Monthly Archives: June 2014

A Step in the Right Direction

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[A] bill announced Thursday by Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Senator John McCain (R, AZ) would allow veterans who wait 30 days or more for VA appointments or who live at least 40 miles from a VA hospital or clinic to use private doctors enrolled as providers for Medicare, military TRICARE or other government health care programs.

This is clearly a step in the right direction, but this bill absolutely does not complete the reform of the VA. Why should a veteran have to wait 30 days before he can see a non-VA doctor that he could see tomorrow at urgency or in a few days to a week otherwise?

Why should a veteran have to drive 39 miles to a VA facility, driving past a non-VA doctor’s office just 10 miles away?

Why should a veteran be required to see a government-designated doctor when he could see one that he prefers those 10 miles away?

No. The final way, the complete way, to reform this VA is to disband it and let our veterans see the doctors they choose to see at the medical facility they and their doctor deem appropriate, with the VA’s budget paid to the veterans as vouchers.

The Sanders-McCain bill, it’s claimed

also would let the VA immediately fire as many as 450 senior regional executives and hospital administrators for poor performance.

Again, a useful step, but this cannot be a final one. Disbanding the VA and returning all of the VA’s employees to the private sector clears this problem away, also, and with finality.

YGTBSM

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Yet another installment.

At the D-Day ceremonies last Friday, on the beaches of Normandy, our President Barack Obama did this. That’s right,

President Obama was caught on camera chewing gum during the D-Day ceremonies in France as Queen Elizabeth II was welcomed….

His chaw seems to have been extended through the playing of the Marseillaise, the French National Anthem, too.

This is such an easy thing not to do. It’s got to be deliberately disrespectful, to his host, to the fallen, to the occasion, to all of us.

Keep it in mind this fall, and in the fall of 2016, when his acolyte will be the Democratic candidate.

Bergdahl and Deal Making

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Power Line‘s Paul Mirengoff made a number of points about the Obama “exchange;” I’ll add just a couple.

…President Obama was motivated less by a desire to bring back this particular prisoner than by a desire to make a deal—almost any deal—with the Taliban. Obama himself tipped his hand when, in announcing the deal, he said it could “open the door for broader discussions [with the Taliban] about the future of [Afghanistan] by building confidence.”

Mirengoff added

But who doubted that deals can be made with the Taliban? A deal can be made with anyone if it is one-sided enough.

Indeed. And after initially (or so Obama’s minions claim) holding out for a grand bargain,

A senior administration official said “we didn’t achieve as much as we would have liked, but neither [did we achieve] nothing.” Instead, “we have created precedent and a basis that might well provide an opening in the future,” he asserted.

Well, no, you didn’t. A precedent in this venue requires that both parties to agree that it is one or that one party has the power to enforce its terms in later efforts. This isn’t an American superior court where precedence has force regardless of agreement (you’d think a Constitutional scholar like our President would understand that). On the other hand, the Taliban did set a very critical precedent. They’ve demonstrated that they have the power to enforce their precedential terms onto this administration at will.

And this: only a partisan hack could think trading five four-star generals for a single sergeant is a good deal. Or a community organizer out of his depth.

An Illustration

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…of why government is unsuited to run what are essentially business operations.

Not to keep picking on Obamacare, but this program really is a poster child for why government can’t do this sort of thing. All year long, the Federal government has been trying to revamp its failed ObamaMart, euphemistically known as Healthcare.gov. Here’s the status of that effort.

  • ObamaMart still is transitioning to new government contractors to manage basic functions. This transition has been going on since the first of the year. They’re not even stable yet on what companies have been hired to do the work.
  • Some back-end functions, including a system to automate payments to insurers, are running behind schedule—still. These functions were supposed to be fully operational last October 1, at the initial deployment of ObamaMart. The revamp can’t get this right, either.
  • [N]ew versions of some functions still will need to be tested with insurers before open enrollment begins 15 Nov. Actual testing is a new wrinkle. Welcome to be sure, but even though CDS has said that ObamaMart was never seriously tested the first time, apparently CDS still is only testing some parts—spot checking.
  • [The] exchange for small businesses, delayed by technical problems last year…will “launch” without some functions.
  • [T]he system to funnel subsidy payments to plan providers for the benefit of plan purchasers (remember that back end?), originally supposed to be ready for the launch in October, then later set for completion by mid-March, is now scheduled to be fully operational in 2015—well after the enrollment period for purchasing 2015 plans has closed.

These highlights demonstrate a terrible performance, by an entity that has no concept of the cost of money and that has none of the performance incentives that a competitive environment in a free market economy provides.

For Progressives, Some Lives are More Important than Others—A Follow-up

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A bit over a year ago, I wrote about King Cove, AK’s, attempt to get an 11-mile road built to Cold Bay so they could get folks quickly to Cold Bay’s all-weather airport and thence to a hospital. For 30 years, the Feds have been blocking King Cove’s road because the lives of animals are more important than those of the humans who live in King Cove. And die there, as 19 have, recall, over the last three decades because they couldn’t get to medical treatment in time.

Here’s the current status of that shameful situation.

A group of native tribes in Alaska is suing the Obama administration after being blocked for years from building an emergency road from their fishing hamlet to a vital airport over preservation concerns.

The suit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Alaska, claims the Interior Department’s refusal is a violation of federal law and argues no other reasonable transportation alternative exists.

They say they know taking the issue to court will likely make an already lengthy process even longer but say they have exhausted all other options.

And this from Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Senator Lisa Murkowski (R, AK):

Secretary [of the Interior Sally] Jewell has ignored the King Cove folks for six months—despite her very public promise to find a viable alternative to the land exchange.

You can imagine their frustration with Interior when they can’t even get Jewell to acknowledge them. Jewell may be hoping this issue just going away, but it won’t. The people of King Cove are fighting to keep their families safe—that’s not something you give up on.

Recall that the land swap Jewell refused involved 43,000 acres elsewhere in Alaska for the 1,800, or so, needed for King Cove’s short road.

But Jewell thinks the lives of bears, caribou, and birds are more valuable than the lives of a few hundred financially poor Aleut native Americans.