Errata

From the reporting I've read, I was unclear that Walter Reed is a military hospital and not a VA hospital, and that there is a crucial difference between the two.

The VA system has made remarkable strides in the past decade, and is now the best hospital system in the nation, beating out such gold standard institutions as the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics. As Phil Longman writes, "A RAND Corporation study published in the The Annals of Internal Medicine concludes that the VA outperforms all other sectors of American health care in 294 measures of quality. In awarding the VA a top prize in 2006 for innovation in government, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government gushed that "While the costs of healthcare continue to soar for most Americans, the VA is reducing costs, reducing errors, and becoming the model for what modern health care management and delivery should look like." The military hospitals, sadly, have not enjoyed the same rennaisance.

Note, also, that the VA hospitals are run by the federal government, while the situation at Walter Reed was exacerbated by privatization. Which, of course, is the exact opposite the the takeaway Michelle Malkin got. Not that this is surprising.