Thread: TAKE A DEEP BREATH:For V.A. Health Care Hotshot, Allowing Vets to Die Apparently Pays

TAKE A DEEP BREATH: For V.A. Health Care Hotshot, Allowing Ailing Vets to Die Apparently Pays

By Norvell Rose
2:26 pm May 21, 2014

This outrageous health care scandal rocking the Veterans Administration gets even more outlandish by the day. If you can stomach this — what can I say without cursing? — this unbelievable violation of our military, then read this from The Weekly Standard:

The director of the Phoenix VA hospital where 40 veterans died while waiting for care received an $8,500 bonus last month, according to Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System, ”got an $8,500 bonus last month while there was an open [inspector general] investigation into Phoenix,” Chairman Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Wednesday.
It had been previously reported that Helman received more than $9,000 in bonus pay in 2013 on top of her annual salary of $169,900. The VA office of inspector general began investigating the Phoenix VA for wrongdoing in December 2013, months before Helman received the additional $8,500 bonus.

This on a day when President Obama goes on national television to say how upset, how angry, how darn P-O’d he is about the exploding V.A. scandal. And he really means to get to the bottom of it…right after he finishes his next fundraising tour and a few rounds of golf.

http://www.libertynews.com/2014/05/f...hat-too-harsh/

Obama Knew About VA “Death Panel” 5 Years Ago!

in News, Videos / by Brandon Walker / on May 20, 2014 at 9:58 am /

It seems that President Obama in his outrage failed to mention one thing to reporters. Obama knew about the VA “Death Panels” five years ago. His response can be seen in the results of the VA corruption.

Here is a flash back from 2008 of a then Senator Barack Obama that told the American people that he wanted to raise the quality of life for Veterans.

As it turns out, it seems to be another campaign promise that was an absolute lie.

This breaking scandal and the murder, destruction of evidence, and illegal experiments conducted by the Veterans Administration seems to be a new thing. Jay Carney gets on the air on May 19, 2012, and says that President Obama just found out about it on the shows and news from his television. But some recently uncovered documents show that he knew about this as early as his transition brief in 2009. While he may have increased the budget by 3%, he cut pensions for veterans to provide access to care for illegal aliens for years to come.
From Investor’s Business Daily comes one more scandal to chalk up for those keeping score:

Scandal: Documents show the president was told by Veterans Administration officials during his transition briefings that he shouldn’t trust the wait time and treatment scheduling data being reported by local VA centers.
On April 9, 2009, with his Secretary of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Eric Shinseki by his side, President Obama said, “As long as I’m commander in chief, I promise that we will work tirelessly to meet that mission and make sure that all those who wear this nation’s uniform, know this when you come home to America, America will be there for you.”
True, he has significantly increased VA funding on his watch. This upcoming fiscal year Obama requested a 3% boost for the Veterans Affairs budget. Obama’s fiscal 2015 budget request points out he has increased the VA discretionary budget by 35.2% since 2009.
The question amid this scandal is just how this taxpayer money was spent.
“I am amazed this (scandal) is still happening, given the big increase in resources that the department has received,” says Phillip Carter of the Center for a New American Security.
Maybe not so amazing when you consider that according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the VA has spent $489 million to upgrade conference rooms, buy drapes and purchase office furniture during the past 4-1/2 years.
Just months before President Obama made his pledge to veterans, VA officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team not to trust the wait-time data that VA hospitals were reporting.
They said that bureaucrats might be cooking the books to make performance look better than it was and to make bonuses likelier, according to briefing obtained by the Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act.
“This is not only a data integrity issue in which (Veterans Health Administration) reports unreliable performance data; it affects quality of care by delaying — and potentially denying — deserving veterans timely care,” the officials wrote in materials used to brief the incoming commander in chief.
The question of what Obama and Shinseki knew and when they knew it has been answered.
Yet despite calls from two prominent veterans groups, the American Legion and Concerned Veterans for America, for Shinseki to resign or be fired, Obama has given the retired Army general a thumbs up.
“The president remains confident in Secretary Shinseki’s ability to lead the department and to take appropriate action based on the (inspector general’s) findings,” said White House spokesman Shin Inouye last week.

