Veterans Affairs Scandal

[Lucille]

"No drama Obama." Please. It's been one drama, scandal, crisis, and appalling criminal act after another with this guy.

Anyways, feel free to post any updates on his VA scandal here.

The Latest on VA Delay Scandal: 18 Vets Died in Phoenix Awaiting Visits; Feds Probe Retaliation Against Dozens of Whistleblowers
http://reason.com/24-7/2014/06/06/the-latest-on-va-delay-scandal-18-vets-d


The scandal we had before the Bowe Bergdahl thing blew up isn't over, folks. You may recall there was that little issue with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals cooking their schedule books to make it appear as though they had a better record serving their veteran patients than they actually did. Secretary Eric Shinseki may have resigned, but there's still plenty to discuss.

Here are a couple of the latest developments about the VA hospital scandal:

VA Confirms 18 Died While on Wait Lists in Phoenix

Acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Sloan Gibson said that at least 100,000 veterans have been kept off waiting lists nationwide. In Phoenix, where details of the scandal first were exposed, 18 veterans died while waiting to see a doctor.
[...]
More details from an internal audit will be released Monday about how many patients had been placed on "secret lists" rather than being provided medical care.

Feds Probe Retaliation Against Whistleblowers

The problems with medical care at VA hospitals aren't new. Complaints about poor treatment have been popping up forever. And not all VA employees have been complacent or passive about the agency's shoddy care. Federal investigators are now probing dozens of allegations that VA management retaliated against those who tried to blow the whistle on the agency's incompetence. From The Washington Post:


Federal investigators are examining claims that the Department of Veterans Affairs retaliated against 37 whistleblowers, including workers who tried to report actions relating to the agency’s recent scheduling scandal.

The complaints include allegations that managers demoted, suspended and lowered the performance ratings of employees who tried to expose inappropriate record-keeping practices at VA hospitals, according to the Office of Special Counsel, a federal investigative and prosecutorial agency that protects federal employees from reprisals.

Claims of retaliation against whistleblowers have arisen at 28 VA locations in 18 states and Puerto Rico, OSC said.

“The frequency with which VA employees are filing these complaints is one of the highest levels in the federal government,” said OSC spokesman Nick Schwellenbach.

That's a lot of whistles.

Fear kept the VA scandal a secret
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/05/politics/va-scandal-fear-secret/


All the doctors confirmed to us that VA officials had posted warnings in the hospital's halls and elevators that no VA employees could speak with the media or divulge details of what went on inside the hospital. The warnings, the doctors said, included details about laws that could be violated and penalties that employees could face, including financial reparations and even jail time, if they were to speak out publicly, and if the hospital suffered financial losses as a result.

[Lucille]

Senate reaches deal on VA bill
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/05/senate-reaches-deal-on-va-bill/


The bill would create 26 new VA health facilities in 18 states and allow hiring of new doctors and nurses to care for growing rolls of veterans seeking care from the VA.

It would also let patients who live far away from VA facilities to go to doctors of their choosing and bill the Veterans Affairs Department.
[...]
It still needs to go to the floor for approval of the full Senate. That could happen as soon as next week, according to aides.

Those aides predicted it probably would be approved because lawmakers are anxious to show their constituents they are responding to the scandal.

You know it will, and I'm sure it will be full of other unassociated goodies too.

Where is all the money (and doctors (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?453267-America-is-running-out-of-doctors)) going to come from for this? Certainly not from ending the wars (which are only making more injured veterans).

[Lucille]

Barone: VA scandal shows big government flaws
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/op_ed/2014/06/barone_va_scandal_shows_big_government_flaws


One who was probably not taken by surprise is longtime Yale Law Professor Peter Schuck, who identified the problems at the VA before the scandal broke in his recently published book, “Why Government Fails So Often and How It Can Do Better.”

Schuck is no anti-government libertarian. He says he has voted for every Democratic presidential candidate but one since 1964.

The federal government, he notes, does more things than ever and gets less respect than ever from the people it purports to serve. There is, he argues, a connection.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is a case in point. Writing well before the current scandal, Schuck notes that the VA’s budget has more than doubled in real terms over a dozen years, from $45 billion in 2000 to $154 billion in 2012, and that it hired many more claims processors.

“Yet as Congress keeps authorizing new benefits and makes eligibility easier, the backlog (now 900,000 claims) grows steadily worse due to the agency’s continued reliance on paper records, its perversely designed production quotas that encourage employees to reach for the thin folders first, the numerous refilled and appealed claims after denials, and its lax definition of disability to include common age-related conditions.”
[...]
But, as the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Yuval Levin points out, “centrally run, highly bureaucratic public health care systems that do not permit meaningful pricing and do not allow for competition among providers of care can really only respond to supply and demand pressures through waiting lines.” Long queues are the price of free care.

It’s easy to call for eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, and sometimes an administrative change can improve performance. Levin, who worked in the George W. Bush administration, credits the Clinton administration for some “very well executed” modernization efforts at the VA.

But policy failure and mismanagement, Schuck argues, are the result of “the deep structures of our policy system — perverse incentives, collective irrationality, lack of credibility with necessary stakeholders, the superior speed, flexibility and incentives of private markets, obstacles to implementation, the inherent limits of law as a policy instrument and a mediocre and degraded bureaucracy.”

It doesn’t help when you have a president uninterested in the actual operations of government and a VA secretary unduly trusting of subordinates.

Obama came to office determined to expand government and confident that Americans would like it. Instead, Obamacare, the sluggish economy and now the VA scandal have tended to discredit big government more than any abstract argument could.

[Lucille]

Mental health delays at VA system five times longer than reported
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/4/texas-va-probe-finds-more-waiting-list-problems/#ixzz33xgDEJNG


Veterans seeking mental health care through the El Paso VA system were forced to wait more than two months just to get an appointment, a delay five times longer than the Veterans Affairs Department’s official estimates, according to a study released Wednesday by a congressman from Texas.

More than one-third of veterans surveyed who tried to schedule an appointment at the El Paso facility couldn’t get one, and appointments were canceled in many cases, said the study, released by Rep. Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat.

Statistics show 22 veterans a day are committing suicide and many are putting off mental health services altogether because of difficulties in getting appointments, the study said.

[Lucille]

The Smoking Gun in the VA Scandal? "Gaming the System" 2010 VA Memo EXPOSED
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/06/smoking-gun-va-scandal-gaming-system-2010-dept-veterans-affairs-memorandum/#GxzcypTRd6vIlacb.99


According to a Department of Veterans Affairs "Memorandum" dated April 26, 2010. The Department of Veterans Affairs was very aware of the "cooking of the books" dating back to 2008.

http://cdn.freedomoutpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Veterans-Administration-Memo-Gaming-the-System-260x300.jpg
[...]
Note: I would like to say a special thank you to the three individuals that did care enough to issue this memo in 2010. They tried to stop the "gaming the system" and emphatically stated it would not be tolerated, apparently nobody listened. William Schoenhard FACHE. Karen Morris, MSW Associate Director, as well as Michael Davies, MD, Director VHA Systems Redesign.

[Lucille]

Kelly Vlahos (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/kelley-vlahos/) has been writing about the VA's negligence for years.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/va-whistleblower-ignites-firestorm-over-vets-illnesses/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-new-agent-orange/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-backlogged-va-means-a-million-forgotten-vets/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-militarys-prescription-drug-addiction/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/memorial-day-nightmare/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/g-i-drugged/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/gulf-war-panel-were-being-purged-for-contradicting-the-va/

[oyarde]

If this causes semi privatization and allows these people to see the regular Dr in the town they live , would that not be an improvement of sorts ?

[angelatc]

Senate reaches deal on VA bill
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/05/senate-reaches-deal-on-va-bill/



You know it will, and I'm sure it will be full of other unassociated goodies too.

Where is all the money (and doctors (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?453267-America-is-running-out-of-doctors)) going to come from for this? Certainly not from ending the wars (which are only making more injured veterans).

What a dumb idea. This system is not working - let's make it bigger!

[kcchiefs6465]

If this causes semi privatization and allows these people to see the regular Dr in the town they live , would that not be an improvement of sorts ?
I doubt the treatment of some of these soldiers could be afforded without passing the cost on to others and socializing it. Not that many of them, anyways.

50 years of intensive supervised hospital care? Probably $100,000,000. It's such a fucked up and tragic situation I doubt many even recognize the truth of it all.

[oyarde]

I doubt the treatment of some of these soldiers could be afforded without passing the cost on to others and socializing it. Not that many of them, anyways.

50 years of intensive supervised hospital care? Probably $100,000,000. It's such a fucked up and tragic situation I doubt many even recognize the truth of it all.

I agree , and the way I was thinking the bill is still going to be pd from Fed tax monies , but at least that money would go to private citizens in towns instead of govt employees in centralized high population centers.Less govt employees and money going to a small local economy and better care seems like an improvement to me .....

[Occam's Banana]

Senate reaches deal on VA bill


The bill would create 26 new VA health facilities in 18 states and allow hiring of new doctors and nurses to care for growing rolls of veterans seeking care from the VA. [...] Those aides predicted it probably would be approved because lawmakers are anxious to show their constituents they are responding to the scandal.

Problem: TV not working right.
Solution: Bang on TV with hand.

Problem: TV still not working right.
Solution: Bang on TV some more.

- United States Federal Government Television Maintenance & Repair Manual

[CPUd]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-tCIRJH9p0

[alucard13mm]

Who cares about the VA scandal! Its all about the taliban trade!

[UtahApocalypse]

If this causes semi privatization and allows these people to see the regular Dr in the town they live , would that not be an improvement of sorts ?


I doubt the treatment of some of these soldiers could be afforded without passing the cost on to others and socializing it. Not that many of them, anyways.

50 years of intensive supervised hospital care? Probably $100,000,000. It's such a fucked up and tragic situation I doubt many even recognize the truth of it all.


I agree , and the way I was thinking the bill is still going to be pd from Fed tax monies , but at least that money would go to private citizens in towns instead of govt employees in centralized high population centers.Less govt employees and money going to a small local economy and better care seems like an improvement to me .....

My dad uses the VA and let me tell you the nightmare it has been. We live in Michigan and have to travel all over the state for his care. For his pace maker check; its a drive across to Ann Arbor. Time for his semiannual Lung and Pulmonary function test; across the state to Battle Creek. We do have a local outpatient clinic right here in town but out of the average 9-10 yearly appointments only TWO of them are here locally. Not only that but each specialized clinic has its own schedule, and rarely (like twice in 4 years) have we been able to schedule things the same day. My dad no longer drives, and has difficulty with remembering things about his care and conditions. I have to be able to take him to his appointments in order to hear for him, explain anything, answer questions and of course I have to transport him there. Having my own family I have had to get a job and now my father is missing many appointments because I cannot afford to miss work and lose my job. the VA is a nightmare.

What irks me the most about this mess is that all of his care is done at the local hospital right here. Even for the most specialized testing it would be at most a drive to Grand Rapids. At one point I had contacted the pacemaker manufacturer and they explained to me that even if you see a Dr. in a rural area they can have a tech come to them and perform the test. I talked to the VA about this and they cannot authorize it.

