Walter Reed A Metaphor For Government Health Care

by Doug Patton: As I read about the scandal surrounding the Walter Reed Army Hospital, I was reminded of Hillary's 1994 fiasco, and why so many of us were motivated to action against her blatant power grab. Can you imagine huge government hospitals, whose services all of us would be forced to utilize, with mold growing up the walls and vermin infesting the rooms like some third world medical facility? Liberals will never admit that this will be the result of their vision for our nation's health care system, but that is exactly what our wounded military heroes have been enduring at Walter Reed. Why should we believe that dictatorial Hillary-care would be any different?

Pick a federal agency. Do any of them fit your model of how health care should be run? How about the United States Postal Service? Calling itself a quasi-private government entity, the USPS is a relatively unaccountable monopoly that would crumble under real-world competition. How about our government schools? Talk about unaccountable monopolies! Do I detect a pattern here? Perhaps the Internal Revenue Service or Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would qualify as your bureaucracy of choice. Ask those who have ever dealt with either agency if they would like to negotiate for cancer surgery with such people. How about five trillion dollars in government spending for the forty-year "war on poverty"? Is that your model for efficiency? While there was outsourcing going on at Walter Reed, with private companies providing at least some of the management, the truth is that whenever government is involved in any endeavor, efficiency, cost effectiveness and accountability inevitably head south. When government partners with a large corporation, the private sector does not improve the government; government corrupts the private sector. ... [Read More]

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Tags: Doug Patton, healthcare, Hillary-care, Walter Reed Army Hospital