Paul Krugman Blog- Vouchers For Veterans

[n2doc]

Oh, boy. Mitt Romney wants to privatize the VA.

This is awesome on multiple levels. First, you know what voucherization would mean in practice: the vouchers would be inadequate, and become more so over time, so that veterans who don’t make enough money to top them up would fail to receive essential care. Patriotism!

Second, the VA is one of the great policy success stories of the past two decades. Back in the early 90s it was a terrible system — but as Philip Longman showed, what followed was a transformation that should be emulated by the rest of our health care system. Integrated care — and effective use of electronic records — delivered rising quality of care even as it reduced costs. Yes, I know, someone will chime in with a VA horror story, because any large health system will make errors. But the VA clearly delivers care as good or better than most civilians receive, at sharply lower cost.

So naturally Romney wants to privatize it. Because let’s remember, he’s the serious Republican.

Actually, this is quite consistent with the rest of his health care ideas. Basically, he wants to replace Medicare with Romneycare/Obamacare; this despite the fact that the only reason Romneycare/Obamacare runs through private insurers, rather than being straight single-payers, is as a political compromise. Medicare has lots of problems, but it’s more cost-effective than private insurance — as demonstrated by the utter failure of Medicare Advantage to save, as opposed to costing, money.

So, our serious Republican is committed on ideological grounds to demolishing successful programs and replacing them with conservative fantasies that have failed repeatedly in the past.

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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/vouchers-for-veterans/