The answer is simple. Allow Veterans to use Doctors, Hospitals, and Facilities of their own choice where they live. The money would still come from the taxpayers but would at least be used in the community that the veteran resides. Not only this but it would allow more effective care as it would not be spread all over through dozens of different facilities and people. I also believe that care done in the private sector could be more efficient both in time and money, which would benefit the veteran and the taxpayers.

With the recent Veterans Affairs scandals in the news it is clear that our American Heroes deserve better, they need better, and we can do better for them.

[Lucille]

More details from audit of VA healthcare scandal expected Monday
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-va-healthcare-audit-texas-20140606-story.html


As the acting secretary of Veterans Affairs tries to assure congressmen that he is moving to address the VA healthcare scandal, his department is preparing to release more results of a nationwide audit of scheduling practices that have been denounced as misleading and harmful to veterans.

The results are expected to be released Monday, as a House committee puts VA officials through another round of grilling over findings that VA employees falsified records to conceal long waits for medical appointments.
[...]
The VA scandal moves to center stage on Capitol Hill next week, with the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs due to hear Monday night from the inspector general and the Senate expected to take up a bill aimed at reducing veterans’ waits for healthcare.

The inspector general last week issued an interim report that sparked national outrage by finding a systemic problem nationwide in scheduling veterans for healthcare in a timely manner, including instances of VA staff falsifying records to cover up long waits. A final report is expected in August.

A VA doctor blinded Fred Reed:

A Medical Disaster
Dr. Philip Francis Stanley (Currently of Khoo Teck Phat Hospital in Singapore), Grotesque Malpractice, and Me
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Stanley-home1.shtml


He left me sitting at the slit lamp with no bandage, contact lens to prevent loss of aqueous, clear shield, or other protective measure or bandage over the eye. He did not tell me not to strain, squeeze, or touch the eye. However at no point did I touch or squeeze the eye, having been through far too much eye surgery over the years to do such a thing. In five or ten minutes a gurney was brought in. He placed me flat on my back on it. I lay there for an extended period of time while Dr. Stanley tried to assemble the necessary personnel to undertake surgery to close the eye. He did not place any sort of shield or bandage over the eye. In about a half hour or forty-five minutes Dr. Stanley put drops in the eye and suddenly I felt the most intense pain I had ever experienced. Someone said, “There’s blood coming from the eye.” I had suffered a choroidal hemorrhage. This hemorrhage has left the eye totally blind.
[...]
The loss of the eye was a most unpleasant shock to me. I had expected to have normal or nearly normal vision in the eye and had planned to return to my work in journalism, having for example made tentative plans with Kara Hopkins, then the editor of The American Conservative, to go to Afghanistan for the magazine. Having been blinded, and thus unable to travel without my wife to help me, my reporting days were over. I became extremely depressed. The effects of losing one’s vision are hard to describe. Loss of a leg would be a nuisance, but losing one’s sight is ghastly.

[coastie]

If this causes semi privatization and allows these people to see the regular Dr in the town they live , would that not be an improvement of sorts ?

But, it doesn't allow them to see whoever they want. It only allows people that live x amount of miles from a certain doctor see whoever they want.

I personally went through this shit with Tricare - when I was active. My wife and kids and to jump through hoops, stand on one foot, face east and then fart twice just to make a fucking appointment.

This is what Obamacare will be, only much much worse...

[oyarde]

But, it doesn't allow them to see whoever they want. It only allows people that live x amount of miles from a certain doctor see whoever they want.

I personally went through this shit with Tricare - when I was active. My wife and kids and to jump through hoops, stand on one foot, face east and then fart twice just to make a fucking appointment.

This is what Obamacare will be, only much much worse...

When I was active , I was in the hospital a few places a few times ,once they sent me to a private Hospital, but other than that never used any care . I sent my wife to a private clinic and just pd cash. I can imagine it is shit , no doubt .

[bunklocoempire]

*Insert baby throwing money out the window GIF here*

[Lucille]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/audit-57000-awaiting-initial-va-visits-24057662?singlePage=true


More than 57,000 U.S. military veterans have been waiting 90 days or more for their first VA medical appointments, and an additional 64,000 appear to have fallen through the cracks, never getting appointments after enrolling and requesting them, the Veterans Affairs Department said Monday.

It's not just a backlog problem, the wide-ranging review indicated. Thirteen percent of schedulers in the facility-by-facility report on 731 hospitals and outpatient clinics reported being told by supervisors to falsify appointment schedules to make patient waits appear shorter.
[...]
The VA believes it will need $300 million over the next three months to accelerate medical care for veterans who have been waiting for appointments, a senior agency official said in a conference call with reporters. That effort would include expanding clinics' hours and paying for some veterans to see non-VA providers. The official said he could not say how many additional health providers the VA would need to improve its service.

The report said 112 — or 15 percent — of the 731 VA facilities that auditors visited will require additional investigation, because of indications that data on patients' appointment dates may have been falsified, or that workers may have been instructed to falsify lists, or other problems.

Gibson also has ordered a hiring freeze at the Washington headquarters of the Veterans Health Administration, the VA's health care arm, and at 21 regional administrative offices, except for critical positions personally approved by him.

Boehner said the House would act on legislation this week to allow veterans waiting at least a month for VA appointments to see non-VA doctors, and said the Senate should approve it, too. An emerging bipartisan compromise in the Senate is broader than that, but senators have yet to vote on it.

SMH. They have to have waited a month in order to be "allowed..." So they can end up like this poor guy:

Death by government
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/05/28/death-by-government/


To recap: The government sent Isaac Sims man to fight a pointless war waged on a collection of false premises. When he returned, Veterans Affairs refused to treat the part of him that the war had broken. Left untreated, his post-traumatic stress disorder caused him to lash out. So the local government sent a SWAT team, which killed him

Senators urge DOJ to lead criminal probe of VA, as audit details problems
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/09/audit-over-57000-awaiting-initial-va-visits/


Nearly two-dozen senators issued a bipartisan call for the Justice Department to lead a criminal probe into the Veterans Affairs scandal, citing mounting evidence of secret waiting lists and other "potential criminal wrongdoing."

The letter to Attorney General Eric Holder came as the department released an internal review showing more than 57,000 veterans have been waiting for up to three months for medical appointments. An additional 64,000 who enrolled for VA health care over the past decade have never been seen by a doctor, according to the audit.
[...]
The internal audit released Monday outlined additional problems. The audit said a 14-day target for waiting times was "not attainable," given growing demand for VA services and poor planning. It called the 2011 decision by senior VA officials setting it, and then basing bonuses on meeting the target "an organizational leadership failure."
[...]
The audit is the third in a series of reports in the past month into long wait times and falsified records at VA facilities nationwide.

[enhanced_deficit]

All this had been pushed under the rug for so long.

[oyarde]

All this had been pushed under the rug for so long.

I somehow think many will be pushed under the rug again . It looks like the best bet is to not live near a facility and then be able to use what you wish , or have a problem they do not work on and they will send you to a private facility .Only cure is to privatize it .

[Lucille]

FBI Opens Criminal Probe Into Phoenix VA Scandal
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-11/fbi-opens-criminal-probe-phoenix-va-scandal


Just when the administration thought they had thrown enough people under the bus and the news cycle had moved on to Bergdahl (how did that work out?), WSJ reports:
[...]
FBI Director James Corney says that the Phoenix office of the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the VA scandal, adding that "We're working with the VA IG and we'll follow it wherever the facts take us." We are yet to hear what the over/under on 'pleading da fifs', but we suspect it will be high.

[Lucille]

Report: VA Gave $100M in Bonuses As Vets Awaited Care
http://www.wltx.com/story/news/2014/06/11/report-va-gave-100m-in-bonuses-as-vets-awaited-care/10316521/


ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Even as federal inspectors repeatedly warned that patient wait lists were having a detrimental impact on care, the troubled Veterans Affairs health system handed out $108.7 million in bonuses to executives and employees the past three years, an Asbury Park Press investigation found.
[...]
On Tuesday, the U.S. House voted 426-0 to ban all bonuses through 2016, which would save the VA $400 million annually, according to House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the bill's author. Miller said that money could be used for expanded care for veterans.
[...]
"Here's what the systemic problem is when you look at it all. The way they're measuring success is by a metric that even the (Inspector General) can't tell us how they came up with the numbers," said Rep. Jon Runyan, R-N.J., who represents parts of Ocean County. "That's where these secret lists come in to factor, because if they're not in the computer system, they're not on the clock for getting that patient seen, and so they're cooking the books by not putting them in the computer system. Now they can get their bonuses on the back end."
[...]
Meanwhile, the Phoenix VA Health Care System refuses to disclose how many of its employees received bonuses despite one official's acknowledgment that the information is readily available.
[...]
The data, although incomplete, shows that bonuses ramped up when Helman became director at the Phoenix VA in early 2012. Helman could not be reached to discuss the bonuses.

The number of bonuses given out annually nearly tripled over three years, from 97 in 2011 before Helman arrived, to 161 in 2012 and 286 in 2013.

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

the whole VA thing was implemented by design. Use the soldiers for what they're worth, then kill them.

[Occam's Banana]

FBI Opens Criminal Probe Into Phoenix VA Scandal
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-11/fbi-opens-criminal-probe-phoenix-va-scandal

How does this keep us safe? Can they spare the manpower?

Don't they have some terror plots to concoct & foster discover & stymie?

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

How does this keep us safe? Can they spare the manpower?

Don't they have some terror plots to concoct & foster discover & stymie?

lol like that fbi plot to bomb the federal reserve that they uncovered?

[Lucille]

V.A. Punished Critics on Staff, Doctors Assert
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/va-punished-critics-on-staff-doctors-assert.html


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 V.A. isn’t a place where you speak out,” Dr. Stout said in an interview.

Dr. Yu called the department’s decision to close his lab “malicious,” and added in an interview that “I fall into a category that the V.A. absolutely abhors — whistle-blowers.”

The number of claims of retaliation by V.A. whistle-blowers is among the highest of any federal agency, said Carolyn Lerner, who runs the Office of Special Counsel, and have been documented by Congress going back at least two decades.

In 1992, a congressional report concluded that the V.A. discouraged employees from reporting problems by “harassing whistle-blowers or firing them.” In 1999, a House subcommittee hearing on “Whistleblowing and Retaliation in the Department of Veterans Affairs” found little had changed.

Today V.A. employees and whistle-blower lawyers say the problem has only gotten worse.

VA priorities:

478523107440091136

[Lucille]

The Obama Administration is Trying to Cover up the VA Scandal by Issuing Subpoenas to Whistle-Blower Sites
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/06/11/the-obama-administration-is-trying-to-cover-up-the-va-scandal-by-issuing-subpoenas-to-whistle-blower-sites/


One of the most significant realizations to emerge since the Edward Snowden revelations, is the understanding that we need more secure tools for would be whistle-blowers to more easily provide sensitive information in a secure and anonymous manner. As such, we have seen the deployment of encrypted drop boxes by several media outlets. I highlighted one of these a little over a year ago called Strongbox, which was a project announced by the New Yorker and was what Aaron Swartz was working on just before his death.

Recently, the Washington Post and the Guardian have released something similar called SecureDrop. The Washington Post described it as such:

Users may have noticed a button on The Washington Post homepage called “SecureDrop.” The new feature enables confidential sources to contact The Post and share documents in an encrypted fashion. The Post launched this feature to offer even more security and anonymity to sources.

