V.A. administrator Eric Shinseki resigned this weekend under severe pressure from everyone who wants a broken Veterans Affairs department to get fixed. The problem is this–changing the cast of characters won’t repair a systemically flawed system.
The V.A. works on fundamentally socialist principles. It’s a single-payer entitlement program (that our veterans are definitely entitled to!) that operates, not on any sort of free-market competition, but rather is a bureaucratic leviathan mired in red tape; unresponsive committees working with sub-committees shuffling problems down to yet more subcommittees.
Unlike a private-sector company, in which performance is monitored–rewarding excellence with promotion and penalizing incompetence with dismissal–in a bureaucracy, no one is answerable to anyone. In fact, in order to hide screw-ups, incompetency is rewarded with promotions and bonuses!
It’s a government bureaucratic shell-game in which no one gets fired, no one gets reprimanded, idiocy, mismanagement and incompetency are rewarded, and excellence is, by default, held down and discouraged.
The prevailing m.o. is to deflect blame, cover your tracks and kick the problem down the road to yet another sub-committee. Such is the quagmire we are now seeing unraveled within the Department of Veterans Affairs.
We owe more to our veterans who have served to defend our country than this shabby treatment. How about offering vouchers to use in private hospitals and medical clinics … or better yet–How about our members of Congress accept the same health care options as are currently residing at the V.A.? Do you think the problem might receive a more immediate response?
Unlike a private company that must keep their bottom line low and to compete, must keep their quality high … the V.A., funded by billions and billions of your tax dollars, has zero motivation to cut inefficiencies and streamline their operation. They have zero motivation to make it airtight and running like a Swiss watch. And with our current system, they’re currently the only place in town.
Where else you gonna go?
As we watch the debacle of the V.A. scandal roll out, we Americans are watching in horror as one by one, we are all slowly coming to the realization that, with ObamaCare attempting to roll out, this is the disaster that is barreling down on us.
I was in a DMV office recently, waiting three-and-a-half hours of getting bounced from window to window, only to finally get a title transfer started … only to have to wait an additional hour as the computer crashed and had to be unraveled … and I looked around at all these people milling about, waiting … waiting …waiting … and I thought to myself … ‘Ya know … this is what the Obamacare medical clinics will soon look like.
The V.A. disaster is a look into our future. And it’s not a pretty sight.
–GG
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