Thread: [Watch] VA Scandal Spreading – Secret Waiting Lists Also Used At Florida Hospital

June 4, 2014

Single payer is Root Cause of VA Deaths

By Deane Waldman


General Eric Shinseki ‘falling on his sword’ won’t bring back a single veteran who died needlessly while waiting for approved medical care. Punishing specific hospitals or administrators won’t get our veterans the timely doctor visits they need. Blaming doesn’t fix anything, and tweaking the VA system won’t make things right.
The problem with the VA system is the system, a single-payer model. Newspaper headlines shrieked outrage over unconscionable wait times to see a doctor; inadequate operating rooms; and needed medicines not available. This should come as no surprise. That is the way single-payer systems work. That is the norm, not the exception.
Look to our north for proof, to the single payer system in Canada. Fifteen years ago, a Canadian surgeon named Dr. Ciaran McNamee sued the Alberta Provincial government claiming that patients were dying needlessly, while waiting for authorized (but not funded) care. He had good hard medical data to back up his claim, showing that there were not enough operating rooms, too few nurses or doctors, and insufficient medicines, all due to a government budget allocation process. The phrase applied to these patients, equally appropriate for our veterans, was death-by-queueing.
The current VA scandal comes as a surprise to many. It certainly shouldn’t. In 2003, a task force established by President G.W. Bush reported that at least 236,000 (!) U.S. veterans were waiting six months or more for a first medical appointment or initial follow-up. Nothing was changed in eleven years.
In 2011, a former VA administrator stated before Congress that our VA hospitals were “gaming the system,” cooking its books. Rather than solving the problem, the VA administration was simply spinning the data so that it appeared as though there was no problem.
Why did they cover up rather than implement a solution? Because solving the VA health crisis would force them to admit that the system is the problem.
A single-payer healthcare system is, at its most basic, a government-run monopoly over health services and goods. The government pays what it chooses, when it chooses. The consumer has no say. The care a patient receives is determined by bureaucratic rules and budget allocation, not by the doctor in concert with the patient. There are no free market forces in a single-payer system.
Supporters claim that single payer will dramatically reduce administrative costs and eliminate the obscene profits that commercial insurance companies make. I defy any supporter to show evidence of a government-run bureaucracy that is more efficient or effective than in the private sector. And we all know that government programs invariably much cost more than when the free market is allowed to function.
A recent New York Times headline blamed our veterans’ deaths-while-waiting-for-care on a doctor shortage. Why, you ask, is there a shortage of providers in VA system? For two reasons that apply with equal force to the non-veteran general populace (you and me): money and red tape.
“You can’t get more of something by paying less for it,” said the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Moffitt in testimony to Congress. What did Congress think would happen to the supply of physicians when ACA cut reimbursements by $716 billion over ten years? Did they think that U.S. doctors clamor to work more hours for less pay? As the government-controlled (single payer) system fixes prices, market forces drive suppliers of service -- doctors -- out of the market, whether VA or private sector.
To make the VA situation seem like a Bizarro comic, one solution proposed was to have veterans get their medical care in the private sector. Has no one in Washington noticed that you and I cannot get in to see the doctor?
In January 2014, my wife began searching for a new family doctor. In March 2014, she found one who was accepting new patients. She has an appointment for August 27, 2014, eight months after she identified her need for care.
The doctor shortage is less about money than it is about red tape. Excessive administration, reason-robbing regulations, mandatory time-wasting, intrusive oversight, and bureaucrats practicing medicine are what drive more and more doctors, including me, to quit clinical practice.
It is vital to understand that bloated administration, gross inefficiency, overwhelming regulatory burden, and cost overruns are the norm for all bureaucratic, government-run programs. The needs of the end-user, aka the “patient,” are unimportant in a single-payer system compared to the budget process and regulatory compliance.
Fifteen years ago, Great Britain’s vaunted National Health Service was rocked by a scandal similar to our current VA debacle. There, it was children with congenital heart disease at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. The British blue ribbon Panel Report ultimately concluded that the problems were systemic, rather than limited to Bristol. Government-controlled healthcare created a culture of complacency, rationalization and justification, with cover-up utilized when necessary. The Panel members specifically cited a bureaucratic mentality that was inappropriate in a healthcare setting. When rule-following and CYA are more important than individual patient welfare, guess who loses?
The VA system here and the national health systems of Canada and Great Britain are all single-payer systems. They protect the budget and the bureaucracy over the welfare of a sick patient. The evidence should provide a cold shower wakeup call to any who still want a government-controlled healthcare system. Advocates of single payer option and Kool-Aid drinkers everywhere, beware! There are rising costs, fewer doctors and nurses, less care, poorer health, and premature death in your future.
Deane Waldman MD MBA -- “Dr. Deane”-- is author of The Cancer In Healthcare; Host of The Hidden Enemy Newsletter-&-Forum; member of the Board of Directors of the NM Health Insurance Exchange; Adjunct Scholar for the Rio Grande Foundation; and Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science