Naturally, this sort of potential transparency and ease of exposing corruption and criminality is not welcome within the halls of government. As such, the reaction from Obama Administration lawyers is to issue subpoenas for information so that they can avoid cracking the encryption and the U.S. legal system altogether.

ArsTechnica reports that:

It’s not shadowy spies or engineers from the National Security Agency secretly reading the hundreds of tips about government fraud that the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has received in less than a month.

Instead, it’s lawyers from the President Barack Obama administration employing the power of the administrative subpoena in a bid to siphon data from POGO’s encrypted submission portal. POGO’s site encourages whistleblowers to use Tor as the gateway and has garnered more than 700 tips about abuse and mismanagement at the US Veterans Administration after less than a month of operation.

“If they are successful, that defeats the purpose of trying to improve our online security with encryption,” Joe Newman, the project’s communications director, said in a telephone interview.

The administrative subpoena, which does not require the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, comes as the number of so-called drop boxes from media organizations and other whistleblower groups is on the rise in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. The Washington Post and the Guardian were among the latest to deploy drop boxes on June 5. But no matter how securely encrypted the boxes might be, the subpoena is an old-school cracking tool that doesn’t require any electronic decryption methods.

Typical response from a “constitutional lawyer” President.

POGO launched its submission tool in the immediate aftermath of the disclosure of the Veterans Administration scandal, which on Monday blossomed to revelations that as many as 57,000 vets have been awaiting treatment for as long as three months each because of 1990s-era scheduling technology. The agency is also accused of trying to cover that up.

The subpoena from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Inspector General demands from POGO records related to “wait times, access to care, and/or patient scheduling issues at the Phoenix, Arizona VA Healthcare System and any other VA medical facility.”

On Monday, POGO told the Obama administration that it would not comply with the subpoena. Most government agencies have such subpoena powers, and they have been doled out hundreds of thousands of times, all with the signature of federal officials as no judge is required. The subpoenas demand that utilities, ISPs, telecommunication companies, banks, hospitals, and bookstores cough up information if the authorities deem it relevant to an investigation.

If the VA doesn’t drop its subpoena, POGO said it would never turn the data over, even if ordered to by a judge.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-14/obama-administration-forcing-local-cops-stay-silent-surveillance


The criminality of the Obama Administration is at this point almost beyond description. Earlier this week I highlighted a shocking discovery in my post titled: The Obama Administration is Trying to Cover up the VA Scandal by Issuing Subpoenas to Whistle-Blower Sites. In that piece, it was noted that:

Instead, it’s lawyers from the President Barack Obama administration employing the power of the administrative subpoena in a bid to siphon data from POGO’s encrypted submission portal. POGO’s site encourages whistleblowers to use Tor as the gateway and has garnered more than 700 tips about abuse and mismanagement at the US Veterans Administration after less than a month of operation.

The administrative subpoena, which does not require the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, comes as the number of so-called drop boxes from media organizations and other whistleblower groups is on the rise in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. The Washington Post and the Guardian were among the latest to deploy drop boxes on June 5. But no matter how securely encrypted the boxes might be, the subpoena is an old-school cracking tool that doesn’t require any electronic decryption methods.

Basically, the feds are so concerned that more truth about the VA scandal will get out there they have resorted to subpoenas to cover up as much as possible. Of course, considering that the entire Administration, and indeed the entire status quo in America, appears to be essentially a criminal syndicate, there is a naturally an endless stream of abuses that must be concealed from the plebs.

[Lucille]

The Ruling Class refuses to take care of the injured veterans they made thus far, so of course they're agitating to make some more in Iraq.

New PTSD report documents known lapses in veteran care
http://www.stripes.com/news/us/new-ptsd-report-documents-known-lapses-in-veteran-care-1.289932


Guyton, 57, said the Department of Veterans Affairs originally claimed the visions, which at times have been so violent they’ve led to injuries, were the result of “battle fatigue” or “shellshock.”

In 2000, the agency diagnosed him as having PTSD, but the New York native said the VA didn’t start treatment until March, when he began meeting a psychologist at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center weekly to unlock decades of dormant stress.

“I’m doing well with her. I trust her very much,” Guyton said of his psychologist. “She acts as an intermediary between me and the staff.”

Guyton’s difficulty finding collaborative care is not uncommon, particularly those diagnosed with PTSD, according to a new report (http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2014/Treatment-for-Posttraumatic-Stress-Disorder-in-Military-and-Veteran-Populations-Final-Assessment.aspx) from the Institute of Medicine.

The report, released Friday, found the VA and Defense Department do not encourage the use of best practices in programs and services for preventing, screening for, diagnosing and treating PTSD. In the DOD, leaders at all levels are not regularly held accountable for implementing policies and plans to manage the disorder, the institute observed in its study, the second of a two-phase assessment of PTSD services.

Further, the review stated the VA has established policies on minimum care requirements and guidance on treatment, but that it is unclear whether leaders adhere to the policies, encourage staff to follow guidance or use the data available from its specialized PTSD programs to improve the way it manages the disorder. As a result, only 53 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who had a primary diagnosis of PTSD and sought VA care in 2013 received the recommended eight sessions within 14 weeks.

Samo samo:

The Veterans’ Administration Has Been a Disaster Since Its Inception
http://blog.independent.org/2014/06/20/the-veterans-administration-has-been-a-disaster-since-its-inception/


In her modern, exceptional biography of President Calvin Coolidge, Amity Shlaes (Coolidge, HarperCollins, 2013) documents the very blemished history of today’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), illustrating the trite, but nevertheless very true old saw that the more things change the more they remain the same.

That department of the federal government, now embroiled in controversy for falsifying records about the excessive times the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are required to wait for appointments to treat their combat-related injuries, both physical and psychological, was born during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. At the time, “bonuses for veterans dominated all budget talks” (p. 230). In order to deflect pleas for spending taxpayers’ money on American soldiers returning from the trenches in mud of Belgium and France — “a new commitment to such a large group [that] would be ‘a disaster to the Nation’s finances’ — President Harding negotiated a compromise with Congress to abolish the existing War Risk Bureau and replace it with a new Veterans Bureau. Headed by Harding’s friend, Charles Forbes, the bureaucratic reorganization doubled federal budget outlays from $300 million a year to $600–$700 million. Harding’s Veterans Bureau, among other things, was supposed to “build hospitals in fourteen regional offices to serve the vets all over the country” (p. 231).

Soon thereafter, “the bureau was expanding at an alarming rate”, but unsurprisingly “the veterans were finding that they “were not getting what was promised”, in part because “the prices in the contracts for the buildings Forbes was constructing seemed inflated” (p. 233). Nevertheless, “the Veterans Bureau continued to spend and [in 1923] was set to outgrow the navy in size, with a budget of $455 million” (p. 236), representing about one-seventh of the total federal budget of that long-ago time.
[...]
Many people, including me, think that caring for the veterans of America’s foreign wars, no matter how ill conceived they may be, is a national responsibility. (Truth in advertising: I am a veteran of the U.S. Navy). Quite plainly, though, that responsibility should not be delegated to a distant, inefficient and often corrupt federal bureaucracy. Such responsibilities should be devolved to state and local levels of government — or, more ideally, to the private sector (under a voucher scheme) — whereby the taxpayers who finance veterans’ benefits are better equipped than the federal government to monitor the charitable and patriotic purposes for which their hard-earned incomes are spent.

[Lucille]

Good enough for government work!

Lawmakers outraged: Despite VA scandal, senior execs rated ‘fully satisfactory’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/06/20/house-committee-challenges-va-bonuses/


Members of a House committee want to know why an agency that has come under fierce attack for covering up long delays in service to veterans says all of its senior executives are “fully satisfactory” or better.

That and the performance awards given to Senior Executive Service members in the Veterans Affairs Department were the focus of incredulous representatives at a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing Friday.

Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) said he called the hearing to examine “the outlandish bonus culture at VA and the larger organizational crisis that seems to have developed from awarding performance awards to senior executives despite the fact that their performance fails to deliver on our promise to our veterans….”

“These performance awards went to at least 65 percent of the senior executive workforce at the Department. In fact not a single senior manager at VA, out of 470 individuals, received a less than fully successful performance review for the last fiscal year…. I wholeheartedly disagree with VA’s assessment of its senior staff.”

This one's behind a pay wall:

The Second VA Scandal
The latest non-reform could cost taxpayers $50 billion more a year.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-second-va-scandal-1403131818


The Veterans Affairs scandal has exposed a failing bureaucracy, so naturally Congress's solution is to give the same bureaucracy more money. The underreported story is that taxpayers could end up paying $50 billion each year so Congress can claim to have solved the problem.

[Lucille]

Even at the VA Your Federal Bureaucrats Are Stellar Enough for Government Work
http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/22/even-at-the-va-your-federal-bureaucrats


Defenses of public sector salaries often rest on the idea that better pay attracts better candidates, while low turnover is chalked up to government workers being so good at their job nobody gets fired or wants to leave. The low turnover, of course, can also be attributed to union protections, and even in the absence of a public union governments often have stricter rules on managing employees than the private sector. It's difficult to compare or even gauge job performance, too, as so many government jobs don't have an equivalent in the public sector, while government employees often get stellar reviews from government supervisors.

For example, The New York Times reports that in the last four years, each of 470 senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was reviewed as being "fully successful" (or better!) in their jobs, this while the department's employees were actively covering up criminal negligence in veterans' healthcare. The Times reports:


The data also showed that in 2013, nearly 80 percent of the senior executives were rated either "outstanding" or as having exceeded "fully successful" in their job performance, and that at least 65 percent of the executives received performance awards, which averaged around $9,000. Only about 20 percent received the middle of the five ratings.

Veterans Affairs officials sought to play down the data, saying that only 15 senior executives across the federal government had received either of the two lowest ratings in the most recent year

That someone paid to spin things to the media would really think pointing out that every supervisor in the federal government gets a good review would help illustrates how disconnected from reality federal employees have become. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising though, given the Obama administration's insistence that the scandals they're embroiled in are fake and the willingness of Obama apologists to eat that narrative up.

The data The Times quotes came out in testimony by a VA assistant secretary last week who defended the system of performance bonuses by saying it was needed to retain talent—as lawmakers pointed out, there wasn't a mass exodus from the department after bonuses were suspended. Her testimony also revealed that the outstanding performance reviews are likely written by the people being reviewed. Government's just that good.

[Suzanimal]

:mad:


Veterans neglected for years in VA facility, report says


(CNN) -- Two veterans in a Veterans Affairs psychiatric facility languished for years without proper treatment, according to a scathing letter and report sent Monday to the White House by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, or OSC.

In one case, a veteran with a service-connected psychiatric condition was in the facility for eight years before he received a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation; in another case, a veteran only had one psychiatric note in his medical chart in seven years as an inpatient at the Brockton, Massachusetts, facility.

Examples such as those are the core of the report released Monday by the OSC, an independent government agency that protects whistleblowers.

...

According to the OSC, at a VA hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, the Office of Medical Inspector substantiated a number of allegations, including "improper credentialing of providers, inadequate review of radiology images, unlawful prescriptions for narcotics, noncompliant pharmacy equipment used to compound chemotherapy drugs, and unsterile medical equipment."

"In addition, a persistent patient-care concern involved chronic staffing shortages," which led to the creation of "ghost clinics" in which veterans were scheduled for appointments without an assigned provider and as a consequence were leaving the facility without receiving treatment.

