Free Republic

President Obama and the Veterans Administration bureaucracy are already sabotaging the VA reform law passed in August. The ink is barely dry on the 8.6 million “Choice Cards” that supposedly allow vets to see a doctor outside the delay-plagued system. Obama’s budget tries to snatch the $10 billion allocated for the Choice program and allow it to be spent however VA top administrators want. It’s a sickening betrayal. Even worse, VA secretary Robert McDonald is telling federal lawmakers that this underhanded move will better serve “VA system priorities.” That’s the problem. He’s more interested in protecting “the system” than vets....

U.S. veterans are dying because of delays in diagnosis and treatment at VA hospitals. At least 19 veterans have died because of delays in simple medical screenings like colonoscopies or endoscopies, at various VA hospitals or clinics, CNN has learned. The new document obtained by CNN shows a worse problem than has previously been made public by the VA. As CNN has previously reported, as many as 7,000 veterans were on a backlog list -- waiting too long for colonscopies or endoscopies -- at VA facilities in Columbia, South Carolina and Augusta, Georgia.

Comparing VA/Obamacare Veteran’s Insights into Government Run Healthcare and the Implications of Obamacare on Everyone Else You cannot line each system up and make perfect comparisons but you can delineate basic failures within the V.A. system, and many other government programs, and come to the clear conclusion that setting ourselves down this path of dependency on government will do nothing but increase deficits and debt, while making decent free market healthcare even more expensive to get access to.

At a time when much of our public discussion is riddled with disagreement, there is an emerging bipartisan consensus in one vitally important area: that the challenges facing U.S. health care require major, transformative change. Some steps are already underway. Recently the Department of Health and Human Services announced a 10-year plan to build a new health information infrastructure. And while there is no consensus yet on all the changes needed, we both agree that in a new system, innovations stimulated by information technology will improve care, lower costs, improve quality and empower consumers.