A scathing report by the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs confirms that VA hospitals have systematically subjected vets to shamefully long waiting times for appointments while using double sets of books to conceal the scandal.
After months of press reports showing VA hospitals allowed would-be patients to languish, the IG also established that the delays and tricks to hide them are widespread, and not isolated as Secretary Eric Shinseki and President Obama have claimed.
Shinseki called the findings “reprehensible.” He was right. At the same time, he was also responsible for failing to provide care in a reasonably prompt manner for months, if not years, after evidence of his agency’s dangerous failings began to circulate.
Back in 2010, one of Shinseki’s aides produced a memo that identified many schemes VA hospitals were using to make it appear that they were giving vets appointments within 14 days while making them wait far longer.
Still worse, as the new report notes, the IG has released 18 documents detailing waiting-time issues since 2005 and is now probing some 42 VA medical facilities for “manipulation of VA data.” (Read: For covering up with secret books.)
As of Thursday evening, some 31 congressional Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for Shinseki’s resignation. Which would be appropriate, but not sufficient.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is the biggest direct provider of health care in the United States, with 300,000 employees tending to 230,000 veterans daily. Its failings do not begin or end with this secretary. Ousting the leader without enacting major reforms would be yet another betrayal of men and women who have served their country.
Surveys show that veterans are largely happy with the care they receive from the VA, once they receive it. They are also pleased to have a single place to go for all medical needs. The stumbling block has been getting to a doctor in the first place.
In Phoenix, according to the IG, the wait was 115 days. That’s not unusual, partly because the VA suffers from a huge shortage of primary-care physicians. Additionally, the agency failed to staff up in order to serve the large numbers of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, as well as to care for aging Vietnam-era vets.
An additional scandal in its own right is VA’s inability to process disability claims filed by post-9/11 vets for years at a time.
Far too many of the servicemen and servicewomen who have come home over the past decade have horror stories about making a call in a moment of physical or psychic need, only to hang on the line both metaphorically and literally.
Democrats are calling for boosting the VA budget. Down the road, that may be worth discussing, but VA funding has soared since 9/11. What’s needed now is a wholesale revamp of programs.
Across the aisle, Republicans are perhaps even more misguided. They would privatize veterans’ medical care by giving them vouchers to see doctors in private practice. Millions of veterans depend on the care they have been promised, and many have needs that are unique to military service. They warrant a system built to address them.
To start with, the bloated central bureaucracy in Washington must be streamlined. Its functionaries paid distressingly little mind to what actually goes on at VA centers around the country, even as they created bonus pay structures that gave hospital leaders a cash incentive to lie about service delivery.
The VA must also correct its uneven allocation of resources, to strengthen the connections between where its 151 medical centers and 20 community outpatient clinics are located and where veterans actually live.
The criminal investigation that House members from both parties are now calling for in response to the double books in Phoenix and elsewhere for is indeed overdue. But still more important than punishing those who have done wrong by the men and women who have served the country is ensuring that we do right by them going forward.
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