Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-lusional Calif.) said Wednesday that congressional conferees working on a border security deal agree that there should be “sizable funding for food, clothing, medical care for immigrants,” as well as funding for more judges to adjudicate immigration cases, and sending taxpayer money to countries in the northern triangle to “alleviate” the conditions there that made them flee.

Reflections on a State of the Union Message... “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” “Mr. Gorbachev: Tear Down This Wall!” Every politician, when making a speech, hopes to hit a few major themes, and hopes to include lines that are as descriptive and memorable as the quotes above from Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan… but it’s a lot to hope for. In recent years, the State of the Union message has largely become an annual laundry list of spending proposals, some with...

When elderly World War II veterans go to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to receive urgent care, they may be greeted by child molesters, ex-convicts, men with face tattoos and gun-wielding rapists. Eleven sex offenders list the John D. Dingell VA Hospital in Detroit as their work address. Within the VA’s regional office for Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, 30 sex predators work at nine facilities, according to the records. . . . Three men listing the Detroit hospital as their work address are currently in violation of their sex offender registry requirements and are being sought by authorities.

Employees at the Bay Pines VA medical center dropped off a veteran’s dead body in a shower and let it sit there for nine hours, before trying to cover up that they had done anything wrong. According to a 24-page April investigation by the hospital in Florida, staff broke VA regulations by “failing to provide appropriate post mortem care” back in February when the incident took place, Tampa Bay Times reports.

Almost immediately after Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate #11109-017 completed a 14-month sentence for using sensitive credit card data on his previous employer’s computer system to steal $70,000, he was hired by the Department of Veterans Affairs in a position that ultimately led to his present job — running an office racked with credit card fraud and bribery problems. Braxton Linton is prosthetics service chief at the Caribbean Veterans Affairs hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Service chiefs are the top officials in each department in VA hospitals. VA prosthetics offices procure all assistive devices and use government credit cards...

During a recent radio interview, a Democrat Veterans Administration Hospital union leader, who is now ashamed of herself, admitted she lied about letting sick veterans die to avoid giving Republican Congressional investigators information they could use against Democrats. In a sad admission of guilt and placing her allegiance to the Democrat Party over the very lives of sick men and women who have turned to the Veterans Administration for healthcare, former VA hospital union president Germaine Clarno lamented “If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved?” Clarno, a lifelong Democrat...

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it may have to shut down some hospitals next month if Congress does not address a $2.5 billion shortfall for the current budget year. The VA told Congress Monday that it needs to cover shortfalls caused by an increased demand by veterans for health care, including costly treatments for hepatitis C. …

A Veterans Administration researcher used actors and pressured veterans into participating in a “secret shopper”-style project, and now the House Veteran Affairs Committee is investigating how the agency spent $900,000 for the faked study. The head of the study, Dr. Saul Weiner, professor of medicine, pediatrics and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, admitted actors were hired to portray veterans, according to a letter from the committee chairman, Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo. “The actors wore hidden microphones to capture the physician-patient interaction; feigned symptoms that took real appointment slots from veterans and tied up facility resources, such...

Looking back, we might have been off when the Democrats didn’t pass a Federal Budget for six years, because now that think they are in “the game,” Barack Obama is swinging his ax at a very valuable program designed to help America’s wounded Veterans. The provision, called The Veteran’s Choice Program and authored by Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, gives veterans the option to seek faster and in some cases better medical care outside of the Veteran’s Administration system. In many cases this provision offers the only avenue for relief from the very long waiting times so many Vets have...

The head of the troubled Phoenix veterans’ hospital was fired Monday as the Veterans Affairs Department continued its crackdown on wrongdoing in the wake of a nationwide scandal over long wait times for veterans seeking medical care and falsified records covering up the delays. Sharon Helman, director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System, was ousted nearly seven months after she and two high-ranking officials were placed on administrative leave amid an investigation into allegations that 40 veterans died while awaiting treatment at the hospital. Helman had led the giant Phoenix facility, which treats more than 80,000 veterans a year,...