http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/...va_deaths.html

Susan Rice Dishonors Dead US Soldiers on Sunday Shows... Again

Walid Shoebat 11 mins ago

Susan Rice clearly didn’t learn the ‘fool me once, shame on me. fool me twice, shame on you’ lesson. After the Benghazi tragedy, Rice was instructed to lie about a video being responsible for the attacks. She did so on five Sunday talk shows. In so doing, she dishonored all who died.
After the announcement of the prisoner swap to free Bowe Bergdahl, Rice again appeared on the Sunday shows to… lie. This should be obvious after reading our comprehensive report.

During this interview, Rice said that Bergdahl ‘served with honor and distinction’. Not only has Bergdahl been exposed as a deserter but multiple independent reports indicate that several soldiers were killed in action while searching for him. Bolstering these claims even more are reports that soldiers who knew the truth were made to sign nondisclosure agreements:

Many of Bergdahl’s fellow troops — from the seven or so who knew him best in his squad to the larger group that made up the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division — told CNN that they signed nondisclosure agreements agreeing to never share any information about Bergdahl’s disappearance and the efforts to recapture him. Some were willing to dismiss that document in hopes that the truth would come out about a soldier who they now fear is being hailed as a hero, while the men who lost their lives looking for him are ignored.
“I don’t think I could have continued to go on without being able to share with you and the people the true things that happened in this situation,” Korder said Monday. “Because if you guys aren’t made aware of it, it will just go on, and he’ll be a hero, and nobody will be able to know the truth.”

By lying about Benghazi, Rice dishonored those who were murdered. By lying about Bergdahl, she not only elevated him unjustly but dishonored those who were murdered looking for him.




Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/06/su...wCUc97ldF7X.99





Another political spokesperson from Hell...

Marine watchdog: VA deaths actually 'in thousands'

'It was all deliberate, and it was all in the name of an almighty dollar'




Evidence of dozens of U.S. veterans dying as they waited months for appointments and treatment are just the tip of the iceberg – and the real number of deaths could be in the thousands – according to a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who closely follows the issue.

Jessie Jane Duff spent 20 years in the Marines, rising to the rank of gunnery sergeant. She is now on the organizing committee at Concerned Veterans for America. While the government is essentially admitting to about 40 deaths in Phoenix due to long waits and dozens more facilities are under investigation, Duff said the real number of veteran deaths due to the VA bureaucracy in recent years is exponentially higher.
“Yes, I do estimate it’s in the thousands,” she said. “Let’s go to the backlog that they had. Fifty-three veterans died a day just waiting on their benefits in 2011. The VA itself has those numbers. We’re talking about egregious mismanagement, a culture of corruption that was allowing all these executives to give the impression that they had 14 days of waiting time, not months and months of waiting time, so they could get bonuses. So I expect it will be several hundred, if not thousands.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Jessie Jane Duff:

video at link below

Duff said another reason the numbers are likely to soar is because of systemic bureaucracy that grinds the system to a crawl.
“In Albuquerque, New Mexico, veterans were waiting over four months with gangrene, heart disease, brain tumors. I didn’t even know you could wait that long with any of those predicaments. In Harlingen, Texas, in 2010, they decided that men had to come back with three screenings that came out positive before they could get in for a colonoscopy. By that time, it was a Stage Four cancer,” said Duff, who elaborated further on some of the red tape veterans are forced to navigate in Albuquerque.
“It came out that they had eight cardiologists on staff. But only three would work a day, and they would see only two patients per day. I’m not sure if that was two patients per cardiologist or two total. Regardless, the report I read determined that they were seeing in a week what most medical facilities could see in two days,” she said.
Duff said a final death count may prove difficult since many vets ultimately gave up on the VA system and sought care in the private sector. Duff said the most troubling aspect of this story is not just incompetent mismanagement but the blatant deceit perpetrated by VA officials around the nation.
“What disappoints me the most out of this is that it was deliberate. I used to think it was just mismanagement. I’ve been reporting on mismanagement for the past year. Now I realize it was all deliberate and it was all in the name of an almighty dollar,” she said. “I’m so shocked and saddened to know that executives at the highest level were training their employees to hide numbers, training their employees to make it look like veterans were only waiting 14 days.”
Duff added, “They were not realizing the reality nor did they care about the reality that this was going to result in many of these veterans’ deaths. And we’re talking often about our Vietnam era and older. Many of those men are not in a position where they can heal quickly and go without medical care for sustained periods of time.
“It’s tragic that these executives became so removed, so removed from the very veterans they were helping that they never looked in the eyes of these family members or went to one of the funerals or watched the pain and suffering that these men went through.”
Federal spending on veterans’ health care is up significantly in the Obama administration, and the president vowed last week to fight for as much additional money as needed to fix the system. That approach to the problem leaves Duff incensed.
“Oh please. I just want to scream when I hear somebody say, ‘Let’s slap more money onto it,’” Duff said. “They have a $150 billion budget. They requested $160 billion for the next fiscal year. They’ve never been denied anything from the Senate or the House, as far as their budget goes. Thirty-nine percent is going to medical costs. Thirty-nine (percent) of the $150 billion.”
Duff reports that 52 percent of taxpayers dollars spent at the Phoenix VA went to administrative costs, including the purchase of expensive office furniture. Another six million was spent on a sparsely attended national conference in Orlando, Florida.
“They’ve wasted thousands and thousands and millions of dollars,” she said. “The money is simply being mismanaged.”
She is also seething at Senate Democrats for blocking the VA Accountability Act, which easily passed the House and would give the secretary of Veterans’ Affairs. However, GOP attempts to approve the plan in the Senate were blocked by Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
“Sanders has another bill of his own, another $20 billion in a pork-funded bill that he’s trying to get through the Senate. He used two false arguments. His first false argument is we need time to review the bill. It’s a three-page bill, 27 lines, Bernie. How slow do you need to read?”
Duff explained, “The second false argument is that he said this would give a greater opportunity when we change administrations for executives to be fired and that would be unfair. That’s another false argument. The Department of Defense has this authority to fire executives. This was in place in several previous administrations. Secretary (Robert) Gates used it during the Walter Reed scandal in 2007. We have heard of no executives being fired when the administrations changed so that is a false and ridiculous argument.”
She said executives would still have the right to appeal their termination, so punitive firings would be very difficult. Duff said the case of Sharon Helman is the perfect example of why reform is needed.
Helman deliberately submitted false information on the number of veteran suicides. Instead of being fired, she was promoted to director of the Phoenix VA, site of the initial reports of falsified wait lists for veterans.
With all of the promises of reform flowing out of Washington, when will America know if real progress is being made?
“We have over a quarter-million veterans who are appealing their claims. I want to see where they start getting a very solid ratio of when they grant a claim, it’s not being appealed,” Duff said. “That tells me you’re giving a quality assessment to the person who is making the claim. We’re going to see our veteran suicides drop. Right now, 22 vets a day are killing themselves due to mental health issues. Often there is a huge delay of up to three weeks getting in for a mental health exam within the VA. We’ll see that drop.
“We will also see a greater quality in care. I expect that they’ll start serving these veterans and find out how long they’ve been getting care. And I expect the Senate and the House to be monitoring this a hell of a lot closer than they’ve been. Sadly, they’ve all gotten letters from veterans complaining about the VA, but it wasn’t until Phoenix that we heard them do anything about it.”


Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/marine-wa...A88VWV8u4JO.99

Concerned Veterans For America: VA Deaths Actually In The Thousands

Marine Watchdog: VA Deaths Actually ‘In Thousands’ – WorldNetDaily

Evidence of dozens of U.S. veterans dying as they waited months for appointments and treatment are just the tip of the iceberg – and the real number of deaths could be in the thousands – according to a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who closely follows the issue.
.

