Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« In 2012, PolitiFact Rated Obama's Promise to "Make the VA a Leader in National Health" A "Promise Kept" | Main | Sarkozy: EU Must Re-Create National Borders; Cannot Permit "Welfare Tourism" »
May 22, 2014

Krugman, Kristof, and Klein All Praised the "Success" of the VA's Socialized Medicine Model

PolitiFact rates their hackery: Glittery with Truth.

here are some pretty big names on that list. Paul Krugman in 2011 wrote of the VA’s “huge success story”:
Multiple surveys have found the VHA providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers…the VHA is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it’s free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense.

Krugman added, “Yes, this is ‘socialized medicine’…But it works, and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of US health care more broadly.”

"Multiple surveys have found..." Well that's well and good, until you find out the VA was systematically gaming the paperwork in order to make their services look better than they really were.

This is ultimately the problem, of course: It is not a bureaucrat's actual job to provide good service to the client; his actual job is to appear to his superiors that he's providing good service to the client.

Actually, this is everyone's real job, of course.

But in a system in which there is only one vendor, where there is an established government monopoly, the bureaucrat is free to game the system in ways in which a private vendor could not.

The private vendor would ultimately be fired if he continued only working to make it appear on paperwork that he'd done a good job. The actual client would know the truth of it, and quit the service.

And eventually enough customers would quit, and the management of the private firm would start to wonder why they were getting so many complaints and terminations, and would eventually work to fix it. (Or, of course: They'd go bankrupt.)

But that can't happen when the Government is the only game in town.

The left likes to talk about the David vs. Goliath nature of a citizen being abused by a large and powerful corporation. The corporation has endless resources and personnel; the individual in conflict with the corporation has rather less.

That's true, of course.

But the stupidity of the left is its abject refusal to see that The Government is a corporation, and is in fact the most powerful, richest, and most heavily armed corporation in the history of the world.

The left endlessly rages against misbehaving corporations with one-one thousandth of the resources of the government, and of course none of the government's armed agents and prison wardens, and endlessly fights to take power out of the hands of the misbehaving, selfishly-motivated unarmed corporation... and put that power into the hands of the misbehaving, selfishly-motivated armed corporation.

They're never quite able to understand this: The conservative preference for power in private hands isn't that we love big, unaccountable, guild-agenda-serving corporations.

It's that the alternative ever proposed by the left is just an even bigger, more unaccountable, more guild-agenda-serving corporation called the US Government.

And you can't quit the US Government without quitting the the United States itself.


digg this
posted by Ace at 04:49 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Moron Robbie - If this is how Georgia hires attorneys, imagine how they manage elections: "I think it was grump928 who made an outstanding po ..."

Don Black: "is everyone over on the main page, slapping f5 lik ..."

JackStraw: ">>The long-shredded pretense to impartiality is su ..."

Moron Robbie - If this is how Georgia hires attorneys, imagine how they manage elections: "Wakandyass it is! ..."

Don Black: "NYR 0 COL 0 end 1st p 🏒 ..."

Alberta Oil Peon: "If the Wakandians hadn't been isolationists then t ..."

Puddleglum at work: "[i]173 167 I’ve often speculated that the re ..."

Moron Robbie - If this is how Georgia hires attorneys, imagine how they manage elections: "If the Wakandians hadn't been isolationists then t ..."

Ciampino - Bloody 'experts' again ...: "158 For being the alleged "birthplace of civilizat ..."

sock_rat_eez - these lying bastardi e stronzi have been lying to us for decades [/b][/u][/i][/s]: "got to have a spread of alternatives, amirite? ..."

Bulgaroctonus : "167 I’ve often speculated that the reason th ..."

Hairyback Guy: "Anita Bryant > All Other Female Crooners ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64