Misappropriation of veterans’ property in LA County: Nine separate illegal real estate dealings During the reign of Henry Waxman, Los Angeles County was given a well deserved, although unenviable title of the veteran homeless capital of the nation. Hundreds of acres of land deeded to veterans in 1888 were to serve as their sanctuary, but instead, some definitely not angelic officials turned the place into a cradle of both the greatest paradox and the most smothered land grabbing scandal in VA’s history. Eric Shinseki must have been in a hurry to resign from his role as Veteran Affairs Secretary… He...

I hear talking heads and politicians calling for one man’s resignation over the VA’s delayed treatment of our military men and woman. I see them in front of any camera they can find, throwing around strong words of indignation and outrage concerning the scandal having been perpetrated, apparently for years, resulting in a minimum of 40 deaths to date. I hear no politicians offering the immediate steps necessary to serve our veterans. Conservative pundits, yes. Politicians, no. So how to solve the V. A. problem and end the unnecessary loss of life? First, immediately announce that all military personnel may...

A refashioned bill to address problems plaguing the Veterans Affairs Department should be approved by the Senate as soon as possible, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would give the VA authority to immediately remove senior executives based on poor job performance while preventing “wholesale political firings” that Sanders said could be allowed under a similar bill approved by the House. The Senate bill also would allow veterans who can’t get timely appointments with VA doctors to go to community health centers, military hospitals or private doctors and would authorize VA...

Navy veteran Ken Senft turned to the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical care in 2011 after his private insurance grew too costly. It could have been a fatal mistake, he now says. A few years ago, the 65-year-old had a lesion on his head. He went to a VA clinic near his home outside Phoenix, but he said the doctor told him it could be two years before he might get an appointment with a dermatologist.So he paid out of pocket to see a private physician. Turns out, he had cancer. […] A probe of operations at the Phoenix...

Sometimes that sinking feeling turns out to be well founded. In the case of the similarities between a little remembered movie about the dangers of bureaucratic policy making in the VA hospital system it is well founded indeed. In 1992 Hollywood produced a movie called Article 99 which was set in a Kansas City VA hospital. The film dealt with the struggles of a maverick surgeon who was undoubtedly modeled after Dr. Hawkeye Pierce of MASH the still very popular series that was winding down at the time. The surgeon, played by Ray Liotta has contempt for VA rules that...

Barack Obama is on record as being “furious” over the needless deaths in Veteran’s Administration hospitals. He’s not “furious” because he loves veterans, to the contrary, Barack Obama is “furious” at being been caught in yet another lie. By his own admission Obama knew there were problems in the VA in 2007. In 2008 even before he first took office, Obama was made aware of the problems in the VA hospital system. His response was to appoint Eric Shinseki whose only qualification was that he is “America’s first Asian American four star general,” as the new head of the Veteran’s...

Having a convo with a friend, who says that I am wrong when I told her that VA hospitals are run by civilians. Am I wrong? A quick Google search would not answer my query. Thanks!

For the left, the Department of Veterans Affairs is how health care is ideally supposed to work. No insurance companies, no private doctors, no competition — just the government and the patient. Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist, has held up the VA as a model for the entire country. The Washington Monthly ran a famous article in 2005 arguing that the VA was leading the way for U.S. health care. The socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, is such a reflexive defender that in an instantly notorious interview on CNN he pooh-poohed the burgeoning scandal that may involve...

May 22, 2014 12:39 PM N.M. VA Hospital Assigned Vets to Doctors Who No Longer Worked There By Andrew Johnson A new report from NBC News reveals that a Veterans Affairs hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., assigned patients to unavailable doctors and treated patients rudely when they inquired about the problem. One veteran said she stopped going to the VA after she was badly treated following her diagnosis of breast cancer. “Because I didn’t get a response and they didn’t seem to care, I really wasn’t comfortable going there,” said Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Renee Sussman. She recounted a telephone...

Editor's note: This story is the second of two parts. A high-ranking official with Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System wanted the agency to keep quiet about a deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak rather than warn the public, internal emails indicate. ... The email is among nearly 7,000 pages of internal VA emails and documents the Tribune-Review obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.