Do Military Hospitals Provide Good Care or Poor Care?

It depends on when you ask the question.

Last year, authoritative economist Paul Krugman declared, in an enthusiastic endorsement of socialism, that the Veterans Administration Hospitals provide better care than private hospitals.

This year, people of a similar ideological bent are blaming the numerous problems of the Walter Reed Medical Center and the Veterans Hospitals on President Bush.

It makes one wonder why they didn't attribute last year's superior care to President Bush, and this year's failures to socialism.

One innocent possibility is confirmation bias, where all evidence appears to confirm one's preconceived conclusions. Or, a more malevolent explanation would be that these people will cynically use anything for propaganda -- although they secretly know that these examples aren't sufficient to support their conclusions.

And in any event, is it really possible for a huge bureaucracy like the Veterans Administration to change so much in only one year?