Despite the numerous lapses in care at the Jackson VA, the Office of Medical Inspector did not acknowledge any impact on the health and safety of veterans, according to the OSC letter.

Monday's letter also outlined whistleblower complaints ranging from unsterlized surgical equipment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to neglect of elderly residents at a geriatric facility in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a pulmonologist in Montgomery, Alabama, who "copied prior provider notes in over 1,200 patient records, likely resulting in inaccurate health information being recorded."

Other facilities with substantiated complaints include Grand Junction, Colorado; Buffalo, New York; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Harlingen, Texas.

The OSC said all these cases are "part of a troubling pattern of deficient patient care at VA facilities nationwide, and the continued resistance by the VA, and the OMI in most cases, to recognize and address the impact of health and safety of veterans."

...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/23/politics/veterans-care-va-report/index.html

[Lucille]

A few from Griffin's Unfiltered News (http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html):


US: The Senate proposes to spend an additional $50 billion over and above its current budget to fix the problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs. (http://ppjg.me/2014/06/25/we-dont-support-the-troops-we-support-war-and-corruption/) [This is a disgusting example of how, no matter how badly a government operation fails or how much corruption creeps into it, we can be sure that politicians will claim that the primary problem is that it doesn't have enough money. They seldom fire the corrupt managers or trim the fat. The VA's budget more than doubled from $61 billion in 2001 to $125 billion in 2012, and now it will get a big pay raise as a reward for failure.] PPJ 2014 Jun 25 (Cached)


US: Senator Tom Coburn published an explosive report on the Veterans Administration. (http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=2db6e061-d1c1-4440-a03e-2a30c051a68e) [It cites examples of criminal activity by VA employees that include murder, rape, theft of veterans' belongings, and drug dealing. Over 1000 veterans have died as a result of poor management, and almost $1 billion has been paid out in malpractice settlements over ten years] Senator Coburn 2014 Jun 24 (Cached)


Key findings in the report include:

A CULTURE OF MANIPULATION PERMEATES THE DEPARTMENT.


The cover up of waiting lists for doctor’s appointments at the VA is just the tip of the iceberg, reflecting a perverse culture within the department where veterans are not always the priority and data and employees are manipulated to maintain an appearance that all is well.
Bad employees are rewarded with bonuses and paid leave while whistleblowers, health care providers, and even veterans and their families are subjected to bullying, sexual harassment, abuse, and neglect. For example, female patients received unnecessary pelvic and breast exams from a sex offender, a noose was left on the desk of a minority employee by a co-worker, and a nurse who murdered a veteran harassed the family of the deceased to get them to admit guilt for the death.
The care at more centers is getting worse and some VA health care providers have lost their medical licenses, and the VA is hiding this information from patients.
Delays exist for more than just doctors’ appointments—disability claims, construction, urgent care, and registries are also slow or behind schedule.
Despite a nursing shortage, many VA nurses spend their days conducting union activities to advocate for better conditions for themselves rather than veterans.



VA MADE WAITING LISTS WORSE.


As waiting lines were growing, the VA expanded eligibility in 2009 to those who already had insurance without any service related injuries, making the delays longer.
Despite having the authority to do so, the VA was reluctant to let vets off the waiting lists by freeing them go to doctors outside of its system while sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars intended for health care that went unspent year to year.
VA doctors are seeing far fewer patients than private doctors and some even leave work early.



VA EMPLOYEES BEHAVE AS IF THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW.


Criminal activity at the department is pervasive, including drug dealing, theft, and even murder. A VA police chief even conspired to kidnap, rape and murder women and children.
Many VA doctors and staff are overpaid and underworked, some are paid not to work and more and more employees are not even showing up for work.



THE VA WASTES AND MISMANAGES BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.


The report identifies $20 billion in waste and mismanagement that could have been better spent providing health care to veterans.
The federal government has paid out $845 million for VA medical malpractice since 2001.
Most VA construction projects are over budget and behind schedule, inflating costs by billions of dollars.

[Lucille]

Dear US Soldiers And Veterans: Avoid The Following Hospitals Like The Plague
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-29/dear-us-veterans-avoid-following-hospitals-plague


The VA scandal was just the beginning.

According to Internal documents obtained by New York Times, US military healthcare is "a system in which scrutiny is sporadic and avoidable errors are chronic." As the NYT reports In Military Care, a Pattern of Errors but Not Scrutiny, "the military system has consistently had higher than expected rates of harm and complications in two central parts of its business — maternity care and surgery."

Among the findings:

More than 50,000 babies are born at military hospitals each year, and they are twice as likely to be injured during delivery as newborns nationwide, the most recent statistics show. And their mothers were more likely to hemorrhage after childbirth than mothers at civilian hospitals, according to a 2012 analysis conducted for the Pentagon.
In surgery, half of the system’s 16 largest hospitals had higher than expected rates of complications over a recent 12-month period, the American College of Surgeons found last year. Four of the busiest hospitals have performed poorly on that metric year after year.

As the NYT observes, "based on Pentagon studies, court records, analyses of thousands of pages of data, and interviews with current and former military health officials and workers, indicates that the military lags behind many civilian hospital systems in protecting patients from harm. The reasons, military doctors and nurses said, are rooted in a compartmentalized system of leadership, a culture of interservice secrecy and an overall failure to make patient safety a top priority."

One would think that when caring for the nation's veterans, the healthcare system - whose very existence one can say is a direct function of the US military's intervention around the globe - would pay particular attention. One would be wrong: the military’s reports show a steady stream of the sort of mistakes that patient-safety programs are designed to prevent.

The most common errors are strikingly prosaic — the unread file, the unheeded distress call, the doctor on one floor not talking to the doctor on another. But there are also these, sprinkled through the Pentagon’s 2011 and 2012 patient-safety reports:

A viable fetus died after a surgeon operated on the wrong part of the mother’s body.
A 41-year-old woman’s healthy thyroid gland was removed because someone else’s biopsy result had been recorded on her chart.
A 54-year-old retired officer suffered acute kidney failure and permanent hearing loss after an incorrect dose of chemotherapy.
In 2011, 50 unexpected deaths were identified but only 25 analyses submitted.
The next year, the center was informed of 110 deaths but received only 44 root-cause analyses.
In 2013, the report documented 79 deaths and 31 root-cause analyses.

The NYT slams a system rife with abuse: "The patient-safety system is broken," Dr. Mary Lopez, a former staff officer for health policy and services under the Army surgeon general, said in an interview.

“It has no teeth,” she added. “Reports are submitted, but patient-safety offices have no authority. People rarely talk to each other. It’s ‘I have my territory, and nobody is going to encroach on my territory.’ ”

In an internal report in 2011, the Pentagon’s patient-safety analysts offered this succinct conclusion about military health care: “Harm rate — unknown.”

In short, America's veterans and military forces: proud recipients of the worst health care America has to offer.

We sincerely urge US veterans to avoid the following military hospitals like the plague.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/06/Bad%20Hospitals_0.jpg

[bunklocoempire]

No worries, Mr. Proctor and Gamble CEO to the rescue. What could possibly go wrong-er?

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-nominate-former-p-g-ceo-bob-mcdonald-200500118.html

[Suzanimal]

Just no words...


VA Offers Doctor's Appointment To Veteran 2 Years After He Died

ACTON, Mass. (AP) — The Veterans Affairs Department is apologizing to a Massachusetts woman for offering an appointment to her husband almost two years after he died.

Suzanne Chase, of Acton, tells WBZ-TV her Vietnam veteran husband, Doug, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011.

In 2012, she tried to move his medical care to the VA hospital in Bedford. They waited four months and never heard anything. He died in August 2012.

Suzanne Chase says two weeks ago she got a letter addressed to her husband, saying he could call to make an appointment.

She says the VA had to know her husband was dead because she applied for funeral benefits and was denied.

The department said in a statement: "We regret any distress our actions caused to the veteran's widow and family."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/01/va-appointment-2-years-after-death_n_5548330.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

[Lucille]

Shocker. Throwing money at the VA doesn't change their behavior.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/09/brickbat-quality-care


A man, who wasn't identified by local media, died after he collapsed in the Albuquerque Veterans Affairs hospital cafeteria and had to wait 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. The cafeteria is just 500 yards from the hospital's emergency room, which is where the ambulance took him. Officials say hospital staff followed procedures when they called 911 rather than take the man to the ER themselves.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/veteran-dies-waiting-for-ambulance-in-va-hospital-in-new-mexico/


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veterans Affairs hospital cafeteria, 500 yards from the emergency room, died after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance, officials confirmed Thursday.

Officials at the hospital said it took a half an hour for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five minute walk.

VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived.

She says staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday. "Our policy is under expedited review," Brown said.

[Lucille]

"May have?" Obama hates all whistleblowers, so the smart money's on he did.

VA whistleblower: Retaliation followed after telling White House about abuses
hxxp://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/09/va-whistleblower-retaliation-followed-after-telling-white-house-about-abuses/


Did the White House leak whistleblower identities during its investigation of abuses at the VA? Last night, one such whistleblower testified to Congress about what happened after he sent information to White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors, and it wasn’t pretty. Scott Davis got challenged by his manager, had his work record altered, and got kicked out of his assignment and eventually placed on involuntary leave — and he’s not alone in suffering retaliation


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9qjYa5Caxls


“The harassment I’ve experienced at the HEC from top levels of management include: my whistleblower complaint to White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors was leaked to my manager … who stated in writing that she was contacting me … My employment records were illegally altered … I was illegally placed on a permanent work detail … I was placed on involuntary administrative leave, curiously, at the same time … Unfortunately, my experience is not unique at VA. Darren and Eileen Owens who work at the Atlanta VA medical center have experienced the same retaliation for reporting medical errors and patient neglect as well as misconduct by senior VA police officials.

“Our local 518 union president … is routinely harassed as a direct consequence of assisting me and other disabled federal employees with retaliatory action by members of management.”

How exactly did Davis’ name get from Nabors’ office to his manager? Congress had better take a close look at that leak, because it strongly suggests that the White House may have interfered with the investigation rather than tried to solve the problems at the VA. That could be a case of incompetence, or it could be something else entirely — but either way, Congress needs to hold the White House accountable for it, even if that only means public exposure for now.

ABC calls whistleblower retaliation the “VA’s newest scandal (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/vas-newest-scandal-whistleblower-retaliation/),” and the cases are rising after the exposure of wait-list fraud two months ago:


The Veterans Affairs scandal is taking a new turn as a special counsel is receiving a growing number of complaints from employees that the agency retaliated against them for attempting to expose problems.

Carolyn Lerner, special counsel with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee Tuesday night that her office is investigating 67 cases of alleged retaliation against whistleblowers at the VA.

“The number increases daily,” Lerner said, adding that since June 1, her office has received 25 new complaints of retaliations from employees claiming they were whistleblowers.

Scott Davis wasn’t alone (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/07/09/va-employees-testify-about-retaliation-against-whistleblowers/) among whistleblowers who suffered retaliation at the hearing, either:



Among the other witnesses at the hearing was Christian Head, a physician and quality-assurance official for the VA’s Los Angeles health system, who said one of his bosses used an embarrassing slideshow presentation to punish him for aiding an investigation of her alleged time-card abuses. He said the supervisor is still serving in the same capacity for the VA, even though an inspector general recommended that she be removed.