.
Jessie Jane Duff spent 20 years in the Marines, rising to the rank of gunnery sergeant. She is now on the organizing committee at Concerned Veterans for America. While the government is essentially admitting to about 40 deaths in Phoenix due to long waits and dozens more facilities are under investigation, Duff said the real number of veteran deaths due to the VA bureaucracy in recent years is exponentially higher.
“Yes, I do estimate it’s in the thousands,” she said. “Let’s go to the backlog that they had. Fifty-three veterans died a day just waiting on their benefits in 2011. The VA itself has those numbers. We’re talking about egregious mismanagement, a culture of corruption that was allowing all these executives to give the impression that they had 14 days of waiting time, not months and months of waiting time, so they could get bonuses. So I expect it will be several hundred, if not thousands.”
Duff said another reason the numbers are likely to soar is because of systemic bureaucracy that grinds the system to a crawl.
“In Albuquerque, New Mexico, veterans were waiting over four months with gangrene, heart disease, brain tumors. I didn’t even know you could wait that long with any of those predicaments. In Harlingen, Texas, in 2010, they decided that men had to come back with three screenings that came out positive before they could get in for a colonoscopy. By that time, it was a Stage Four cancer,” said Duff, who elaborated further on some of the red tape veterans are forced to navigate in Albuquerque.
“It came out that they had eight cardiologists on staff. But only three would work a day, and they would see only two patients per day. I’m not sure if that was two patients per cardiologist or two total. Regardless, the report I read determined that they were seeing in a week what most medical facilities could see in two days,” she said.
Duff said a final death count may prove difficult since many vets ultimately gave up on the VA system and sought care in the private sector. Duff said the most troubling aspect of this story is not just incompetent mismanagement but the blatant deceit perpetrated by VA officials around the nation.
“What disappoints me the most out of this is that it was deliberate. I used to think it was just mismanagement. I’ve been reporting on mismanagement for the past year. Now I realize it was all deliberate and it was all in the name of an almighty dollar,” she said. “I’m so shocked and saddened to know that executives at the highest level were training their employees to hide numbers, training their employees to make it look like veterans were only waiting 14 days.”
Duff added, “They were not realizing the reality nor did they care about the reality that this was going to result in many of these veterans’ deaths. And we’re talking often about our Vietnam era and older. Many of those men are not in a position where they can heal quickly and go without medical care for sustained periods of time.
“It’s tragic that these executives became so removed, so removed from the very veterans they were helping that they never looked in the eyes of these family members or went to one of the funerals or watched the pain and suffering that these men went through.”
Federal spending on veterans’ health care is up significantly in the Obama administration, and the president vowed last week to fight for as much additional money as needed to fix the system. That approach to the problem leaves Duff incensed.
“Oh please. I just want to scream when I hear somebody say, ‘Let’s slap more money onto it,’” Duff said. “They have a $150 billion budget. They requested $160 billion for the next fiscal year. They’ve never been denied anything from the Senate or the House, as far as their budget goes. Thirty-nine percent is going to medical costs. Thirty-nine (percent) of the $150 billion.”
Duff reports that 52 percent of taxpayers dollars spent at the Phoenix VA went to administrative costs, including the purchase of expensive office furniture. Another six million was spent on a sparsely attended national conference in Orlando, Florida.
“They’ve wasted thousands and thousands and millions of dollars,” she said. “The money is simply being mismanaged.”
She is also seething at Senate Democrats for blocking the VA Accountability Act, which easily passed the House and would give the secretary of Veterans’ Affairs. However, GOP attempts to approve the plan in the Senate were blocked by Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
“Sanders has another bill of his own, another $20 billion in a pork-funded bill that he’s trying to get through the Senate. He used two false arguments. His first false argument is we need time to review the bill. It’s a three-page bill, 27 lines, Bernie. How slow do you need to read?”
Duff explained, “The second false argument is that he said this would give a greater opportunity when we change administrations for executives to be fired and that would be unfair. That’s another false argument. The Department of Defense has this authority to fire executives. This was in place in several previous administrations. Secretary (Robert) Gates used it during the Walter Reed scandal in 2007. We have heard of no executives being fired when the administrations changed so that is a false and ridiculous argument.”
She said executives would still have the right to appeal their termination, so punitive firings would be very difficult. Duff said the case of Sharon Helman is the perfect example of why reform is needed.
Helman deliberately submitted false information on the number of veteran suicides. Instead of being fired, she was promoted to director of the Phoenix VA, site of the initial reports of falsified wait lists for veterans.
With all of the promises of reform flowing out of Washington, when will America know if real progress is being made?
“We have over a quarter-million veterans who are appealing their claims. I want to see where they start getting a very solid ratio of when they grant a claim, it’s not being appealed,” Duff said. “That tells me you’re giving a quality assessment to the person who is making the claim. We’re going to see our veteran suicides drop. Right now, 22 vets a day are killing themselves due to mental health issues. Often there is a huge delay of up to three weeks getting in for a mental health exam within the VA. We’ll see that drop.
“We will also see a greater quality in care. I expect that they’ll start serving these veterans and find out how long they’ve been getting care. And I expect the Senate and the House to be monitoring this a hell of a lot closer than they’ve been. Sadly, they’ve all gotten letters from veterans complaining about the VA, but it wasn’t until Phoenix that we heard them do anything about it.”

