Krauthammer Proposes Voucher System to Cure VA Woes

On Monday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer sounded off on the revelations of the dire problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital throughout the country, which he tied to it being a “purely government-run service.”

“This is a purely government-run service,” Krauthammer said. “Doctors are on salary. They have zero incentive to see a lot of patients. In the Albuquerque report that you saw in the Daily Beast, they reported the average cardiologist treats alone in one week what the entire eight-person department of cardiology in the Albuquerque facility treated. So that’s eight-to-one and that’s because if you are in private practice, if you want to stay alive, you have to see a lot of patients so you can cover your overhead. I mean, this is — this is not new. Butcher shops in the Soviet Union and the butcher shops in the West are difference because if you have a stake in this, you are going to work harder. So, as a result, you are going to get these long delays. What’s new here and probably criminal is the fact is that you then falsely report all this stuff that you have not done, which you have no incentive to do in the first place. It’s a lesson about government-run health care.”

Krauthammer suggested that a voucher system should be put in place to create an incentive for those providing health care to veterans over the current all-government model in place now.

“Well, if you would suggest that we go to a voucher system, where everybody will get a voucher for treatment in any hospital he or she chooses, and I were a vet, I would choose that. I would rather go to Georgetown University Hospital than to a VA,” he added.

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