Manweller 3/17/07
Every once in a while a political scandal will come to light in which most Americans learn the entirely wrong lesson. The revelation of terrible medical care at Walter Reed hospital is a perfect example. While most Americans are sensibly outraged at the compassionless care our veterans are receiving, too many see these events as an isolated incident that can be overcome with more money and better management. Neither is correct. The problems at Walter Reed are systemic to all government run services and the lesson we should be taking from Walter Reed is “Thank God the Government Doesn’t Run My Health Care!”
I always get a smirk on my face when someone (usually a liberal) spends a few minutes ranting at the Bush administration for its handling of Walter Reed and then in the next breath goes into a rant about how American needs a national health care system run by….that’s right, the same people running Walter Reed hospital. The only thing worse than letting the government run veteran health care would be to let the government run all health care. Government can’t do simple things well, what makes anyone believe they can do complex things (like health care) well?
Walter Reed is not a disaster because the doctors there are incompetent or the nurses are indifferent. Walter Reed is a failure because it exists in a world absent of individual incentives and market forces. Walter Reed has the same level of customer service you will find at the DMV in Seattle. And for the same reason; no one has an incentive to do a better job. There are no repercussions for inexcusable service. Trust me, if the State of Washington were to seize control of the Kittitas Valley Community Hospital our medical service would be the same as our poor veterans are receiving. It doesn’t matter how good are the people you put in a bad system, you will still get bad results. If you don’t believe me, just check out the effectiveness of the United Nations or how compassionate the Internal Revenue “Service” can be.
In Olympia there are a variety of ill-conceived plans to let the state creep further into our health care system. In 2008, the presidential campaign is going to put nationalize health care front and center. If we want to look at the one example we have of real world state run heath care, we will be wise to remember the miserable failure the government has done at Walter Reed. My fear is that too many will be blinded by their animosity towards the Bush administration to learn the correct lesson from our experience.
While it is true that our current health care system is not perfect (mostly due to government mandates, not market failure) we should be loath to replace an imperfect system with a disastrous “Hillary-care” system. Most Americans receive pretty good health care. It is why many people with a state run heath care system come here for major surgery. In our desire to provide better health care for the 10% of people falling between the cracks, we should not destroy the excellent health care the other 90% is already getting. This is the danger of democracy that Alexis DeTocqueville warned us about. He observed that it always easier to push the top down than to pull the bottom up. Yes, there are uninsured Americans. But, I am not willing to subject my wife, and everyone else I know, to the compassionless and disgraceful health care of Walter Reed, just to pull those 10% up.