It isn’t like he didn’t know, because he did. It wasn’t like the bureaucrats cooking the books to get bonuses wasn’t an issue, because he was warned about it. He can fake the outrage all he wants. Thanks to the Washington Times, Washington Free Beacon, and Investor’s, the only reason he has to be mad is the fact he got caught in another lie.
Meanwhile, the Veterans are still dying, still on a waiting list, still looking for care, still having their files destroyed, and now betrayed by the man in charge who pretends he didn’t know.

http://madworldnews.com/obama-knew-v...l-5-years-ago/

Are Death Panels Operating in the Veterans Administration (VA)?

RUSH: The VA, as I say, I get calls here, we have every year for 25 years, and the horror story here or the horror story there. And this is just the latest. Now we learn of these deaths by attrition, secret waiting lists, and this is the real bad thing of it. People on these lists assume that they’re being moved ahead of the line. That’s the purpose of the secret list, that they’re going to really be taken care of. Because the backlog is so jammed, the line for treatment at the VA is so long that they’ve come up with this secret list business, and the people on that list think that they’re essentially being moved to the top of the class, or the head of the line, in front of the line. And they’re just being ignored.
Now, over a hundred people, if you add the Dayton Daily News story today, over a hundred people have died while on these lists. It’s simply unconscionable. So you have to ask, the natural assumption is that nobody wants these people to die, even if you add the death panel component, nobody wants these people to die, yet they are. At the very least what we’re dealing with here is a total inability to deal with this. And at worst it’s the death panel being done on purpose.
But no matter how you come down on this, I mean, some of you are not gonna want to believe the death panel aspect, even though the evidence is pretty clear. When you have government employees receiving salary bonuses for ostensibly saving money by virtue of shrinking the number of people on the list, how does that happen? How do people end up off the list and not treated? They pass away. And if you’re gonna have government employees bonused on that basis, then you would be not that far out of whack to assume there might be some death panel at work here.

Read More @ RushLimbaugh.com



http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines...inistration-va

Col. Rob Maness on Obama VA Scandal: Criminal Charges Needed Where Laws Broken


by Tony Lee 20 May 2014 7 post a comment
Ret. Col. Rob Maness, who is the conservative GOP Senate candidate in Louisiana, said there should be criminal charges for anyone in President Barack Obama's Veterans Administration (VA) found to have broken laws in the scandal involving secret waiting lists. At least 40 veterans reportedly died in Arizona while waiting for medical care on these lists.

At an event in Louisiana on Sunday, Maness, who has been endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, blasted the unaccountable bureaucracy that may be rewarding executives with bonuses for cutting costs and corners regarding care for veterans and suggested the country may be better off if the Pentagon had oversight over the VA.
"We veterans have understood for a long time that the VA system is slow and clunky, but now we know that some of our fellow veterans were not just victims of bureaucracy but of willful neglect, all to ease the workload and save some money. And they died because of it," Maness said. "I support full accountability for all those involved who made the decision to do this to our veterans, and I support criminal charges where the laws were broken."
The agency's chief watchdog will conclude an "exhaustive" investigation and considering whether criminal charges will be warranted this summer, according to Fox News.
The White House said Obama found out about the scandal in his own administration while watching television reports even though he had been briefed about the wait-time problems veterans were facing. Obama and Veterans Secretary Eric Shinseki have said they are "mad as hell," but have only forced an official who was slated to resign later in the year to leave his post a bit early.
Maness said that even a senior officer like him who has been briefed about his benefits has had trouble receiving care in the inefficient system.
"Being a disabled veteran myself, I understand what it’s like to go through the VA process. I don’t pull any rank or identify myself when I go into the system, because I want to see what’s going on, and I’ve seen some pretty atrocious things in the VA system here in Louisiana," he said. "It took me over two years to get my initial claim settled, and it was just a vanilla medical record claim with no changes. I can only imagine what happens to everyone else.”
After noting that America is spending trillions of dollars on the VA, Maness asked, "How many people have had 100% positive experience with the VA? Not even a senior officer does."
"And I was personally briefed by my benefits guys when I left the Air Force. I had personal briefings every day, and I still didn’t know enough, and still don’t know enough today," he said.

