Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/331754
NowonderIamso cynical about government health care. Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that the Department of Veterans Affairs is facing some care-delivery chal- lenges. As it goes, according to the VA's internal audit report released last week, more than 57,000 veterans who signed up for care at VA-run facilities have waited at least 90 days for their first appointments — well be- yond the VA's goal of provid- ing first appointments within 14 days of an initial request. Such challenges have been around a good long while. In fact, writes Andrew Kaczynski for Buzzfeed, President Obama made promises to address such VA health-care challenges some seven times between 2007 and 2009. "It's time for comprehensive reform," said Obama while run- ning for the presidency. "When I am president, build- ing a 21st-century VA to serve our veterans will be an equal priority to building a 21st-cen- tury military to fight our wars." Regrettably, that didn't hap- pen. To be sure, the VA is still using 20th-century practices and failing considerably to meet the needs of our veterans — which is why veterans are wait- ing so long to get care. Here's what's worse: About 13 percent of the rank-and-file employees who schedule VA patients indicated they were told by their superiors to fal- sify reports to mask the fact that wait times were way lon- ger than genuine reports said they were. This is how failed government bureaucrats often solve their problems: They don't solve them at all. They simply force their underlings to alter reports so that the problem appears not to exist — despite the suffering of our veterans. In fact, says the VA audit, about 8 percent of the VA sched- ulers kept separate, unoffi- cial lists to track patients who waited at least 90 days for ap- pointments — essentially keep- ing two sets of books to make the "official" numbers appear more pleasing to VA bureau- crats. And the poor rank-and-file VA employees have had to go along with it — or face various punishments. VA employees at 24 VA locations said they felt threatened or co- erced to manipulate the numbers — numbers that made the 115-day waiting average appear as a 24-day average — and who can blame them? The frustration is because our country and government orga- nizations can do so much bet- ter. And now that this latest VA scandal is out in the open, I hope to goodness we actu- ally solve the VA's problems this time. The real solution to the wait times our veterans are facing is to unleash competition and cre- ativity and give veterans vouch- ers to purchase care as they choose in the private sector — rather than wait months to get into a government-run VA fa- cility. That is what bipartisan legis- lation in the House and Senate is finally seeking to do — and if Medicare Part D is any indica- tion, it will work. Medicare Part D is a suc- cessful government entitle- ment program that provides drugs to the elderly. It is suc- cessful because seniors are free to choose among a variety of benefits, costs and plans of- fered by private insurers. And Medicare Part D par- ticipants' actual costs are half the monthly average of $61 that Medicare trustees esti- mated for 2013, according to The Heartland Institute. Sheesh, what a concept: free- dom, choice, competition and creativity. In the private sector, you see, if a health facility makes pa- tients wait three months for an appointment, patients will go to another provider that doesn't make them wait. That is how freedom of choice works and ef- ficiencies are born. I fear we won't give veter- ans such freedom, though. I fear our politicians will lather up the populace with more empty words, promise needed reforms, then promptly fail to deliver them. As I said, no wonder I am so cynical about government health care. TomPurcell,authorof"Misad- ventures of a 1970s Childhood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Hu- morist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pittsburgh Tribune- Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@ caglecartoons.com. Column When government runs health care This is how failed government bureaucrats often solve their problems: They don't solve them at all. Cartoonist's take By Jason Stanford Usually state parties nomi- nate candidates at conventions, activists adopt a pre-approved platform and everyone goes home happy. What happened in Fort Worth was a combination of a demolition derby and an inauguration. Rick Perry may have kicked off the weekend with a well-regarded speech, but there was a new king when delegates left town. Ted Cruz is now the head of the He-Man Woman-Gay-Immigrant-Sci- ence-Logic Hater's Club for- merly known as the Republi- can Party of Texas. Long may he reign. Need proof? After Texas Re- publicans got done adopting a platform that compared un- authorized immigrants to Is- lamic terrorists, they held a presidential straw poll. Cruz won big, and Perry came in fourth. Perry has been gover- nor of Texas since Major Ap- plewhite was everyone's favor- ite college senior. For Perry, it must have felt like watch- ing your children call another man daddy. There is not a rational reason in the world to think that put- ting Cruz in charge of anything makes sense politically, but we're talking about the Republi- can Party that is now evenly di- vided between those who advo- cate bad ideas and those who see that as a weak-kneed com- promise. In Fort Worth, the lat- ter-day jihadists won the day, and Ted Cruz, the apogee of tantrum politics, is their cham- pion. When Cruz forced a govern- ment shutdown because he didn't get his way on Obam- acare, the polls punished both him and the GOP, but Repub- licans fell in love. Republi- can activists think the govern- ment shutdown was a good idea regardless of how unpopu- lar it proved because it picked a fight they blamed their lead- ership for avoiding. Republi- can congressional leadership, of course, was more concerned about winning the Senate than about kowtowing to a conser- vative base with a blood lust for a fool's errand. This is how Texas Republi- cans end up having a family feud in public over an issue that will determine whether the GOP can ever win the White House again. There is no political up- side to appearing hostile and unwelcoming to Hispanics, and yet one of the leading activists at the Fort Worth convention told this paper that he "would rather have a unified party than win." That's the same logic that