Health Care BS

One of the talking points frequently deployed by the socialized medicine crowd to explain away WR’s bureaucratic inefficiencies is that all the trouble started when those malevolent Bushies unleashed that most ravenous of all beasts: “privatization.”  Well, as this story makes perfectly clear, government bureaucrats thwarted the project by snaring IAP in a thicket of red tape. Here’s the crucial passage:

An Army contract to privatize maintenance at Walter Reed Medical Center was delayed more than three years amid bureaucratic bickering …IAP finally got the job in November 2006, but further delays caused by the Army and Congress delayed work until Feb. 4, two weeks before the Post series …

So, to blame this on the contractors is ridiculous. The government bureaucrats kept them out until six weeks ago. This is precisely the kind of bureaucratic inertia that would infect the entire health care system if the United States is dumb enough to adopt socialized medicine.