Fix the VA's problems, don't exploit them

Instapundit’s op-ed on the problems at Veterans Affairs hospitals reads like a plug-and-play template for libertarian commentary: “The cleanup will be, basically, impossible. That’s because the VA is government health care.” He goes on to argue that the unacceptably long wait times, deceptive record keeping, and undeserved executive bonuses at VA facilities are due to a lack of free-market competition: there’s no bottom-line issue, so managers mismanage with impunity.

This would be a more compelling argument if the free-market alternative—the real-world one, not the theoretical one used so often to bash (real-world) government work—actually performed consistently better, and actually had a better system for accountability. But as Philip Longman tells Ezra Klein, neither of these things is quite true:

If [the VA] didn't measure or care whether veterans get prompt appointments it could just do what the rest of the health-care system has done and not hold people responsible for these metrics. Now, certain people seem to have cheated on this metric. But that's far better than what goes on in the rest of the health-care system where no one is accountable for this at all....