Posted on 05/19/2014 9:05:17 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Veterans with serious heart conditions, gangrene, and even brain tumors waited months for care at the Albuquerque VA hospital, a whistleblowing doctor tells The Daily Beast.
Add Albuquerque, New Mexico’s to the growing list of VA hospitals accused of keeping secret waiting lists to hide delays for veterans seeking medical care. And it may already be too late to get to the truth and find out what harm, if any, was done to veterans there—VA officials are already destroying records to cover their tracks, a whistleblower inside the hospital tells The Daily Beast.
Last month, word broke that the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix kept a secret waiting list that allegedly led to dozens of preventable deaths. The VA’s inspector general was brought in to investigate the charges and hasn’t yet found any deaths in Phoenix linked to wait times, but his investigation is ongoing. Since then five other facilities have come under fire, leading to calls for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to step down. And now there’s Albuquerque’s. The evidence for this new secret list may be hard to track down, however.
“The ‘secret wait list’ for patient appointments is being either moved or was destroyed after what happened in Phoenix,” according to a doctor who works at the Albuquerque VA hospital and spoke exclusively with The Daily Beast. “Right now,” the doctor said, “there is an eight-month waiting list for patients to get ultrasounds of their hearts. Some patients have died before they got their studies. It is unknown why they died, some for cardiac reasons, some for other reasons.”
There’s no proof yet that veterans died while waiting for treatment, like what allegedly happened in Phoenix....
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
Government run healthcare.
Someone on another thread (sorry - I can’t recall whom) suggested veteran’s vouchers for use in the free market.
The idea has legs, but soebarkah hates capitalism wherever he finds it, and particularly in the United States. Combined with his hatred of the military and veterans, it’s a no go.
And don’t even think of getting any relief from our so-called conservative Hose...I mean, uh, House.
I thought 0 HAD to sign the sequestration bill to avoid an economic crisis/collapse. (/s)
Besides that, wasn't the VA omitted from the budget cuts? Here's a little snippet from WaComPost....
One federal department stands conspicuously protected from the automatic budget cuts falling across the government: the Department of Veterans Affairs with its 300,000 employees and $140 billion budget, a mammoth agency second in size only to the Defense Department.
The exemption, carved out in the legislation establishing the cuts, reflected rare bipartisan agreement in Washington that the VA should be spared the threatened budget turmoil.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/va-dodges-budget-cuts-but-veterans-will-still-feel-effects-of-the-sequester/2013/03/08/f5266034-8527-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html
The VA spent a LOT Of money on facility improvements like landscaping, which, btw, vets could not care any less about
So that argument is flat all around
100 dead and counting...........................
How many people will link the VA waiting lists and denial of care to the horrors that await when the government is in charge of ALL healthcare?
I’ve been told by Albuquerque residents that Alb VA hospital is part of the Phoenix VA Medical Region, so no surprise that it’s all the facilities in the management area.
The press is trying very hard to give the impression that “Phoenix” only refers to a single facility.
“Bush’s fault!
“The Obama administration received clear notice more than five years ago that VA medical facilities were reporting inaccurate waiting times and experiencing scheduling failures that threatened to deny veterans timely health care — problems that have turned into a growing scandal.
Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the department shouldn’t trust the wait times that its facilities were reporting.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/18/obama-warned-about-va-wait-time-problems-during-20/#ixzz32BWi0cDh
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.