THE IRONY, IT BURNS: Ezra Klein in 2009: Does The Government Run Health Care Better? “If you ordered America’s different health systems worst-functioning to best, it would look like this: individual insurance market, employer-based insurance market, Medicare, Veterans Health Administration.”

This was demonstrably untrue at the time. Ezra either doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or is happy to lie to advance an agenda. And at this point, what difference does it make?

Related: Ezra Klein in 2011: When socialism works in America. “The thing about the Veteran’s Administration’s health-care system? It’s socialized. Not single payer. Not heavily centralized. Socialized. As in, it employs the doctors and nurses. Owns the hospitals. And though I think there’s some good reason to believe its spending growth is somewhat understated — it benefits heavily from medical trainees, for instance — accounting for that difference still means a remarkable recent performance.”

And yet the predictable new spin will be: Don’t blame Obama. The VA has always sucked.