Click HERE For Rest Of Story

http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/2...the-thousands/

Watchdog Group Subpoenaed for VA Whistleblower Info


Group will resist subpoena from VA inspector general



The Phoenix VA Health Care Center / AP

BY: CJ Ciaramella
June 9, 2014 3:10 pm
The Veterans Affairs Inspector General has subpoenaed a watchdog organization for information it received from whistleblowers about fraud and mismanagement at VA facilities.
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) announced Monday that it will resist a subpoena from the VA Inspector General, an independent federal agency tasked with oversight of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The VA IG has been investigating hidden wait times and patient deaths at VA facilities across the country.
POGO, along with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, launched a website on May 15 where whistleblowers within the VA could confidentially report problems. According to POGO, roughly 700 people have submitted tips using the site.
Numerous VA whistleblowers alleged they experienced retaliation from superiors after trying to report mismanagement through official channels.
On May 30, the VA IG subpoenaed POGO for its records from the website.
POGO executive director Danielle Brian said in a statement that the IG’s demand “stands opposed to POGO’s mission and to good government reform—both of which serve the public interest.”
POGO’s reply to the IG Monday said the subpoena violates its constitutional “freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of association rights as they relate to all whistleblowers and sources.”
“The people coming to POGO have a shared interest in our investigative reporting and efforts to expose and remedy the failures at the VA,” the reply states. “That shared interest includes allowing those sources to make disclosures to POGO without fear of being identified and possibly retaliated against. The overall intent is to ensure that the investigation remains focused on the VA’s failures and that the focus does not become an agency-wide witch hunt to punish the individuals who stepped forward.”
A VA Inspector General spokeswoman said the office “will review POGO’s response and deal directly with them when we make a determination.”
This entry was posted in Issues and tagged Veterans Affairs. Bookmark the permalink.


http://freebeacon.com/issues/watchdo...leblower-info/

If Possible - The VA Scandal Just Got Worse


By Onan Coca / 17 June 2014



I’m not sure it’s possible that a scandal where the government allows our heroes to die without ever receiving care, then covers up those deaths as if they never happened… can get any worse. But if it can, it just did.
The New York Times is reporting that corruption, backlog and heartlessness at the VA go back much longer than the government first let on.
Staff members at dozens of Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals across the country have objected for years to falsified patient appointment schedules and other improper practices, only to be rebuffed, disciplined or even fired after speaking up, according to interviews with current and former staff members and internal documents.
The growing V.A. scandal over long patient wait times and fake scheduling books is emboldening hundreds of employees to go to federal watchdogs, unions, lawmakers and outside whistle-blower groups to report continuing problems, officials for those various groups said.
In interviews with The New York Times, a half-dozen current and former staff members — four doctors, a nurse and an office manager in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Alaska — said they faced retaliation for reporting systemic problems. Their accounts, some corroborated by internal documents, portray a culture of silence and intimidation within the department and echo experiences detailed by other V.A. personnel in court filings, government investigations and congressional testimony, much of it largely unnoticed until now.
The department has a history of retaliating against whistle-blowers, which Sloan D. Gibson, the acting V.A. secretary, acknowledged this month at a news conference in San Antonio. “I understand that we’ve got a cultural issue there, and we’re going to deal with that cultural issue,” said Mr. Gibson, who replaced Eric K. Shinseki after Mr. Shinseki resigned over the scandal last month. Punishing whistle-blowers is “absolutely unacceptable,” Mr. Gibson said.
The federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistle-blower complaints, is examining 37 claims of retaliation by V.A. employees in 19 states, and recently persuaded the V.A. to drop the disciplining of three staff members who had spoken out.
The Times article also says that thus far, the pogrom against whistleblowers goes back at least 7 years!
This is simply more proof of how the government works. Whether it’s the IRS, the NSA, the Justice Department, the EPA, the BLM, or the VA, government agencies are heavy-handed and often without oversight. The government is just too BIG. There is no way to monitor all of the horrible mismanagement and malfeasance that happens among these agencies – which is a prime example of why socialism/communism is always full of corruption and waste. It is inefficient, and when dealing with people, simple and unmeant inefficiency very quickly becomes destructive evil.
So, the VA has known about these problems for years and done nothing to solve them. In fact, instead of dealing with the issues, they’ve instead persecuted the people trying to fix things, and just swept the mess under the rug.
Sounds just like our government.
The folks at Reason have put together a brilliant music video that succinctly explains the entire VA scandal and throws in a little Bowe Bergdahl just for fun.