Head held up a copy of one slide that his supervisor showed at the event. It contained a picture of him on his phone, and it said: “If all else fails, he reports you to the inspector general at the VA.”

“In front of 300 individuals, I was labeled a rat,” the physician said. “I was labeled the person who ratted out this person.”

Another offered a warning to doctors — don’t fill out an employment application at the VA:


Katherine Mitchell, who works at the Phoenix VA, told the committee that the agency has intimidated any employee who raises information that could be detrimental to the agency, discouraging new doctors from considering the VA for employment. “Just because someone has an MD doesn’t mean they have ethics,” Mitchell said. “I wouldn’t recommend that people get a job at the VA as physician until there are changes.”

The newest scandal may be retaliation, but it’s now looking like the White House isn’t just a passive (and incompetent) player in the scandal.

[HOLLYWOOD]

"May have?" Obama hates all whistleblowers, so the smart money's on he did.

VA whistleblower: Retaliation followed after telling White House about abuses
hxxp://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/09/va-whistleblower-retaliation-followed-after-telling-white-house-about-abuses/Yeah, the damn propaganda WHITE HOUSE turned around and threw the whistle-blower right under the bus of his boss... how criminal of the LIAR and CHIEF.

I wonder what Bathhouse Barry is attempting to hide... he's only making it all much worse. Betcha it's a deflection from Benghazi CIA terrorist arming and training, IRS targeting innocent civilians, IRS discrimination, droning/killing round the world, rigged racketeering stock markets, gun running Fast and Furious.... frigin covering-up and hiding everything. But Obama and company don't give a shit, he's and the WH gang are lame ducks. The only thing he's putting effort into, is attempting to save some Liberal-Progressive-Marxist politician 2014 and 2016 elections through fundraisers. It amazes me how ignorant and/or brainwashed liberal-progressives stand when Obama travels to wealthy Lake Forest, Il(northern Chicago) for another elitist fundraiser @ JP Morgan's Jamie Diamond's former castle. Clueless American morons...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhFB7-w2MY8

[Occam's Banana]

A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veterans Affairs hospital cafeteria, 500 yards from the emergency room, died after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance [... It] took a half an hour for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five minute walk. [... Staff] followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday. "Our policy is under expedited review," Brown said.

[emphasis added - OB]

SMH @ "expedited" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

[Lucille]

Yeah, the damn propaganda WHITE HOUSE turned around and threw the whistleblower right under the bus of his boss... how criminal of the LIAR and CHIEF.

I wonder what Bathhouse Barry is attempting to hide... he's only making much worse. Bit it's a deflection from Benchazi CIA terrorist arming and training, IRS targeting innocent civilians, discrimination, killing round the world, rigged racketeering markets, Fast and Furious.... frigin covering-up and hiding everything. But Obama and company don't give a shit, he and his gang lame duck president/White House and the only thing he's putting effort into, is attempting to save the 2014 and 2016 elections.

I don't recall a presidency that had so many scandals, let alone going on all at once. Great clip. Always projecting, that guy.


SMH @ "expedited" ...

You'd think being under scrutiny like this, they'd be on their best behavior (or act like normal human beings) and wouldn't watch people die while they follow their idiotic policy! Was there seriously not one person there who GAF about that man's life?!

Scandal-Plagued VA Is Overpaying Workers By Millions Of Dollars, Internal Audits Find
http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/10/scandal-plagued-va-is-overpaying-workers


The scandal-plagued Department of Veterans Affairs is systematically overpaying clerks, administrators and other support staff, according to internal audits, draining tens of millions of dollars that could be used instead to ease the VA's acute shortage of doctors and nurses.

The jobs of some 13,000 VA support staff have been flagged by auditors as potentially misclassified, in many cases resulting in inflated salaries that have gone uncorrected for as long as 14 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/va-overpaid-workers_n_5564766.html?utm_hp_ref=politics


At the VA central office, meanwhile, the review of those 13,000 jobs has not yet begun, Molloy said. And the overpayments continue, leaving classification specialists fuming.

PuffHo seems shocked that the massive bureaucracies they love so much are totally out-of-control, unaccountable, and the greedy bureaucrats who work for them happily take advantage of the unmanageable system.

[Suzanimal]

Nothing to see here folks....



VA says no proof delays in care caused vets to die

WASHINGTON —

The Department of Veterans Affairs says investigators have found no proof that delays in care caused any deaths at a VA hospital in Phoenix, deflating an explosive allegation that helped expose a troubled health care system in which veterans waited months for appointments while employees falsified records to cover up the delays.

Revelations that as many as 40 veterans died while awaiting care at the Phoenix VA hospital rocked the agency last spring, bringing to light scheduling problems and allegations of misconduct at other hospitals as well. The scandal led to the resignation of former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. In July, Congress approved spending an additional $16 billion to help shore up the system.

The VA's Office of Inspector General has been investigating the delays for months and shared a draft report of its findings with VA officials.

In a written memorandum about the report, VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald said: "It is important to note that while OIG's case reviews in the report document substantial delays in care, and quality-of-care concerns, OIG was unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely quality care caused the death of these veterans."

McDonald acknowledged that the VA is "in the midst of a very serious crisis." He also promised to follow all recommendations from the inspector general's final report.

"We sincerely apologize to all veterans and we will continue to listen to veterans, their families, veterans service organizations and our VA employees to improve access to the care and benefits veterans earned an deserve," said McDonald's memo, which was also signed by Carolyn Clancy, VA undersecretary for health.

The inspector general's final report has not yet been issued. The inspector general runs an independent office within the VA.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson stressed that veterans are still waiting too long for care, an issue the agency is working to fix.

"They looked to see if there was any causal relationship associated with the delay in care and the death of these veterans and they were unable to find one. But from my perspective, that don't make it OK," Gibson said. "Veterans were waiting too long for care and there were things being done, there were scheduling improprieties happening at Phoenix and frankly at other locations as well. Those are unacceptable."

In April, Dr. Samuel Foote, who had worked for the Phoenix VA for more than 20 years before retiring in December, brought the allegations to Congress.

Foote accused Arizona VA leaders of collecting bonuses for reducing patient wait times. But, he said, the purported successes resulted from data manipulation rather than improved service for veterans. He said up to 40 patients died while awaiting care.

In May, the inspector general's office found that 1,700 veterans were waiting for primary care appointments at the Phoenix VA but did not show up on the wait list. "Until that happens, the reported wait times for these veterans has not started," said a report issued in May.

Gibson said the VA reached out to all 1,700 veterans in Phoenix and scheduled care for them. However, he acknowledged there are still 1,800 veterans in Phoenix who requested appointments but will have to wait at least 90 days for care.

The VA has said it is firing three executives of the Phoenix VA hospital. The agency has also said it planned to fire two supervisors and discipline four other employees in Colorado and Wyoming accused of falsifying health care data.

Gibson says he expects the list of disciplined employees to grow. Gibson took over as acting VA secretary when Shinseki resigned. He returned to his job as deputy secretary after McDonald was confirmed.

"The fundamental point here is, we are taking bold and decisive action to fix these problems because it's unacceptable," Gibson said. "We owe veterans, we owe the American people, an apology. We've delivered that apology. We'll keep delivering that apology for our failure to meet their expectations for timely and effective health care."

To help reduce backlogs, the VA is sending more veterans to private doctors for care.

Congress approved $10 billion in emergency spending over three years to pay private doctors and other health professionals to care for veterans who can't get timely appointments at VA hospitals, or who live more than 40 miles from one.

The new law includes $5 billion for hiring more VA doctors, nurses and other medical staff and $1.3 billion to open 27 new VA clinics across the country.

The legislation also makes it easier to fire hospital administrators and senior VA executives for negligence or poor performance.

http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/top-news/va-says-no-proof-delays-in-care-caused-vets-to-die/ng8kq/

[donnay]

SMDH.

[LibForestPaul]

The answer is simple. Allow Veterans to use Doctors, Hospitals, and Facilities of their own choice where they live. The money would still come from the taxpayers but would at least be used in the community that the veteran resides.

Like medicaid...
So the question is why not. I suspect it is to hide medical information when required.

[Lucille]

Of course.

So In The End, The VA Was Rewarded, Not Punished
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2014/08/so-in-the-end-the-va-was-rewarded-not-punished.html


People talk about government employees being motivated by "public service" but in fact very few government agencies have any tangible performance metrics linked to public service, and when they do (as in the case of the VA wait times) they just game them. At the end of the day, nothing enforces fidelity to the public good like competition and consumer choice, two things no government agency allows.

I will admit that government employees in agencies may have some interest in public welfare, but in the hierarchy of needs, the following three things dominate above any concerns for the public:


Keeping the agency in existence
Maintaining employment levels, and if that is achieved, increasing employment levels
Getting more budget



But look at the VA response in this context:


The agency remains in existence and most proposals to privatize certain parts were beaten back
No one was fired and employment levels remain the same
The agency was rewarded with a big bump in its budget



The VA won! Whereas a private company with that kind of negative publicity about how customers were treated would have as a minimum seen a huge revenue and market share loss, and might have faced bankruptcy, the VA was given more money.

Murry Rothbard via Bryan Caplan (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/08/government_work_1.html):

On the free market, in short, the consumer is king, and any business firm that wants to make profits and avoid losses tries its best to serve the consumer as efficiently and at as low a cost as possible. In a government operation, in contrast, everything changes. Inherent in all government operation is a grave and fatal split between service and payment, between the providing of a service and the payment for receiving it. The government bureau does not get its income as does the private firm, from serving the consumer well or from consumer purchases of its products exceeding its costs of operation. No, the government bureau acquires its income from mulcting the long-suffering taxpayer. Its operations therefore become inefficient, and costs zoom, since government bureaus need not worry about losses or bankruptcy; they can make up their losses by additional extractions from the public till. Furthermore, the consumer, instead of being courted and wooed for his favor, becomes a mere annoyance to the government someone who is "wasting" the government's scarce resources. In government operations, the consumer is treated like an unwelcome intruder, an interference in the quiet enjoyment by the bureaucrat of his steady income.

[Lucille]

Assistant Inspector General Concedes That VA Shenanigans 'Contributed' to Patient Deaths
http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/18/assistant-inspector-general-concedes-tha


Last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General insisted, after a close look at manipulated and secret waiting lists at the Phoenix Veterans Health Administration facility, "we are unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely quality care caused the deaths of these veterans." Yesterday, a hearing before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs got a bit heated as lawmakers pushed Inspector General Richard Griffin and Assistant Inspector General John Daigh to concede that confining sick veterans in bureaucratic limbo while they wait for care "contributed" to the untimely deaths of some. Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) says he got the concession, and in Daigh's case he clearly did.

Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.): Did the wait lists contribute to the deaths of veterans?

Daigh: Yes. Yes, no problem with that. The issue is cause, or a direct relationship.

Griffin probably thinks he hedged his way out of a tight corner, though he seems none too happy with his subordinate. Decide for yourself from the exchange embedded below.

Katherine L. Mitchell, M.D. Medical Director, Iraq and Afghanistan Post-Deployment Center, Phoenix VA Health Care System, and retired VA doctor Samuel Foote directly linked the gamed waiting lists to patient deaths in their testimony.

[Suzanimal]

VA employees doubt agency can police itself

...

