the VA’s medical budget.
But many wonder what took the VA so long to arrive at this decision. Congressman Jeff Miller (R, FL) chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee released a statement criticizing Shinseki and the VA.
Miller charged the Obama administration and the VA of engaging in “an endless discussion regarding allegations, investigations and unreliable internal VA reviews” while at the same time “overlooking VA’s very real, very deadly and very well-documented delays in care problem.
Senator John McCain has also called for the VA to open up the opportunity for veterans to secure healthcare outside the VA system.
While that appears to finally be happening, the fact that government is admitting failure and opening itself to participation from the private sector seems to run contrary to Obama’s government-first, government-best mantra especially with healthcare in light of Obamacare’s desire to limit what the private sector can do on healthcare.
Obama has been quoted for two decades now extolling the virtues of bigger and bigger government. In 1998, for instance, he admitted “I actually believe in redistribution” when he was in Illinois state government.
The constant refrain from this president has been one of government empowerment, a policy best summed up in his “you didn’t build that” speech.
In the months before the 2012 presidential election Obama made a campaign stop where he insisted that everyday Americans didn’t create their businesses, didn’t earn their wealth, and didn’t build this country. It was government, Obama said, that did all that, not we, the people.
But Obama famously ran on the pledge to “fundamentally transform America” by placing government in the driver’s seat.
In December of 2013, Obama again beat the big government drum saying that “government action” has been “the driving force” for his administration and for everything this country has achieved.
Obama went further in a speech in Kansas in 2013 to say that the free market system simply cannot work and only government can assure a prosperous nation. He criticized anyone that imagined that we could have “too much government.”
By May of this year he was saying that anyone that was wary of government intervention was suffering from a “wrongheaded vision this country has” about government.
During another fundraising swing this year, Obama told a gaggle of California billionaires that the federal government isn’t spending enough money on big government and he pledged to do all he could to change that.
Barack Obama has spent his entire adult life looking for ways to place government above the people and telling fans to trust government and not the private sector. But all his efforts seem to be back firing. The President himself warned that if people don’t trust the government “we’re going to have some problems here.” This VA scandal is certainly a “problem.”
After several weeks of scandalous failure to provide timely healthcare to our military veterans, some dying waiting for care that would never come, the Veteran’s Administration has now decided to allow veterans to pursue more private healthcare options to improve their treatment. But isn’t government turning to the private sector in stark contrast to the theme of the age of Obama, one that holds that private business “didn’t build that” and that we need to further empower government?
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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