Veterans deserve good healthcare. There’s no disagreement on that point. The real question is how to provide that good healthcare.

Socialized Medicine

The VA Healthcare System for our veterans is the only true socialized medicine model in this country. The hospitals, doctors, and nurses are all employees of the federal government and federal taxpayers pay all the bills.

Socialized medicine, and its close relative, single-payer healthcare, are considered unacceptable by a majority of Americans for their personal healthcare. Progressives have been pushing for this to change for the last hundred years since the days of President Teddy Roosevelt, but thus far they have failed to convince most Americans. ObamaCare was their best step forward toward this ultimate goal.

Yet, even though this model of healthcare is considered unacceptable for most Americans, we tolerate this for our veterans. In other words, those who deserve our best medicine are getting what we don’t consider acceptable for ourselves.

VA Scandals

The VA System came under close scrutiny in 2014, during the Obama Administration, when reports surfaced of veterans dying while waiting for doctor appointments at the VA Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. I wrote of this in an earlier blog called VA Hospital Scandal. Here is a quote from that post:

“According to the Inspector General report released this past week, the reports of fraudulent documentation of waiting times for veterans to receive medical treatment at the Phoenix V. A. Hospital are worse than initial claims. The IG report found primary-care waiting times averaged 115 days, nearly five times what the hospital reported and eight times the VA’s 14 day target. About 3100 veterans were actually waiting in line and more than half of them weren’t on the official waiting list. Whistleblowers at the hospital allege that forty or more veterans died while waiting to receive treatment.

This problem is not unique to the Phoenix VA Hospital alone. At this time 42 VA medical centers are under investigation for similar problems. This is not actually a new problem. According to an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, this is the 19^th IG report since 2005 to document excessive wait times at VA Hospitals.”

 

Since that scandal of 2014 there have been some changes at the VA. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned and was replaced by Robert McDonald. He lasted until he was replaced by David Shulkin, the Undersecretary under President Obama. President Trump has now replaced Shulkin with the appointment of Rear Admiral Ronald Jackson, his White House physician.

Privatization of the VA

The real solution is to privatize the system. If private healthcare is considered the best healthcare for most Americans, why wouldn’t we want it for our veterans?

Avik Roy, writing in Forbes in 2014 said this:

“There is only one way to truly reform the VA, to truly ensure that veterans get the care they need. And that is to give vets the ability to take the money that the government spends on them and use it to buy high-quality, private insurance. There are two straightforward ways to go about it. One would be to give veterans subsidies with which to buy insurance from the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, the popular private health insurance program for government workers. Another would be to allow those same subsidies to be used on the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. Either approach would allow veterans to seek care from private hospitals and private physicians.”

 

This seems to be the interest of the Trump Administration and the issue that led to the firing of David Shulkin. In an Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled Privatizing the VA Will Hurt Veterans, Shulkin lashed out at the Trump Administration after he was fired.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board rejects Shulkin’s characterization of the issue and says, “Concerned Veterans for America in a white paper has sketched out a plan to restructure the VA and allow it to focus more on the expertise its doctors have developed in, say, post-traumatic stress and prosthetics. The plan includes a premium-support payment so vets could buy discounted private coverage from a menu, much like federal employees do. A current vet who preferred to be treated for diabetes elsewhere would be free to make that choice.”

 

The bottom line is the VA Healthcare System is in need of change – and the more choices it gives veterans about where to get their healthcare, the better. The essence of private medicine is freedom of choice – freedom to pick your doctor, pick your hospital, and pick your treatment. The essence of socialized medicine like the VA is loss of freedom of choice – you must go to their hospital, their doctor, and accept their treatment alone – after lengthy delays.

Veterans deserve the same freedom of choice we all want for our own healthcare. This should serve as a good reminder that we don’t want single-payer healthcare.

 

 

Abortion has become the defining issue of the Democratic Party. Killing unwanted babies in the womb seems to trump every other issue.

Last post I told you how Democrats had thrown the interests of Catholics under the bus in favor of abortion (Democrats Choose Abortion Over Catholics). Today we’ll see how seeking abortion funding is more important to them than funding that lowers premiums for low-income Americans.

Cost-Sharing Reduction Payments

In an earlier post (ObamaCare – To Save or Not to Save?) I explained the debate that was raging in Congress over cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), which are payments to insurers by the government intended to lower premiums and deductibles for healthcare purchased by low-income individuals on the exchanges. These CSRs were illegally made by the Obama administration without Congressional appropriations.

The Trump administration ceased these illegal payments until Congress took appropriate steps to authorize them. This issue was part of the recent Congressional debate before passage of the omnibus spending bill.

