Posted on 05/20/2014 8:18:11 AM PDT by Dqban22
Veterans Affairs and Death by Bureaucracy
Posted By Arnold Ahlert On May 20, 2014 @ 12:19 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage
There may finally be a scandal engulfing the Obama administration that even Democrats and their media collaborators can’t obfuscate. What happened at the VA facility in Phoenix, AZ, where employees created two sets of waiting lists to make it seem patients were being treated in a timely manner—and as many as 40 veterans allegedly died while languishing on the secret list—is an anomaly. Six more whistleblowers from around the nation have stepped forward, alleging the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities they worked at also “cooked the books.”
The despicable subterfuge, allegedly occurring in at least seven VA Medical Centers in Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Illinois is as simple as it was heartless. The official waiting list is the one that ostensibly met the VA’s policy, implemented by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki in 2010. It set a 14-day time limit to provide care for a veteran making an initial application for an appointment. Yet by the agency’s own admission, only 41 percent of new VA medical patients were seen within that period in 2013, down from 90 percent in 2012.
Hence, the secret lists, which contained the names of veterans waiting to get on the official list. In Phoenix, as many as 1,400 to 1,600 veterans were forced to wait for months before they could see a doctor. “The scheme was deliberately put in place to avoid the VA’s own internal rules,” said Dr. Sam Foote, a 24-year Phoenix VA physician who blew the whistle on the scam in that facility. He and other sources further noted that VA officials instructed the staff to avoid using the computer system to make appointments. When a veteran requested an appointment, staff were instructed to do a screen capture, print out the info, and dump the computer file “so there’s no record that you were ever here,” Foote explained.
A second VA in Fort Collins, CO also falsified their lists, according to findings by the VA’s Office of Medical Inspector. But there, where as many as 6,300 veterans waited months to be seen, if clerical staff allowed records to reveal veterans waited longer than 14 days for an appointment, they were placed on a “bad boy list” as punishment.
Sadly, none of this is new. During last Thursday’s Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) quoted from a previously undisclosed nine page memo written in 2010. In it, a VA administrator described the various ways healthcare officials “gamed the system” to hide delays in medical treatment. And according to an Army Times, editorial, a December 2012 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that “four VA medical centers nationwide hid wait times, fudged data and backdated appointments for the purpose of fabricating compliance with department timeliness goals.” The paper further notes in the 18 months since that report was released, the VA “is still widely failing in its charge to provide timely medical care for the nation’s veterans as demand for those services grow.”
The AT editorial also called on Shinseki to “step down,” noting that despite his selfless service to the nation, his “behind-the-scenes” leadership style makes him the wrong person to engineer the “comprehensive, system-wide rebuild” the VA desperately needs.
Last Thursday, in his own testimony before the Committee, Shinseki buttressed the paper’s contention, characterizing the current state of VA healthcare as “a good system,” and denying the link between long waits and the deaths of veterans. “It’s one thing to be on a waiting list, and it’s another thing to conclude that as a result of being on the waiting list, that’s the cause death,” he contended.
Perhaps so, but mathematical probability suggests otherwise. Over 300,000 claims to the VA have been pending for 125 days or longer, meeting the VA’s official definition of “backlogged.” Nonetheless, the VA, and the White House as well, are apparently staying with the “no causal connection” motif for now. Thus, Shinseki’s assistant, Dr. John Daigh, echoed his boss’s contention, insisting the “conclusion between patient harm and death has so far been a tenuous connection.” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was equally skeptical regarding the Phoenix scandal. “You’re saying there’s a suggestion that something terrible happened in Phoenix, and that’s under investigation; all we know is it’s a suggestion,” he said during a Friday press briefing. “We should just accept allegations as true without investigating them?”
Yet even as Carney was speaking, it was announced that Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs Dr. Robert Petzel had tendered his resignation. Some in the media tried to portray that resignation as a “political casualty,” but a 2013 press release on the VA’s website revealed Petzel was due to retire this year, “as planned.”
That’s probably a good thing. Like Shinseki, he also refused to commit to firing anyone responsible for maintaining the secret waiting lists, telling Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) at Thursday’s hearing that he didn’t know “whether that’s the appropriate level of punishment or not.”
His and Shinseki’s contentions were seemingly at odd with those of Richard Griffin, the department’s acting inspector general. He admitted that a review of the VA’s seeming indifference towards veterans could lead to criminal charges. “My staff is working diligently to determine what happened in Phoenix and who should be held accountable,” Griffin said, adding that the investigation is expected to be completed sometime in August.
Veterans groups have no interest in waiting to see what unfolds. On Thursday, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) took matters into their own hands. They launched VAOversight.org, a website aimed at giving VA officials and veterans the opportunity to expose any other scandalous behavior occurring in the system. “It takes a lot of courage to step forward and put one’s career at risk,” said POGO’s executive director Danielle Brain in a statement. “Whistleblowers shouldn’t have to go it alone. We can help whistleblowers hold the VA accountable, and keep the focus on solutions rather than attempts to hunt down those who voiced concerns.”
THE REST OF THE SCANDAL
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/veterans-affairs-and-death-by-bureaucracy/print/
This is Obama’s ticket to immortality as the first Black President to be run out of office on a rail. Its time to quit playing around with diplomatic niceties and call him what he actually is. If the Republicans are afraid then the Marxists have won and the USA as founded is no more and can never be.
The “American Presidents in Uniform” makes me sick to my stomach. How that infiltrator got elected to office is beyond me. :P
Is an “anomaly”? Really?
This not so “benign neglect” borders on ignorance, stupidity, laziness, insensitivity, narcissism, incompetence, or just plain malice aforethought.
Or maybe all of the above.
Two word’s “Special Prosecutor”
This is too big for politicians to investigate, they are the problem. They need to get out of the way.
Americans from both sides need to call for this, Now.
Expect more of the same lack of treatment under ObamaCare .
Even then , it will be proportioned out !
but we won't call them "Death Panels" !!
We will call it bureaucratic inefficientcies .
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