The chief HEC whistleblower, Davis, said he and other employees have been unimpressed by the inspector general’s efforts. He said employees have provided documents and emails to back up allegations. Yet investigators don’t seem to grasp the problems or they don’t seem to want to dig deep in their inquiry, he said.

Davis said it took months after his Congressional testimony for inspector general investigators to contact him. He said they sent him a questionnaire in November that he answered. When investigators visited the HEC last week to interview employees, they set up in an office across the hall from Davis, but didn’t bother to interview him, he said.

The only followup from the November questionnaire was a request for him to provide names of the people inside the agency who had provided him information. There were no followup questions regarding the allegations that more than 800,000 health applications were frozen with no administrative decision from the agency, including more than 47,000 veterans who died while on the pending list, according to Davis.

Davis said some employees who spoke to investigators share his skepticism and doubt much will come of the inquiry. Davis said he’s been providing information to Congressional investigators and news reporters in an effort to make sure that information gets out.

“There’s significant concerns from VA staff that the preponderance of evidence provided to OIG will never make it into the final report,” Davis said. “The only way I feel the truth will come out is by notifying Congress and the media.”

Mason is among those concerned about the final report from the inspector general. She said she and other employees have been interviewed by the inspector general multiple times this year and each time they’ve outlined the same problems at the HEC.

She said she provided detailed information to investigators and even told them where to go to get the answers, yet they don’t seem to have followed up on her leads.

“Why does it take the IG eight times to get the same info and still nothing has changed?” she said.

She said if investigators don’t probe and really try to understand the intricacies of the broken enrollment system those who want to keep the problems hidden can “tap dance around it all day long.”

http://www.myajc.com/news/news/va-employees-doubt-agency-can-police-itself/njQFp/#039a61a3.2470693.735582

[Suzanimal]

Controversial VA projects waste billions, say government reports and lawmakers

(CNN) -- While veterans in recent years were dying as they waited for care at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, the VA has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on controversial projects across the country, according to government reports and members of Congress.

Critics say budget overruns and construction delays on several projects are burning money that could have been used to help more veterans access timely health care, with one lawmaker even comparing the elaborate projects to the Taj Mahal.

For example, a massive construction project near Denver mired with problems ran hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and ended up in court over design and contract issues, according to court documents.

The joint venture building the medical center near Denver, Kiewit-Turner, estimated the total project would cost more than $1 billion -- almost double the contractual estimate of $583 million.

...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/politics/va-waste?sr=fb123214vaprojects7avodtoplink

[Weston White]

...And includes $600 Websites, $300 NASA space-pads, and ACA test runs for organizing "government death-panels".

[Suzanimal]

Veteran Dies After 4-Years Of Trying to Convince The VA That He Was Sick


An East Texas widow says her Air Force veteran husband died last week of Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as ALS, after 4 years of trying to convince the Veteran Affairs (VA) that he was sick. Janie Michels said her husband, Bradley Michels, would do it all over again, if given the chance. “He absolutely loved his country. He said it was important to fight for our rights and our freedoms.” said Janie. Bradley served in the Air Force from 1986 to 1996. He was stationed in South Korea, Germany and Arizona. His tour ended in 1996, but his wife noticed changes in his health. “I noticed his health decline right after he got out of the military…right after he cleaned up after Desert Storm,” recalls Janie. “He started having neurological problems…he had a slurred voice sometimes, and he started having cramps in the balls of his feet that went into his knee and into his thigh.” Janie believed that these symptoms pointed to ALS. In 2010, they filed for disability benefits with the VA. The claim was denied twice. Their most recent appeal was filed a few months ago. Janie asked for ALS testing repeatedly, but Bradley’s doctor said no. “In the beginning, he said he didn’t know what was wrong,” said Janie. “After a lot of pushing, he said it was not ALS and that it was psychosomatic.” The Michels spent four years filing paperwork, going to doctor visits, and making calls to the VA. Then, three weeks ago, a neurologist agreed to test Bradley for ALS. The test came back positive, but his claim for benefits remained denied.

Read more at http://conservativevideos.com/veteran-dies-4-years-trying-convince-va-sick/#cyFGVIiytHakw7is.99

[Suzanimal]

Report: Wisconsin VA hospital turns patients into 'zombies' with opiates

Doctors at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Wisconsin dope up veterans with unusual amounts of painkillers, turning them into "zombies" to keep them sedated and easily managed, according to patients and onetime staff, a new investigation found.

The Center for Investigative Reporting wrote Thursday that doctors at the VA hospital in Tomah, Wis., wrote 25,000 prescriptions for opiates in 2012, up from about 2,000 11 years prior.

At least one patient has died of the drugs while in VA care. Many of the patients were there to work through psychological trauma, but instead, the VA deadened them emotionally, one former VA psychiatrist said.

“We were supposed to be doing hard work, getting these veterans to fight through their anxiety and fear,” Jennifer Brooks said. “But their eyes would be dilated, their sentences would be blurry. Sometimes they’d be on so many medications that they’d fall asleep.”

The hospital is run by David Houlihan, a psychiatrist who was previously disciplined by the Iowa Board of Medicine “for being 'inappropriately engaged in a social relationship with a patient,' hiring a current or former patient and bringing a patient’s medicine home with him,” according to CIR.

VA's inspector general has received numerous complaints about Houlihan's prescription patterns, and wrote a report on it in March. But the VA IG never made the report public or shared the report with Congress.

The IG found that while Houlihan hasn't faced sanctions, the whistleblowers who raised concerns were forced out.

One former VA pharmacist who said Houlihan gladly refilled subscriptions for veterans who implausibly claimed they had lost their opiates five times, now works at Wal-Mart.

No senior agency official was willing to comment on the issue to CIR.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-wisconsin-va-hospital-turns-patients-into-zombies-with-opiates/article/2558426?utm_content=buffercd6fa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[Suzanimal]

Investigation Reveals Oakland VA Intentionally Ignored Thousands of Veterans


...
McDonald apologized for the inaccuracy of that statement, saying, “I incorrectly stated that I had been in special forces. That was inaccurate and I apologize to anyone that was offended by my misstatement. I have great respect for those who have served our nation in special forces.”

But this is the least of his problems.

The CBS investigation goes on to chronicle the efforts of five whistle-blowers from the Oakland facility, who discovered more than 13,000 claims dated from 1996 to 2009 that were simply ignored.

“Half of the veterans were dead that I screened. So almost every other piece of paper that I touched was a veteran who had already passed away,” Rustyann Brown said, upset by the alarming trend when she researched the backlog.

To make matters worse, Brown told reporters that “[w]hether the veteran was dead or still alive, VA supervisors in Oakland ordered her team to mark the claims ‘no action necessary’ and to toss them aside.”
The news not only comes from these whistle-blowers, but from the Office of Inspector General.

“According to the Office of Inspector General, a VA management team came to the office in 2012 to help sort out its problems and found about 14,000 informal claims — those requesting initial assistance — in a filing cabinet that had not been processed. Some were over 20 years old,” reports Doug Oakley of the Bay Area News Group.

However, this isn’t the worst of it. Investigators from the Office of Inspector General visited the site in July, nearly two years after the problems were first reported, and none of the records in question could be located. Investigators were only able to find a spread sheet with a list of old claims that had not been processed and noted that adequate records were not kept and that employees needed proper training.

This incident is just the most recent in a long series of events where the VA destroyed records in an effort to cover ineptitude and laziness.

In 2009, it was discovered that records, still sealed in the envelopes they were submitted in, were hidden or destroyed to cover up improper handling. In 2011, an investigation found that nearly a quarter of disability claims were processed incorrectly or wrongly denied in regional VA offices nationwide. The scandal in 2014 that garnered the attention of mainstream media outlets also uncovered that veterans were intentionally kept on long wait lists and thousands of records were destroyed in several VA clinics.

...

http://ivn.us/2015/03/10/investigation-reveals-oakland-va-intentionally-ignored-thousands-veterans/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=wallpost&utm_campaign=FB

[Ronin Truth]

The US Federal government has been lying, abusing, short changing, and ripping off war veterans for over at least a hundred and fifty years.

It's really a wonder that they can ever get anyone at all to volunteer. Desperation and naivete, I guess.

[Lucille]

Not "we," Jim. They, the ineducable dumbass progs.

VA Inspector General Report: 307,000 Veterans Died Waiting For Health Care
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/09/03/va-inspector-general-report-307000-veterans-died-waiting-for-health-care/


After seeing how the government manages the healthcare of our veterans, we decided to put them in charge of the healthcare for the whole country. We deserve to get it good and hard.
[...]
Before Dan Doherty departed, he wrote about how the Veterans Affairs estimated that hundreds of thousands of their patients had died while waiting for care. At the time, Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA Health Eligibility Center, divulged a report that was conducted within his department and that of the VA Office of Analytics titled “Analysis of Death Services. It was released in April of 2015. Now, we the Veterans Affair Inspector General’s report has given the exact number: 307,000. That’s how many veterans have died before their application had been process by the Eligibility Center (via CNN):


Hundreds of thousands of veterans listed in the Department of Veterans Affairs enrollment system died before their applications for care were processed, according to a report issued Wednesday.The VA’s inspector general found that out of about 800,000 records stalled in the agency’s system for managing health care enrollment, there were more than 307,000 records that belonged to veterans who had died months or years in the past.

In a response to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs’ request to investigate a whistleblower’s allegations of mismanagement at the VA’s Health Eligibility Center, the inspector general also found VA staffers incorrectly marked unprocessed applications and may have deleted 10,000 or more records in the last five years.

In one case, a veteran who applied for VA care in 1998 was placed in “pending” status for 14 years. Another veteran who passed away in 1988 was found to have an unprocessed record lingering in 2014, the investigation found.

VA Deputy Inspector General Linda Halliday noted that whistleblowers have provided essential information “to pursue accountability and corrective actions in VA programs.” In all, nearly 900,000 veterans still have their claims pending review. Additionally, the report found that the Health Eligibility Center (HEC) deleted 10,000 records from the Workload Reporting and Productivity (WRAP) tool since co-workers improperly marked applications as complete. Yet, a full review is not possible due to improper cataloging and storage of data:


While the HEC often deleted transactions for legitimate purposes, such as the removal of duplicate transactions, information security deficiencies within WRAP limited our ability to review some issues fully and rule out manipulation of data.WRAP was vulnerable because the HEC did not ensure that adequate business processes and security controls were in place, did not manage WRAP user permissions, and did not maintain audit trails to identify reviews and approvals of deleted transactions. In addition, the Office of Information and Technology (OI&T) did not provide proper oversight for the development, security, and data backup retention for WRAP. OI&T also did not collect and retain WRAP audit logs, evidence of administrative and user interactions within the database, in accordance with VA policy. In the absence of the audit logs, OI&T cannot analyze system activity for unauthorized or inadvertent undesired activity.

Veterans Affairs scandal is a fiasco, and a national disgrace regarding the inadequate care and attention that’s been given to those who have served our country. Waiting periods and “secret waiting lists” for sick veterans were unearthed in this tedious, frustrating, and wholly deplorable saga that still isn’t over. So far, only three Veterans Affairs personnel have been fired since the scandal broke in April of 2014.

[Lucille]

VA fires veteran for talking to Congress
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/va-fires-veteran-for-talking-to-congress/article/2571616


After a disabled VA employee and Army veteran reached out to Congress for help locating his lost benefits folder, the VA fired him out of retaliation.

