OPINION:
The Veterans Affairs medical center scandal is a perfect example of single-payer, rationed health care (“Veterans die while a traitor gets VIP health care,” Web, May 5). Unfortunately, the most vocal supporters, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, will never get to experience it. VA health care is also a perfect example of consensus, best-practice health care, as determined by a panel of experts.
When you centralize power in the few to govern the many, do you really think that you will be better off in the long run? A perfect example of this has emanated from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and from Obamacare, not to mention the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over the past 50 years.
The efforts of these entities have resulted in a wholesale re-engineering of the U.S. food supply. Investigative journalist Nina Teicholz has finally carried out a thorough review of the research concerning the role of saturated fat in coronary heart disease, and found that it was inconsistent, sloppy and with few exceptions failed to support the famous diet-heart disease hypothesis of Ancel Keys.
Keys was an ideologue, much like Al Gore, and he was in the driver’s seat at the American Heart Association AHA). If you weren’t a believer in his theories, then you merited derision and banishment. Sound familiar? Think “climate science.” Scientists who had different opinions had their funding cut by NIH and their ability to publish severely curtailed. This is corruption in science, and it ran deep in both NIH and the AHA.
So how has it worked out? The U.S. population took the advice, and 11 percent of the population is now experiencing Type 2 diabetes. Metabolic syndrome is now epidemic. Obesity can be seen in half the U.S. population, with all of the ills that go with it.
If you think your health care, much less your health, is going to be improved by a panel of experts residing at the AHA or NIH, maybe your heirs will be better served if you just make the payment on your life-insurance premiums.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston
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