We now know that the state of affairs within the VA system was abhorrent--and that Obama, like his predecessor, knew there were problems. And yet, several well known left-leaning columnists spoke highly about the VA health system over the last few years, ramping up the rhetoric right at the time ObamaCare began to take shape in Congress.
Obama's objectives regarding the VA were laid out in the Obama Transition Plan for when he took office. Obama had been warned about the problems in 2008, so he stated that he wanted to "
make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible".
Shortly after his inauguration, Obama spoke to Congress in February 2009 to discuss healthcare reform, and the process toward the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began.
At the same time during 2009 both Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman of the NYT and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post heaped praised the VA system. They must have read Obama's VA talking points:
Kristof:
It is fully government run, much more "socialized medicine" than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effective elements in the American medical establishment.
Paul Krugman:
Let's talk about health care around the advanced world... By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs."
Klein:
The "VA is actually socialized medicine, where the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors. If you ordered America's different health systems worst-functioning to best, it would look like this: individual insurance market, employer-based insurance market, Medicare, Veterans Health Administration".
It is clear that these writers never had any information, nor had they done any research on the VA, the quality of its services, or its financial and operational efficiency. They write what they wish to be as fact, hoping that their readers won't find them out. You are certainly free to wonder about the credibility and integrity of their other writings.
As we also know, the ACA began to be debated seriously during the fall of 2009 and it passed on March 25, 2010. It was during this same time that the secret waiting lists were developed at many VA centers. In the midwest alone, ten facilities have been found with the secret waitings lists, along with the most widely known problem in Arizona. These were clearly not "rogue" employees but signal part of a wider, concerted effort to keep issues quiet.
How did this happen? At least one attempt to fix the problem never got off the ground after nearly a decade of trying.
Apparently a medical scheduling project for the VA was discontinued in 2009, 9 years after the project began--and it remained utterly unfinished. No other program was attempted for still yet another 4 years either. It was during this time that the practice of "secret lists" began as a coverup/bandaid for the problem. (This also included the timeframe when Obamacare was passed).
According to a press release in 2013 regarding a new attempt at creating "scheduling app" via a contest, it was noted that the "VA started to develop a Medical Scheduling Package replacement in 2000. This effort was not successful. When VA ended the project in 2009, none of the planned capabilities were delivered. It had cost more than $127 million".
$127 million is a lot of taxpayer monies that could have been used on veterans' treatments over the years.
So while the merits of the ACA was being debated, the VA's scheduling endeavor ended--with failure--after 9 years of trying to be implemented.
But who was talking about it? No one. Certainly not the most widely read papers in this country.
Instead, we got reassurances from the press to a nervous public about the government's ability to overesee healthcare, especially after the ACA passed in a controversial way. What's more, the VA continued to be offered as a model when the backlash to the law began.
In 2011,
Paul Krugman of the NYT happily explained how successful the VA system: "The V.H.A. is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform. Many people still have an image of veterans' health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago"
Now we find out that it was clearly
not working.
Underfunding the Department of Veterans Affairs is not the problem. From 2007 to 2012, enrollment in VA services has increased by 13% from 2007 to 2012. At the same time, the VA budget went from $82 million to $125 million--a 53% increase, and the biggest jump in the VA's budget history since records go back to 1940. Yet the VA could not deliver quality services to our Veterans.
Government should not be handling our health systems. The fact that secret waiting lists existed shows just how far the government went to hide its incompetence in running a health system at the very time that Obamacare was being debated both in Congress and then in the public square. And the media supported out the narrative that government delivered quality and efficient health care to our Veterans without checking to see if it was actually true.
If Congress and Americans knew the truth of the condition of the VA health system, it is quite possible that Obamacare would never have been allowed to become law.