Bradie Frink, a clerk at the VA's regional office in Baltimore, had written a letter to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., in Feb. 2013 when the agency misplaced Frink's benefits folder. Two weeks later, his superiors moved to fire him for alleged misconduct, despite having no concerns about Frink's performance prior to his congressional complaint.

The Office of Special Counsel announced Tuesday that Frink had been wrongfully terminated following his attempt to get help from Mikulski's office. Because the VA could not find Frink's file, the agency had stopped making certain payments to his family, according to the OSC report.
[...]
Frink's case is just the latest in a series of firings and demotions doled out by the VA to employees who blow the whistle on internal misconduct.

Whistleblowers have faced retaliation for reporting doctored appointment lists, shoddy patient care and even sexual harassment.

Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner told Congress in July that OSC has more than 300 active VA whistleblower retaliation cases across 43 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, with roughly 100 of those cases involving reports of patient health or safety.

"In 2014 and 2015 to date, OSC has secured either full or partial relief 99 times for VA employees who filed whistleblower retaliation complaints, including 66 in fiscal year 2015 alone," Lerner testified before the Senate Committee on Appropriations on July 30.

In Frink's case, the OSC found all three officials involved in his termination "had a clear motive to retaliate against him."...

[Lucille]

They only fire whistleblowers.

ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/214759/): Watchdog: VA not firing officials for botched veteran care (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/watchdog-va-not-firing-officials-for-botched-veteran-care/article/2572370).


The government's Office of Special Counsel on Thursday told President Obama and top members of Congress that the Department of Veterans Affairs has failed to discipline VA employees for their role in the health care scandal, a conclusion many members of Congress have already reached.

OSC made this finding after examining the case of a VA doctor who was a whistleblower, and exposed many of the problems at the VA in Phoenix, Arizona.

Among other things, Dr. Katherine Mitchell said nurses lacked the proper training in medical triage, and 110 veterans "experienced dangerous delays in care."

Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said in her letter to Obama and Congress that her team substantiated those claims. But she said the VA has yet to impose any discipline on the VA.

"I am concerned by the VA's decision to take no disciplinary action against responsible officials," she wrote. She said the absence of any action against VA employees "sends the wrong message to the veterans served by this facility, including those who received substandard emergency care."

Lerner said her office asked why the VA hasn't fired anyone, but said "the VA did not provide an adequate justification."

Her letter listed several other examples in which the VA failed to fire officials, and noted that the VA seems to have no problem taking disciplinary action against VA whistleblowers.

"The VA has attempted to fire or suspend whistleblowers for minor indiscretions and, often, for activity directly related to the employee's whistleblowing," it said.

Congress passed legislation a year ago giving the VA more authority to fire people involved in the scandal, in which thousands of veterans were delayed care after they were put on secret waiting lists. Those lists served to hide the fact that they had applied for care months or even years earlier, and allowed the VA to claim they were getting people care quickly.

But so far, the VA hasn't fired anyone for the official reason that they worked to delay access to health care. Only a few have been fired, for other reasons, and others have been allowed to retire with full pension benefits.

Read the OSC letter here:

[Suzanimal]

One year after VA scandal, the number of veterans waiting for care is up 50 percent




One year after an explosive Veterans Affairs scandal sparked national outrage, the number of veterans on wait lists to be treated for everything from Hepatitis C to post-traumatic stress is 50 percent higher than at the same time last year, according to VA data.

....

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/06/24/one-year-after-va-scandal-the-number-of-veterans-waiting-for-care-is-up-50-percent/

[Suzanimal]

VA Secretly Paid Exec Who Threatened Whistleblower $86,000 To Quit


A former Department of Veterans Affairs hospital director was paid $86,000 to resign after Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson determined he had retaliated against a whistle-blowing subordinate who reported him for doing little work, The Daily Caller News Foundation found.

Other offenses that preceded the payoff for Japhet Rivera included having sex with a female VA employee and then repeatedly talking about the goings-on to her daughter, who also worked there. When the daughter said she didn’t want to hear it, he wrote that she might have to “live the rest of your life without a mom,” the VA said in Rivera’s firing paperwork.

The VA has repeatedly told Congress in recent years that it doesn’t need new management powers to fire bad workers, but Rivera, a high-level, non-union employee, prevented his firing on a technicality by appealing to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The MSPB is a small federal panel that hears cases involving allegations of violations of civil service employee rights.

...

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/18/va-secretly-paid-exec-86000-to-quit/#ixzz3xtl6s3gx

[Suzanimal]

After Overpayment Of Benefits, VA Wanted $38,000 Back

Clay Hull has a stubborn sense of justice.

After an improvised explosive device blast in Iraq ended his time in the military, he fought the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs over the amount of compensation they awarded him for his injuries.

"If I'm in the wrong, I'll admit it. But I'm not going to let someone just push me around, especially the VA," he says.

It was complicated and drawn out, but Hull now gets the maximum the VA pays for disability.

The money pays for his mortgage, support for his young son and feed for the livestock on Hull's 3 acres in south central Washington — 2 1/2 hours from Seattle.

He has a day job as a shipping clerk and then comes home to work on his place. He's currently fixing a fence that runs along his property line.

Four years after he moved in, Hull went to prison on a weapons charge. Hull notified the VA he was in prison.

The VA was supposed to review Hull's disability payments to see if they should be reduced until he got out. But during Hull's entire 18 months in prison, the full VA payments kept coming.

In February 2014, when Hull was settling back into normal life, he received a letter from the VA: The agency wanted all the money back.

"Thirty-eight grand and they were wanting it in a lump sum payment," Hull says. "There was no negotiating with them. They would just shut off all benefits until they were repaid."

Hull couldn't pay. While in prison he had spent the money on his mortgage and child support for his son.

He says he had done his part by filing the right paperwork. Now the VA was threatening him.

"After the stress they caused, I'm sorry to have ever been a vet or served this country," he says.

Hull took his paperwork to Leo Flor, an attorney and veteran who served eight years in the Army. At the time, Flor worked for the Northwest Justice Project, a publicly funded legal aid program in Washington state.

The first thing he had to do in Hull's case was deal with the threat to cut off his benefits.

"This is the money they use to buy groceries; this is the money they use to put gas in their cars," Flor says.

He won that round, but getting Hull's benefits restarted was only the beginning.

Flor, who has worked with a lot of vets in this situation, had to prove that Hull's overpayment was the VA's mistake.

In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it overpaid 2,200 incarcerated vets more than $24 million. Money it then tried to get back.

The VA puts the burden on veterans. Vets are expected to file all the right paperwork — and do it from behind bars.

"It's not a system that's designed to be used while you're incarcerated and have your ability to speak by phone and have your ability to use the Internet gone," Flor says.

When Hull was in prison he was obsessive about keeping track of his correspondence with the VA. He made copies of every note he mailed them. In those letters he told them he was in prison and explained why he needed the benefits to support his family. He even kept receipts for money he withdrew to buy the stamps.

"You're always afraid you're going to lose an important piece of paper. And you have duplicates of so many things in so many different areas you end up with a stockpile of paper. I've honestly gone through at least a case of printing paper just making copies of things," he says.

All that paper meant Hull had a chance. And so he appealed: On March 5, 2014, Flor sent the VA all of Hull's records. Then on Dec. 18, 2014, the VA sent Hull another notice of intent to collect the debt.

Flor was incredulous. It was as if the VA hadn't read anything he'd sent. On Dec. 23, 2014, Flor sent the entire package of records to the VA again.

Eventually, Hull received a short letter in the mail.

"June 4, 2015 — that's when they sent it," Flor says. "It says, 'This is to inform you that your request for waiver of your compensation pension debt has been approved by the committee on waivers and compensations.' "

Finally, after a year and a half, Hull's $38,000 debt was erased.

The VA says it knows this is an issue.

"Without a doubt, we need to do a better job making sure that doesn't happen," says Dave McLenachen, the VA's acting deputy undersecretary for disability assistance.

He says the VA is swamped. The agency settled 3 million claims for benefits adjustments just last year.

"The month after we get the notice, we should be doing it quickly and doing the benefit adjustment to keep any debt as small as possible," says McLenachen. "There's no disagreement here. But given the resources available to us, we get to them as quickly as possible."

That still leaves many veterans like Hull on the hook to prove their case and win, or forfeit their benefits to pay back the debt.

Hull kept his home, but he's still angry over what he views as a betrayal of a promise by the VA.

"I'd worked awful hard, you know this place is paid for with blood money, my blood. Trying to get a future for him," he says, indicating his son, "and these a******* at the VA were gonna wipe that out in one fell swoop, because they didn't open up my mail, didn't read it, or just lost it, or just didn't care, and then thought they had an easy target."

...

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/27/464348017/after-overpayment-of-benefits-va-wanted-38-000-back?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=morningedition&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160127

[Lucille]

I haven't been watching the primary erection debates. Have Rs said anything in them about the epic and on-going failures of the VA? Ron did during both runs. How unsurprising that nothing has changed.

https://reason.com/blog/2016/02/05/sanders-and-clintons-deflections-on-vete


Clinton had an opportunity in last night's debate to jump on a real-world example of Sanders' failure to actually fix problems—the terrible disaster that is the medical system as run by the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.). The scandal that unfolded in 2014 while Sanders was chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee highlighted everything Americans fear about government-run health care: long waits, an apathetic bureaucracy, corruption within the system, government employees cashing in and getting bonuses while the customers they were supposed to be serving died, and ultimately a significant failure to hold people accountable for what happened.

Sanders' response to the crisis has been lackluster and last night was no different. But Clinton, rather than zeroing in on this serious failure in Sanders resume, ran to his side and helped deflect attention away from the crisis by complaining about "privatization."
[...]
What's absurd about Clinton's answer is that she thinks that having government in control of providing healthcare to veterans means that the care is "guaranteed," when the whole scandal was that, in fact, the government employees were not providing the care and had managed to somehow incentivize lying about it so as to get bonuses. There isn't guaranteed health care for veterans now.
[...]
Veterans organizations themselves do not seem to see Sanders the way he sees himself. Tim Mak at The Daily Beast takes note that at least one veterans group saw Sanders as dragging his feet on concerns about the agency, only acting once the scandal became national news:
[...]
As for blaming the Koch brothers and the Concerned Veterans for America, Clinton and Sanders are flailing away at a straw man. The report put out by Concerned Veterans for America (read here) actually calls for preserving the Veterans Health Administration hospitals, but calls for veterans to be able to choose where to get their treatment. It's not "privatization" so much as liberation. Shouldn't veterans have the same medical choices as the rest of us?

Frankly it's telling that neither of them actually say anything truly substantive about the problems with veterans care other than that it needs to be improved in some fashion (and Sanders' solution that he fought so hard for was to throw money at the problem, which hasn't changed much). Sanders even remains dismissive about the extent there's an actual problem. These are two people who want to have more government involvement in civilian health care and they seem, frankly, in utter denial about the extent of the problems with the health care the government is already responsible for.

[Lucille]

http://wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.7046


From Free Republic: A Dept Veterans Affairs employee was fired after an arrest for armed robbery but her union quickly got her reinstated — despite a guilty plea — by pointing out that management’s labor negotiator is a registered sex offender, and the hospital director was once arrested and found with painkiller drugs. [Ed: not a joke.]