When we heard the wait times on our list
were so long that patients died
We said "This is government-run healthcare"
"So we're gonna do what's right"
We're gonna grab a piece of paper
and we'll make a second list
We'll just say that wait times aren't that long
and that no deadlines were missed
and when people die we'll cross them off
and pretend they don't exist
cuz there ain't no doubt we can't be fired
God bless the government
Our government sucks. Let’s get to work on getting a new one.

Read more at http://eaglerising.com/6812/possible...cMBSZp7WkFl.99

VA Official Arrested For Allegedly Taking $40K In Illegal Gifts

• Colin Campbell
• 
  

• Jun. 16, 2014, 6:50 PM
  

AP Photo
Preet Bharara

An official at a New York Veterans Affairs facility was arrested Monday for allegedly taking tens of thousands of dollars in improper gifts from a telecommunications firm doing business with the center. The arrest was announced by the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Prosecutors accuse Kenneth Czumak, an Information Technology Specialist with the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, of receiving more than $40,000 worth of meals, golf outings, hotel rooms, car services, and other benefits from the unnamed firm.
"Throughout the relevant time period, a telecommunications firm had a subcontract for approximately $6 million to provide voice and data infrastructure and related services to the VAMC Northport," Bharara's office said in a release. "During this same time period, Czumak served as an Information Technology Specialist at the VAMC Northport, and was the primary point of contact for the Telecommunications Firm at the VAMC Northport."
Prosecutors said Czumak was specifically aware his actions were illegal.
"In an interview with law enforcement agents in March of this year, Czumak acknowledged that he was aware from training he had received from VAMC Northport that, as a government employee, he could not accept gifts worth more than $15 from an outside source," the U.S. Attorney's statement continued.
Czumak, who faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The arrest comes as the embattled VA fights to recover its image amid damning revelations it failed to deliver crucial services to veterans at multiple centers. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned due to the scandal at the end of May.
View the federal complaint against Czumak below.





Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/va-of...#ixzz34vxXpSuL

http://tellmenow.com/2014/06/va-bomb...0-really-dead/


VA BOMBSHELL: Deceased Veterans Reclassified As Alive, At Least 1,000 REALLY Dead
tellmenow.com
It appears that the VA scandal has recently blown wide open with another bombshell accusation regarding the number of veterans that have actually died.

VA BOMBSHELL: Deceased Veterans Reclassified As Alive, At Least 1,000 REALLY Dead

Obama has been dodging the VA scandal from the get go, and as it seems that he’s tried to distract Americans with other “good news” (i.e. Bergdahl trade) that has only blown up in his face, it seems that the current administration is literally falling apart. Most recently, it appears the scandal has recently blown wide open with another bombshell accusation regarding the number of veterans that has actually died.