He suggested that the country could possibly "do away with the entire VA bureaucracy" and "put oversight back under the DOD and build up relationships with private entities like Byron’s Home [Magnolia Care Center] and give veterans a card that says, 'I’m a veteran. I’m 90% disabled. I have access to medical care' etc."
Maness said that such places will allow veterans to easily swipe their cards and figure out what benefits they have.
"And it’s because it’s private, that’s why it’s so successful," Maness said. "And it focuses on getting the job done for our veterans."

In endorsing Maness, Palin described Maness distinguished record of service, which included his rescue efforts on 9/11 at the Pentagon:

Col. Maness fought for 32 years in uniform upholding his pledge to support and defend our Constitution, and he is ready now to continue that service in the U.S. Senate. A decorated combat veteran, Rob fought to protect our freedoms and liberties and was awarded the Air Medal and Bronze Star for meritorious service in a combat zone. On that fateful day in September 2001, Rob was stationed in the Pentagon when the terrorists attacked. Rob rushed from his office to the crash site and quickly jumped on one of the first teams entering the building in an attempt to save their colleagues. You can hear more of Rob's inspiring story from that day here.

She hailed Maness, who has wrestled an alligator in a campaign commercial, as a "true conservative" for "opposing amnesty, pledging to protect our Second Amendment rights, and promising to defund Obamacare." And then promptly ripped Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the Republican establishment's preferred candidate who "opposed President Reagan in the past and was actually a supporter of Mary Landrieu until recent years."
In fact, Cassidy has donated thousands of dollars to incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), which will make it tough to run against her in a general election, and Democrat Kathleen Blanco. Cassidy mocked Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Ronald Reagan in the past and openly supported Michael Dukakis. In addition, he campaigned for TARP and now claims he opposes it, which will make it even more difficult for voters in Louisiana to differentiate Cassidy from Landrieu.

"He voted to raise the debt ceiling, was one of 19 Republicans to vote for President Obama's hate crimes legislation, campaigned in support of the government bailout (but now opposes it), voted for Obamacare Medicare savings (but now opposes them)," Palin wrote of Cassidy. "Come on, GOP, is this the best we can do? I say no. Let's come together and unite behind conservative warrior Col. Rob Maness - a proven fighter for freedom."
Louisiana has a "Jungle Primary" on November 4. And if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two will face off in a December runoff. Cassidy has consistently trailed Landrieu in head-to-head matchups because voters even as the Republican establishment pushes him.
"Louisiana, Col. Rob Maness fought for us for 32 years. Let's fight for him these next six months and let him continue to support and defend our Constitution in the U.S. Senate," Palin said while endorsing him.



http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...re-Laws-Broken

He KNEW! President Obama was warned about VA problems in 2008...


+ Obama first told of VA problems in 2008
+ Obama chose to not act for years, even as veterans died
+ Obama wasn’t ‘mad,’ did nothing for five years, until media discovered scandal

(The Washington Times) -- 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.
“This is not only a data integrity issue in which [Veterans Health Administration] reports unreliable performance data; it affects quality of care by delaying — and potentially denying — deserving veterans timely care,” the officials wrote.
The briefing materials, obtained by The Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act, make clear that the problems existed well before Mr. Obama took office, dating back at least to the Bush administration. But the materials raise questions about what actions the department took since 2009 to remedy the problems.

Keep reading...

http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines...oblems-in-2008