{"id":6357,"date":"2014-06-09T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T16:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=6357"},"modified":"2014-06-03T15:57:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T20:57:18","slug":"more-money-for-the-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=6357","title":{"rendered":"More Money for the VA?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This is part of the transcript of my latest podcast episode, "Consider This!"<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In an opinion piece at the Huffington Post by H. A. Goodman<\/a>, he argues that Republicans have been complaining about how bad the VA is, but hypocritically voted against a bill for various funding for the VA back in January. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a problem with that, and it\u2019s not something you\u2019ll hear on most newscasts. For the last 5 years, the VA has not spent its full health care budget<\/a>; as much as $1.163 billion extra to as \u201clittle\u201d as $450 million in medical-care funding from this past fiscal year. And still<\/i> vets have been waiting too long for care, some paying with their lives. Clearly, clearly<\/i>, throwing more money at the problem has done nothing whatsoever to fix it.<\/p>\n

The Republicans, back in January, said that if the huge catch-all bill were split up into separate bills, there were plenty of items they would<\/i> vote for. The issue was fiscal responsibility. Democrats, on the other hand, really do have the mindset that enough greenbacks will solve any problem, especially if the problem is one that makes liberalism look bad. And the single-payer VA medical system absolutely fits that particular bill. Creating a single source of a particular product or service (in this case, health care) inevitably leads to scarcity (in this case, waiting lines). If vets could choose any hospital they wanted, and if the government still picked up the tab, would we have this problem? No. But this would be an indictment of a system that Democrats want to see implemented all over, and so it cannot be seen to fail.<\/p>\n

Remember this when Democrats like Mr. Goodman accuse Republicans of \u201chating the poor\u201d or of being \u201cracist\u201d because they don\u2019t want to throw more money at programs that are similarly flawed. Since the mid 60s, when the \u201cWar on Poverty\u201d began, the poverty rate has been bouncing around between 10 and 15% of the population. Nothing has changed. Prior<\/em> to that, the poverty rate had been steadily decreasing<\/a>, from 30% in 1950 to 15% when we went to war on it. We were gaining ground, but since \u201cgoing to war\u201d, it\u2019s been nothing but a stalemate, even though the programs have been costlier every year. But just look askance at the programs, just try to reign in some of that continue rise in cost, and you get accused of all manner of hate and villainy. For nearly half a century we\u2019ve been pouring more and more money into it, just like the VA. And, just like the VA, it is not<\/i> doing what it is supposed to be doing, or doing it incredibly inefficiently. <\/p>\n

But if you want to change the flat tire and try to get things done better, you\u2019re accused of hating the car. The flat\u2019s got us this far, it can go further, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This is part of the transcript of my latest podcast episode, "Consider This!") In an opinion piece at the Huffington Post by H. A. Goodman, he argues that Republicans have been complaining about how bad the VA is, but hypocritically voted against a bill for various funding for the VA back in January. Here\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15,18,275],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doug","category-economics-taxes","category-government","category-healthcare"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}