“Cognitive dissonance” is defined as the “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” If this concept has any validity at all, Shadowfax’s psychological landscape must have looked like a war zone after writing this post about the latest “never event” idiocy from CMS. The gist of the post is captured in the following passage:
CMS would have you believe that this is about quality and patient safety. Who can argue with those laudable goals? They are so revered as to be sacred, and with good reason. But don’t be fooled. This is cost containment masquerading as quality.
Shadowfax is absolutely right about this. The “never event” initiative is a giant bureaucratic fraud. It is nothing more than pretext for reducing already inadequate payments to providers. Even if this CMS boondoggle were on the level, it is being implemented with classic bureaucratic ineptitude:
It is nonsensical to make peumothorax a facility quality indicator. If there is some quality component to this complication, it is in the skill of the practitioner who performs the procedure, not the facility.
So, if Shadowfax is right about all of this stuff, where does the cognitive dissonance come in? Well, though stopping short of an outright endorsement of ”Medicare-for-All” (probably because of the cognitive dissonance), his blog is full of assertions like this about single-payer:
I do think it is probably one of, if not the, best systems possible for a nation-wide health funding system …
Over at MedPageToday, he overtly endorses government-run health care:
Ultimately, this is why I would like to see a government-run health plan*. They would have no profit incentive, and thus no motivation to harass providers and patients in an effort to cut a few corners and increase profitability.
No, as he himself points in the first quote provided above, they will cut corners in the name of “quality.”
So, Shadowfax finds himself in the awkward position of being simultaneoulsy for government-run health care and against the bureaucratic stupidity that inevitably accompanies government involvement in health care. Strange but true.
This kind of inconsistency is by no means unique to Shadowfax. The moral imperatives of the “progressive” milieu require (at minimum) a nominal commitment to government-run, universal health care. But it is obvious to any sentient being that government agencies like CMS are horribly inefficient.
Thus, for soi disant progressives, cognitive dissonance becomes a necessary evil, an unhappy fact of life like death and taxes.
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