convinced Cruz to force a gov- ernment shutdown over Obam- acare. It wasn't always like this, and writing this next sentence in- duces actual feelings of nausea, but I can't help it: If—as Paul Be- gala famously wrote—Perry was "the candidate for those who thought George W. Bush was too cerebral," then Cruz is the leader for Texans who consid- ered Perry too moderate. If Ted Cruz and Texas Republicans fol- low through on their plans, we will look back fondly on Perry's reign of error as an era of rel- ative tolerance and bi-partisan cooperation. For longer than I care to re- member, Perry was the Repub- licans whom Texas Democrats loved to hate, but compared to this generation of Republi- can leaders he doesn't seem so bad. He signed the DREAM Act in 2001, and for that good deed he got his lunch money stolen by Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum on live television. To be fair, Perry was—rather, is (oops)—no one's liberal, espe- cially compared to his predeces- sor, George W. Bush. As gover- nor, Dubya bragged about bipar- tisanship, proposed new taxes, and seemed unconcerned with whether, as today's Texas Re- publican Party platform claims, homosexuality "tears at the fab- ric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the fam- ily unit." The Texas Republican Party needs a lot of reparative ther- apy to become fit for polite soci- ety again. One can legitimately claim that the Texas GOP plat- form won't change a single vote, but Republican statewide nom- inees agree with the platform's anti-immigrant, anti-women's health, anti-public school, anti- 21st Century agenda. You can't run from a platform and run on it at the same time. The Texas Republican Party convention was the best con- vention Texas Democrats have ever had. For two decades, good economies have prevented Dem- ocrats from convincing Texans that our Republican overlords had gone off the deep end. With this radical platform and like- minded ticket, Republicans have made the case better than Dem- ocrats ever could have. Mak- ing Cruz the standard-bearer? That's better than lucky. For Texas Democrats, it's Christmas come in June, and if we're lucky, in November too. Jason Stanford is a Democratic consultant who writes columns for the Austin American-States- man and The Quorum Report. He can be reached at stanford@ oppresearch.com. Column Ted Cruz is Christmas in July for Democrats nationwide Another view By Rick Jensen Hillary Clinton's term as Secretary of State was a disaster, from presenting the Russian's with a cultur- ally insular "reset" button ig- norantly emblazoned with the Russian word for "over- charge," to failing to respond to the desperate requests for available backup from Am- bassador Chris Stevens, For- eign Service Manager Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Do- herty in Benghazi. What's truly stunning are the failing attempts by Hillary sycophants to reha- bilitate her blotched reputa- tion at the expense of their own. Diane Sawyer nodded in empathy as Hillary stoically described the hardship she and Bill faced, leaving the "White House not only dead broke, but in debt." Yes, surely every Ameri- can who suffered through the Great Recession aided and abetted by liberal fis- cal policies can relate to the challenges she and Bill faced, barely surviving as they "struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education. You know, it wasn't easy." Sniff. Sniff. Oh, poor Hillary. My, she does have the common touch. Reading this right now, you can feel their pain as you, too, have struggled on a mere $8 million for your book advance (like Hillary's) plus Bill's pauper pension of $200,000 a year and Hillary's starving artist salary of $200,000 as Secretary of State. Then there's the $200 million in cookie jar money from both of their high- priced "speeches" to compa- nies that do business with the federal government. How well do you iden- tify with her doe-eyed com- plaint that it took so much hard work to buy two houses? They're actually multi-million dollar mansions. Like so many typical limousine liberals, Hillary actually believes she worked as hard as most ordi- nary Americans and that she's entitled to sympathy since she and Bill left the White House with nothing but her $8 mil- lion book advance, Bill's pen- sion and the custom designer clothes on their backs. Wheel in the sycophants. Politico, the left-lean- ing publication that recently sobbed over President Oba- ma's well-earned, historically low popularity polls by tap- ping into their collective for- lorn, brokenhearted inner teenager to ask, "Will Obama Ever Be Popular Again?," put Thomas Wright to the task of trying to create an "Impres- sive Legacy" for Hillary. He failed. In doing so, he made the mistake of documenting ac- tual accomplishments by for- mer U.S. Secretaries of State George Marshall, George Schultz, Dean Acheson and Henry Kissinger, who opened China with President Nixon. So Wright redefines "ac- complishment" as being per- ceived as a "shaper" of poli- cies. Thus, Hillary is "accom- plished." Yay. Even MSNBC liberal Mika Brzezinski called out fellow travelers Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, Thomas Roberts of MSNBC and NBC, columnist Eugene Robin- son and her own co-host Joe Scarborough for being too "afraid" of the Clintons to honestly assess their duplic- ity and fealty in the hopes of scoring an interview with Hillary or Bill. Hillary actually said she believes her failure with the illegal Benghazi gunrunning debacle has even given her "more of a reason to run" for President in 2016. Imagine that; being crit- icized for failing to answer the actual 3 a.m. call upon which she campaigned gives her "more of a reason to run." How has Hillary earned the trust of such craven lib- erals? What do they expect to get from her? Do they fear being listed in her personal "saints and sinners" (friends and enemies) book as be- ing disloyal and deserving of punishment? Okay. That actually is a very real threat. Rick Jensen is Delaware's award-winning conservative talk show host on 1150AM WDEL and 93.7FM HD3, Streaming live on WDEL.com from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Con- tact Rick at rick@wdel.com. Should we pity poor Hillary? GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Tom Purcell Sniff. Sniff. Oh, poor Hillary. My, she does have the common touch. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, June 18, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6