Veterans would do a lot better if Disney were running the VA
By Hadley Heath Manning
May 25, 2016 | 8:37pm
Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald is claiming he was either misunderstood or that he misspoke when he said, When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or whats important? Whats important is, whats your satisfaction with the experience?
McDonald has appropriately received blowback for this tone-deaf comment, and he backtracked 33 hours later (whos counting?). But his comment was not only insensitive. It was also wrong.
Of course health care is a matter of life and death and shouldnt be compared to a tilt-a-whirl ride at an amusement park. And obviously wait times are an important part of how quality of care should be measured.
Even worse for the VA secretary, his revealing comment speaks to a terrible truth for Americas veterans: Theyd actually be better off if a private company, like Disney, were in charge of their care.
The VA has been in hot water over waiting times since 2014, when journalists revealed that scores of veterans died while waiting for care in the Phoenix VA system on unofficial and manipulated waiting lists. Further investigations by the VA inspector general, Congress and the White House revealed that the problem was not isolated to Phoenix, but actually affected tens of thousands of veterans nationwide.
Nearly two years later, wait times are still too long, and the feds still arent being transparent enough about them. The VA Office of the Inspector General reported that 21 of 38 facilities investigated were using improper scheduling. USA Today explained:
The problems included schedulers entering the next available date as a veterans desired date, thereby reflecting no wait time. In some cases, they found managers directing them to do it. In others, VA staff had lists of patients outside the system, which meant their actual wait time was unknown.
http://nypost.com/2016/05/25/veterans-would-do-a-lot-better-if-disney-were-running-the-va/
How many in the VA administration are actually veterans????