{"id":6395,"date":"2014-07-03T10:53:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T15:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=6395"},"modified":"2014-06-30T15:06:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T20:06:33","slug":"what-works-and-what-doesnt-state-economies-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=6395","title":{"rendered":"What Works and What Doesn’t: Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This is part of the script for the latest episode of my podcast, "Consider This!"<\/a>. You can listen to it on the website, or subscribe to it in iTunes<\/a>, Stitcher Radio<\/a>, Blubrry<\/a>, Player.fm<\/a>, or the podcast app of your choice<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Liberal columnist Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Post, June of 2009<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, he really said that, and it was obviously untrue back then. But that didn\u2019t stop his love of socialized medicine. Here he is again in 2011<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The thing about the Veteran\u2019s Administration\u2019s health-care system? It\u2019s socialized. Not single payer. Not heavily centralized. Socialized. As in, it employs the doctors and nurses. Owns the hospitals. And though I think there\u2019s some good reason to believe its spending growth is somewhat understated \u2014 it benefits heavily from medical trainees, for instance \u2014 accounting for that difference still means a remarkable recent performance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He also called the VA system, \u201cthe program is one of the most remarkable success stories in American public policy.\u201d Of course now<\/i> everyone\u2019s saying that the system has been awful for decades<\/a>, so you can\u2019t blame Obama for it. While that\u2019s certainly true, you can blame liberal pundits who have been trying to suggest for years that the performance of the VA means that ObamaCare ought to work. It seems like they\u2019ll say anything to get their policies enacted. Never mind reality.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re making the same claim as a certain presidential candidate did 6 years or so ago. So in a sense, you can<\/i> blame the President for foisting on us a system based on one that was, and is, a money pit and an abject failure, and which is utterly dishonest about those failures. They can, or should, be able to see what works and what doesn\u2019t, but I guess Obama is going with the idea that this<\/i> time, it\u2019s gonna\u2019 work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This is part of the script for the latest episode of my podcast, "Consider This!". You can listen to it on the website, or subscribe to it in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Blubrry, Player.fm, or the podcast app of your choice.) Liberal columnist Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Post, June of 2009: If you ordered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[940,27,9,18,275,939,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consider-this","category-democrats","category-doug","category-government","category-healthcare","category-podcasts","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t