Now when the first reports of the VA scandal broke, numbers were around 40 veterans that had died due to delayed treatment with numbers as high as 120. Currently though, it appears that yet again, Americans have been lied to, this time to the extent of covering up over the actual 1,000 veterans that actually died.
If you were still unaware of the scandal, the VA created a secret list in which veterans were placed in order to delay them treatment and give the facility the false appearance that they were more effective than they really were. Unfortunately for those veterans – some of which were in dire need of critical treatment – they’re requests were thrown in the trash and forgotten about.
All of a sudden, people started dying because of the VA’s incompetence and secretive policy of abandoning our veterans.
Now, a scheduling clerk at the Phoenix VA, Pauline DeWenter, has come forward to share an even more shocking discovery. While working there, she noticed VA administration “reclassifying” deceased veterans as “alive” to make the number of the dead appear much lower.
Once again, in a shocking discovery, the VA is proving its incompetence and that its malicious acts know no bounds when it comes to self-preservation. Furthermore, Sen. Tom Coburn has recently come forward to say:

“Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of VA malfeasance. Poor management is costing the department billions of dollars more and compromising veterans’ access to medical care.”

These two shocking admissions has not only blow the VA scandal wide open, but has left a gaping wound in the confidence this nation has in its government. Surely now, with that many dead due to nothing more than incompetence and laziness, the American people will demand justice.
For America to turn its backs on those that have honorably served this country, is not only despicable, but nauseating. What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments below.
H/T: Mr. Conservative


video at link below

http://tellmenow.com/2014/06/va-bomb...0-really-dead/

Townhall

Shared publicly - Yesterday 2:10 PM
#Veterans

Coburn Report: 1,000 Veterans Died Because of "Malfeasance" at VA http://ow.ly/2IPOCo


Daniel Doherty - Coburn Report: 1,000 Veterans Died Because of "Malfeasance" at VA
Townhall

Unconscionable.


Coburn Report: 1,000 Veterans Died Because of "Malfeasance" at VA

Daniel Doherty | Jun 24, 2014






“To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
The quotation above is the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) motto, and was taken directly from President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. It was presumably chosen by the VA as an explicit promise to our veterans -- and the men and women who currently serve our nation in uniform -- that the US government will always care for them in their hour of need.
Ironically, though, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) exposes the bankruptcy of that promise in his freshly-released government oversight report entitled "Friendly Fire: Death, Delay, and Dismay at the VA." By any objective standard, it’s clear that the VA system has failed for decades to live up to the Lincolnian ideal of caring for our veterans.
In the report, Sen. Coburn outlines many of the systemic and endemic failures inside the VA Health Care System: excruciatingly long wait times, doctor shortages, excessive and undeserved bonuses for staffers and medical personnel, and head-spinning corruption and malfeasance. The federal agency, as one CNN reporter recently asserted, should fire every senior level manager in the system because the problems are so pervasive and widespread that it cannot realistically be reformed. Incidentally, the report itself is also an investigation into VA culture and practices, and unearths some truly harrowing discoveries. The worst, of course, is the sheer number of veterans who’ve died from neglect, sub-standard care, and bureaucratic incompetence in the VA system over the past 10 years, as Coburn explains in his introduction:

The reason veterans care has suffered for so long is Congress has failed to hold the VA accountable. Despite years of warnings from government investigators about efforts to cook the books, it took the unnecessary deaths of veterans denied care from Atlanta to Phoenix to prompt Congress to finally take action. On June 11, 2014, the Senate recently approved a bipartisan bill to allow veterans who cannot receive a timely doctor’s appointment to go to another doctor outside of the VA.1046
But the problems at the VA are far deeper than just scheduling. After all, just getting to see a doctor does not guarantee appropriate treatment. Veterans in Boston receive top-notch care, while those treated in Phoenix suffer from subpar treatment. Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of VA malfeasance, and the VA has paid out nearly $1 billion to veterans and their families for its medical malpractice.
The waiting list cover-ups and uneven care are reflective of a much larger culture within the VA, where administrators manipulate both data and employees to give an appearance that all is well.
Good employees inside the VA who try to bring attention to problems or errors are punished, bullied, put on “bad boy” lists, and transferred to other locations. These whistleblowers, who come forward to expose the problems, demonstrate many employees within the VA are dedicated to serving veterans and willing to put their livelihood at risk to ensure our nation’s heroes are getting the care they were promised. Without their courage, more veterans may have died unnecessarily and Washington would have continued to ignore the systemic problems within the VA.

The report is some 85 pages and sheds considerable light on one of the most unwieldy, corrupt and fraudulent federal agencies in America today. Read it all here.


http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2014/06/24/report-1000-veterans-died-in-the-va-system-n1855317