Thomas Wictor

One of the main news stories right now is about government health care. The hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs are a disaster. Not only that, the people in charge are engaged in a massive coverup.

A watchdog’s report found systemic problems at Department of Veterans Affairs health-care facilities, including improper procedures for scheduling patient appointments and efforts to hide excessive wait times, increasing the pressure on embattled VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

The interim report by the VA’s independent inspector general focuses on the Phoenix VA Health Care System in Arizona, where wait times for patient appointments were improperly reported, but also points to widespread scheduling problems throughout the VA health-care system.

“Our reviews at more VA medical facilities…have confirmed that inappropriate scheduling practices are systemic,” the report said. The inspector general said it had identified potential criminal and civil violations, and is coordinating efforts with the Justice Department.

Eric Shinseki should be arrested.

But nothing will happen to him. All clubs protect their members. What you’re seeing is kabuki, designed to fool you. The VA won’t change because it can’t. In order to function, it needs to withhold treatment and kill its patients.

I’ve lived in five countries with government-run health care: Venezuela, the Netherlands, Britain, Norway, and Japan. The problems at the VA hospitals in the US are found in all the hospitals of those five nations. Government health care can’t avoid failing. I’ll explain why in a minute.

First, I want to say that if you support nationalized health care, I’m in no way attacking or denigrating you, and I don’t think you’re stupid. You sincerely believe that this is the best solution for taking care of everyone. Unfortunately, you’re the victim of lies. People you trusted looked you in the eye and lied to your face.

Nationalized health care will never work for two reasons: The driving principle always becomes saving money, and government bureaucrats by their nature don’t care.

I’ll give you an example: emergency health care.

The US uses what’s called “scoop and run,” the policy of getting the patient to the hospital as quickly as possible, where he or she can be stabilized. In contrast every nationalized health-care system uses “stay and play,” meaning the patient is stabilized on the scene. This is an absolute guarantee of more deaths from heart attacks, car accidents, or terrorism. Ambulances simply can’t carry the equipment necessary to stabilize patients with life-threatening conditions.

Princess Diana died because they kept her on the scene for over an hour.

My belief is that countries with nationalized health care choose “stay and play” so that more people will die and therefore not cost the government as much as they would’ve if they’d lived.

You may not think that health-care workers could be so callous, but just read their own words. Britain’s National Health Service has a self-described rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. It’s called…NICE.

NICE considers whether a treatment

Benefits patients

Will help the NHS meet its targets, for example by improving cancer survival rates

Is value for money or cost effective

Points number two and three are contradictory. You improve cancer survival rates by giving patients expensive treatment. You can’t improve cancer survival rates and keep an eye on the bottom line at the same time.

NICE is talking out of both sides of its mouth, in an effort to confuse the British public.

One article says this.

The NHS rationing body, Nice, fears the Department of Health proposals could see younger people deemed a higher priority for drug treatments because they have more years ahead of them – potentially contributing more to the economy – than the elderly.

Another article says this.

Under the proposals by the Government’s drugs rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, a drug’s benefit to wider society will be taken into account as well as its advantages to the individual.

There are concerns the policy will discriminate against the elderly, in favour of the young who can contribute to the economy through childcare or going back to work.

However Nice has insisted it will not only consider age.

So, NICE both opposes and supports the new British health-care proposals. This is what bureaucrats do. They blather, contradict themselves, and lie, but they’re detached. No amount of appealing to a bureaucrat’s humanity will move him, because he has no humanity. The VA hospital scandals show that.

“What I don’t understand is, as a veteran, as a doctor, as a practitioner, how you can look at yourself in the mirror and shave in the morning,” Rep. Phil Roe (R., Tenn.) told Thomas Lynch, assistant deputy under secretary for health for clinical operations at the VA, who carried out the department’s initial review of the problems in Phoenix.

Mr. Lynch described the review’s conclusions as “unacceptable” and conceded that the VA should have taken a more critical look at the problems. “I think people lost sight of the real goal of the VA—which is treating veterans,” he said.

Here’s Thomas Lynch.

Why waste your time trying to reach that thing? Representative Phil Roe apparently thinks that those who commit deliberate fraud can be shamed.

Newly obtained internal Department of Veterans Affairs emails show that Central Texas VA doctors were directed to alter their scheduling requests for critical medical screenings in an attempt to make wait times appear shorter than they really were.

Printouts of the emails were mailed to the American-Statesman this week by an anonymous VA employee and echoed allegations made earlier this month by former VA physician Dr. Joseph Spann, who said orders to enter false request dates came from the radiology department at Temple’s Olin Teague Veterans Medical Center. Spann verified the authenticity of the emails. VA officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The VA hospitals falsified records to make their crappy service seem better. They also put veterans on secret wait lists that delayed their treatment. This was done in the hopes that the veterans would die and not cost the system money.

When you confront the people doing this, do you expect them to admit it? They obviously won’t. Because they think you’re an idiot, they’ll put on an act.

The point is that they’re doing it all on purpose, and with full knowledge of the end results, which is the deaths of people these bureaucrats have deemed not worth saving. They are indifferent to the suffering of the veterans and their family members.

Are you aware of how we know the number of people murdered by the world’s despotic regimes? Because bureaucrats kept records. They noted the names and dates of the murders. You don’t ask a bureaucrat how he can look in a mirror. What these people do is compartmentalize. Putting veterans or the elderly on secret wait lists so they’ll die is what the bureaucrat does at work, and then he or she goes home and has dinner, plays with the kids, and watches TV.

Bureaucrats are administering the Affordable Care Act. Look how they treat our veterans. They actually and genuinely put them on secret death lists.

Do you honestly believe that the bureaucrats running the Affordable Care Act will be any different?

I wish these men of the 30th Engineer Regiment (Gas and Flame) were alive to have a word with the bureaucrats of the Veterans Affairs Department.