The True, Awful Horror of the VA Scandal

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Bryan Preston:

I don’t think most Americans have fully come to terms with just how bad the Veterans Administration scandal is. In fact, it took Mark Knoller’s question in the aftermath of Gen. Shinseki’s resignation to reveal it all to me.

Eric Shinseki is a retired four-star general, and a wounded combat veteran himself. He lost part of his foot as a result of combat in Vietnam. It’s not yet clear whether he did anything to deal with the secret wait lists or the bonuses or not. It is clear that he promised to improve the VA’s wait times for veterans, and that he failed.

But it’s also clear that he is not the beginning or the end of the problem. He came into the VA in 2009, aware that there were problems, and promising to fix them. Problems in the VA go all the way back to before it was even called the VA. It has never been a well-run agency, and it’s fair to ask if it can ever be.

But most of those previous problems were not quite as awful as the current one. The current one may not even be fixable.

Shinseki, a wounded combat vet, just took the fall for what the bureaucrats below him were doing. He leaves the Veterans Administration in full disgrace after a career in which he earned the right to put four silver stars on his shoulder.

Those bureaucrats knew what they were doing. The whole time. They orchestrated the secret waiting lists. They paid out the bonuses. They figured out how to game the system, and they gamed it for all it was worth. Surely some of them knew that each day a sick veteran had to wait was a day on which that veteran might die for lack of care. Yet they kept the whole system going, for years, for their own selfish reasons.

Today, after Shinseki’s departure, they are still sitting at their desks. They are not resigning.

Apparently they do not feel the sting of dishonor. They do not feel the pain that they have caused. They terribly mistreated the very people who fought and sustained injuries defending those bureaucrats’ freedoms. And yet, there they sit, waiting for the weekend.

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Those bureaucrats acted like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day who not only would not enter the kingdom but also blocked up the way for others to enter it.
Those bureaucrats punished all who took any initiative to get Vets the help they needed.
Medical workers and doctors who took it upon themselves to clean ORs so that another person could be operated on (after the unionized workers stopped cleaning for the day) were put on reprimand.
Doctors who went looking for ”lost files” when unionized bureaucrats simply gave up without looking were put on report.
Doctors who worked later than the 3pm cut-off time each day were threatened.
And there were gov’t raids on the homes of whistleblowers!

@Nanny G: Actually, this is quite true. One of the guys I work with worked in the safety department at a VA hospital. When he presented the serious issues to the top management, he was actually stripped of all his authority and access. He ended up getting a job elsewhere. I do know that he has been providing information to some members of the house. Watch for Pittsburg VA Hospital to make the news soon.

@Randy: I am a scheduler at the VA and the idea that the computers or software is the problem is a flat out lie!! I use them every day and the scheduling templates are there and work just fine!! Are they old yep, could they be better yep, but NOT the problem!! Access to care, substandard employees who are protected by the unions, and absurd rules are the problem. A bureaucracy called HAS (health administration services) was created to schedule with little or NO direct accountability. I have been verbally instructed to change patient delivery dates, bonuses promised with metrics to encourage such behavior, and clinic cancellations identified as patient cancellations happen every day!! O-blama told America the problem has been fixed and in fact indicated there was a $500 million dollar VA surplus so don’t blame anyone but the Commander and Chief. BTW if you like your health insurance and/or doctor you can keep them “period”!! Also it WAS a video and Al Qaeda is on their heels!! BTW I have filed for Social Security after 47 years in the work force and will retire when that first check hits my bank account. I took the VA job to give something back and have only spent a little over a year there. I can NOT and will NOT be a part of this scandal.