September 12, 2007

The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Veterans Affairs announced yesterday that the DVA "consistently understated the wait times for veterans seeking medical care and in some cases made seriously injured veterans wait more than 30 days for an appointment, a violation of department policy..."

Can this possibly surprise anyone? Government health care means rationing---it cannot mean anything else in a world in which resources are limited---and queuing is one of the most obvious forms of rationing available. It imposes no direct measureable costs on the government budget. The patients are captives of the system; and, anyway, all they can do is write their Congressman.

Let me predict here and now that the ineffable Paul Krugman will cite this report not as an indictment of the concept of government health insurance, but instead of the Bush Administration's purported indifference to the needs of injured vets. Please. This outcome---it cannot be repeated too often---is inevitable regardless of who occupies the White House. And it is a harbinger of what awaits all of us if the U.S. chooses the path medical socialism.

Posted by Benjamin Zycher at September 12, 2007 09:01 AM

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