Republicans were willing to approve the CSRs in an effort to lower premiums and deductibles for low-income Americans. Democrats wanted the same thing – so where’s the problem? Democrats also wanted to throw out the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal taxpayer funding of abortion except in extreme circumstances. The Hyde Amendment has been in effect since first passed in 1976.

Democrats Choose Abortion

The $1.3 Trillion spending bill is now history. It was passed and reluctantly signed by President Trump last week. Who won and lost in the CSRs v. Hyde Amendment debate?

The clear losers are low-income individuals who will have to pay higher premiums and deductibles next year. The CSRs were not approved. The Congressional Budget Office estimates premiums will rise about 10% on the exchanges next year. 

Why weren’t the CSRs approved? The Wall Street Journal says Democrats are blaming Republicans for “demanding the inclusion of abortion restrictions they knew would be unacceptable to Democrats. Republicans say they negotiated in good faith and that Democrats rejected reasonable rules on abortion.”

Notice that both sides agree that the issue of contention is abortions, not lowering premiums and deductibles for low-income Americans! In other words, Democrats have chosen the issue of abortion over the issue of lower-cost healthcare for low-income Americans.

Democrats seem to believe that defending abortion is a bigger political issue than the cost of healthcare. It’s a bigger issue even than propping up their failing ObamaCare. Perhaps they believe that when premiums rise in November, just before the mid-term elections, voters will thank them for fighting for abortion funding even though this fight resulted in higher healthcare costs for them.

Could there be another explanation?

It’s also just as possible that Democrats believe that voters will blame Republicans for their higher healthcare premiums and not blame Democrats for insisting on government funding of abortions. Just as Democrats seem to believe that keeping DACA legislation unsettled is a better election issue than actually solving the problem, they may believe that higher healthcare costs is a winning issue – even though the cause is ObamaCare – and their insistence on funding abortions.

 

The Democratic Party has long been the political party of choice for most Catholics. Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts gave Catholics their first-ever occupant of the White House. I can still remember the furor this caused in 1960 as many feared the Pope would become our defacto president.

Over half a century later most people, including most Democratic Party leaders apparently, take the Catholic vote for granted. That may be about to change.

The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, is taking Democrats to task for their failure to improve schools for low-income Americans – and their unabashed support of abortion.

Support for Schools

Dolan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says the support of the Catholic Church for Democrats dates back to the 19^th century when the first archbishop of New York, Archbishop John Hughes, “displayed dramatic reverence for the dignity of Irish immigrants.”

He notes the schools at the time were hostile to these immigrants so he initiated Catholic schools to provide children with a good education sensitive to their religion and to prepare them as responsible, patriotic citizens. The schools worked and many remain open today; but that may not last.

Dolan cites recent legislation in the State of New York that has repeatedly blocked education tax credit legislation, which would have helped middle class and low-income families make the choice to select Catholic or other non public schools for their children. Opposing the bill reduces the ability of fine Catholic schools across the state to continue their mission of serving the poor, many of them immigrants. Democrats are fierce supporters of the teacher’s unions and oppose school choice.

Support for Life

The second issue is the sanctity of life. Dolan recalls a recent funeral of a great African- American woman, Delores Grier, who was a convert to Catholicism. Grier was named vice chancellor of the archdiocese three decades ago by Cardinal John O’Connor. She was passionate about civil rights, especially the right to life of babies in the womb.

Grier attributed her pro-life sensitivity to Rev. Jesse Jackson who preached that abortion was an act of genocide against minorities. Time has proven Jackson correct. In 2013 there were more black babies aborted in New York (29,007) than were born (24,758), according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The support for the sanctity of life and for good education were early values that seemed better supported by Democrats than Republicans. Dolan recalls his own grandmother telling him, “We Catholics don’t trust Republicans.”

The Modern Democratic Party

But all that has changed. The Democratic Party has come a long way from the stance of President Bill Clinton in 1992 who said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Today it has become a litmus test for Democratic candidates. Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez recently insisted pro-life candidates have no place in the modern Democratic Party.

Democrats have recently proposed new legislation, called the Reproductive Health Act, which says doctors would not be required to care for a baby who survives an abortion. The newborn would simply be allowed to die without any attempt to save the child nor any legal repercussions. Abortions would be legal right up to the moment of birth. Who could have imagined that anyone would propose legislation to legalize the butchery of someone like Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who was convicted of murdering three infants born alive after abortion?

Dolan closes his comments with an apology: to Archbishop Hughes, Dolores Grier, and his Grandma Dolan – for the need to write these words. But the Democratic Party of their day that cared about educating the poor and protecting the unborn are nowhere to be found today.