The Veterans Affairs healthcare scandal should not be seen as a bellwether for the failure of the Affordable Care Act, according to James Taranto, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
"The systems are different. The particular failures are different,'' Taranto told Dennis Kneale, guest host of "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV Thursday.
He pointed to the mismanagement of emergency relief after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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"There was an argument that people on the left made which is government is showing its incompetence,'' said Taranto, who is also editor of the Journal's online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com.
"Of course, they emphasized the federal government, not the state government in Louisiana and the local government in New Orleans which were controlled by Democrats.
"They said that this shows that Republicans can't govern because Republicans don't believe in government. Republicans think government is bad and therefore they're no good at running government.
"Well, here we have Democrats who believe that government is good and they don't seem to be very good at running government either. So the question is, how do you get competent governance, and maybe the answer is you need less government."
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