Freepers picked it up from neo-Trot central: hXXp://hotair.com/archives/2016/03/22/close-call-va-worker-reinstated-with-back-pay-after-missing-time-due-to-being-in-prison-for-armed-robbery/

http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/22/va-worker-gets-job-back-despite-armed-robbery-charge/


Employees said the union demanded her job back and pointed out that Tito Santiago Martinez, the management-side labor relations specialist in Puerto Rico, who is in charge of dealing with the union and employee discipline, is a convicted sex offender. Martinez reportedly disclosed his conviction to the hospital and VA hired him anyway, reasoning that “there’s no children in [the hospital], so they figure I could not harm anyone here.”

The union’s position — that another employee committed a crime and got away with it, so this one should, too — has been upheld by the highest civil service rules arbiters, and has created a vicious Catch-22 where the department’s prior indefensible inaction against bad employees has handcuffed it from taking action now against other scofflaws.

The same reasoning was used by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to justify reinstating VA executives Diana Rubens and Kim Graves after they swindled hundreds of thousands of dollars by bullying others out of jobs and then cashing in on relocation bonuses to take the jobs themselves.

[Bastiat's The Law]

Nothing surprises me anymore.

[Lucille]

Horrible.

Reform? Just shut them all down, and stop creating so many veterans.


BY ALEX ZIELINSKI MAR 25, 2016 11:39 AM

A New Jersey veteran has died after setting himself on fire in front of a state Department of Veterans Affairs clinic. While officials have yet to find any information explaining the 51-year-old man’s suicide, veterans’ advocates say his death could be a response to the VA’s serious lack of timely, accessible medical and mental health care.

“At the very least, his actions were an expression of need. We have been asking the VA … for years for Saturday appointments and late Wednesday night appointments, and were told it was going to be taken care of,” Bob Frolow, Atlantic County Veterans Affairs director, told the Press of Atlantic City on Wednesday. “As of today, it is still not.”

Over the past few years, investigations into VA clinics across the country have unveiled a system plagued with appointment delays that have led to veterans dying from cancer or committing suicide while waiting for care. Bipartisan support from Congress to reshape the VA has sparked further investigations, firings, and reform ideas, but substantial change could take years.
continued...http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/25/3763476/veteran-fire-suicide/

[Lucille]

Report Finds Sharp Increase in Veterans Denied V.A. Benefits
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/us/report-finds-sharp-increase-in-veterans-denied-va-benefits.html


Former members of the military like Mr. Bunn are being refused benefits at the highest rate since the system was created at the end of World War II, the report said. More than 125,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have what are known as “bad paper” discharges that preclude them from receiving care, said the report, released Wednesday by the veterans advocacy group Swords to Plowshares.

The report for the first time compared 70 years of data from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. It found that veterans who served after 2001 were nearly twice as likely as those who served during Vietnam to be barred from benefits, and four times as likely as men and women who served during World War II.

“We separate people for misconduct that is actually a symptom of the very reason they need health care,” said Coco Culhane, a lawyer who works with veterans at the Urban Justice Center in New York.
[...]
The rising proportion of ineligible veterans is largely due to the military’s increasing reliance on other-than-honorable discharges, which have been used as a quick way to dismiss troubled men and women who might otherwise qualify for time-consuming and expensive medical discharges.
[...]
Research has shown that veterans with bad paper discharges may be more likely to commit suicide. Those with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder are at higher risk of drug abuse and incarceration.

[tod evans]

^^^^^^^^This has been going on since Nam that I'm aware of. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Lucille]

I'd call this a scandal.

Since December, the VA Has Revoked Gun Rights For 260,000 Veterans
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?493302-Since-December-the-VA-Has-Revoked-Gun-Rights-For-260-000-Veterans

[Lucille]

"Budget-Crunched" VA Has 167 Interior Designers On Staff
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/08/budget-crunched-va-has-167-interior-designers-on-staff/#ixzz4H3FKxBax


An army of 167 interior designers work at the Department of Veterans Affairs, picking window blind colors and buying millions of dollars of art each year, an investigation from The Daily Caller News Foundation has found.

The designers’ salaries are not included in recent findings that the VA has spent $16 million on art during the Obama administration. At least a dozen individual pieces of art cost a quarter million dollars or more each. Nearly $700,000 was spent on two sculptures at a hospital for blind veterans, the Palo Alto Polytrauma and Blind Rehabilitation Center.

At $100,000 in combined salaries and benefits — many actually make more — the cost of employing those 167 designers would add up to $17 million a year, or $136 million during the eight years of the Obama administration, making the salaries of the people in charge of picking out art dwarf even those art costs.

The list of VA interior designers from 2011 — created by a company seeking to sell to the VA, and spotted online by the Daily Caller News Foundation — shows that virtually every hospital has an interior designer, with some having many. It’s unclear what could possibly keep them busy full-time, considering the bulk of the work would come during major renovations or construction of a new wing.

Oh look. More make-work "jobs" and middle class shadow welfare (http://www.barnhardt.biz/2014/02/08/the-one-about-defense-spending-and-shadow-welfare/).

VA Hospital Bought $300,000 Worth Of TVs, Then Stored Them
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/09/va-hospital-bought-300000-worth-of-tvs-then-stored-them/


Detroit’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital spent $311,000 on TVs that were never used and remain in storage.

The federal agency’s facility ordered the 300 TVs “because they had funds available,” which “may have violated the bona fide needs rule,” according to a new report from the department’s inspector general (IG).

Now, the TVs have sat “in storage for about 2 1/2 years. Further, warranties for the TVs expired.”

Officials were going to use the TVs for a new patient area that had not been built. In May, 2013, they met with the contractor who was planning the future stalls and agreed they would have Ethernet hookups instead of cable. A month later, VA ordered cable-powered TVs instead of Ethernet-powered sets.

“This information was not shared with the … contractor and the compatibility issue with the TVs was not discovered until November 2013 when the facility received the first shipment of TVs,” the IG said.

At that time, they decided to pay the contractor more to install cable rather than return the TVs.

But the new patient area still hasn’t been constructed.
[...]
Senior VA officials frequently claim their department has too little funding to care properly for patients, and have threatened to close down hospitals unless Congress gives the VA more money.

Although much attention has been paid to the fact that VA managers falsified statistics showing how long veterans had to wait for care so that they could get bonuses, an audit found that VA contracting officials did the exact same thing.

Jan Frye, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and logistics, the top contracting official at the VA, said a culture of “lawlessness and chaos” reigns on high-dollar contracts, with officials wantonly misusing credit cards and managers ignoring procurement rule violations.

Fry said there was $1.2 billion of problematic credit card purchases in the prosthetic department alone in an 18-month period, including $70,000 spent on veterinary care for a pet dog.

[Lucille]

76-Year-Old Veteran Kills Himself In VA Parking Lot After Being Denied Treatment
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-26/76-year-old-veteran-kills-himself-va-parking-lot-after-being-denied-treatment


A 76-year-old military veteran killed himself outside a Long Island Veteran Affairs facility Sunday after being denied treatment. He was reportedly seeking help for mental health issues at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center but was turned away, an unfortunately common experience plaguing veterans seeking healthcare in recent years.

According to the New York Times, two people connected to the hospital spoke about the incident on the condition of anonymity. They explained “he had been frustrated that he was unable to see an emergency-room physician for reasons related to his mental health,” the Times reported.

“He went to the E.R. and was denied service,” one anonymous source said. “And then he went to his car and shot himself.”

Peter A. Kaisen of Islip, New York, committed suicide in the parking lot of the Northport facility, where he had been a patient. He was in the parking lot outside Building 92, the facility’s nursing home, when he shot himself.

One of the Times’ anonymous sources questioned why Kaisen had not been referred to Building 64, the mental health center at Northport.


“The staff member said that while there was normally no psychologist at the ready in the E.R., one was always on call, and that the mental health building was open ‘24/7,’” the Times reported.

“Someone dropped the ball. They should not have turned him away,” the source said.
[...]
Just last month, an Iowa military veteran suffering from PTSD and substance abuse killed himself after being denied treatment by the VA. He reportedly made an appointment seeking treatment but eventually posted on social media that he was turned away “even though he requested it and explained to a doctor that he felt his safety and health were in jeopardy,”KWQC, a local news outlet reported.

One veteran who drove to a Seattle VA last year with a broken foot was denied assistance walking from his car to the hospital entrance, a distance of a few feet. He was told to call 911, instead. One gun-wielding veteran with PTSD was shot and killed by police in Maricopa County, Arizona, last year after he was turned away from the VA hospital when he sought treatment for a mental health emergency. He had routinely called suicide hotlines for help but never received the full attention he needed.

Veteran suicides in the United States are a chronic problem. Though some argue the relatively recent figure from the VA that 22 veterans kill themselves per day is inflated, veterans still face a suicide risk higher than the rest of the American population. As USA Today has noted:


“In 2014, veterans accounted for 18% of all suicides in the United States, but made up only 8.5% of the population. In 2010, veterans accounted for 22% of U.S. suicides and 9.7% of the population.”

Further, a more recent analysis by the VA found that in 2014, 20 veterans killed themselves per day. Politifact, an independent fact-checker, has confirmed this figure. While rates of veteran suicides appear to be declining, the figures are still troubling.

Even absent mental health issues like depression and PTSD, veterans are dying waiting for regular health care. A VA whistleblower revealed last year that 238,000 out of 847,000 veterans died after submitting requests for treatment they never received. An audit in 2014 found 57,000 veterans were waiting more than 90 days for an appointment with the VA.

The United States government, politicians, and the media often express compassion and gratitude for veterans. To their credit, some lawmakers recently attempted to allow veterans to use cannabis as an alternative treatment in an amendment to a budget bill — a move Congress ultimately blocked.

But in spite of failed and often unwieldy efforts to reform veterans’ health care, the VA’s systemic failures continue to leave veterans feeling ignored and abandoned by the very institutions that still claim to value them.

[Lucille]

SHOCKING AUDIO: Cancer Patient Secretly Records His VA Doctor Visit
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/08/28/cancer-patient-secretly-records-his-va-doctor-visit-audio-shocking


[vid]

A cancer patient who wanted to expose the horrific treatment inside the Phoenix VA secretly recorded his visit to the clinic.

The shocking audio revealed a VA doctor and nurse acknowledging the many problems with the VA, including a "nightmare" phone scheduling system and enormous, unwieldy patient loads for doctors.

To add insult to injury, the doctor expressed a desire to check the patients' heart and lungs but said he "misplaced" his stethoscope.

Retired Sgt. 1st Class Steve Cooper, who served in the U.S. Army for two decades, said on "Fox and Friends Weekend" this morning that he hopes his secretly recorded tapes will raise awareness about the many unresolved problems at the agency.

"This is absolutely systemic," Cooper told Pete Hegseth."I wanted to really highlight and show people how we're treated at the Phoenix VA. And so this is not a one-off at all."

"This type of behavior, this type of care, this inability for the government to effectively manage its health care is happening constantly throughout the country."

[Lucille]

It Turns Out That Firing Nobody and Giving the Agency More Money is a Really Poor Way to Fix Things
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/10/it-turns-out-that-firing-nobody-and-giving-the-agency-more-money-is-a-really-poor-way-to-fix-things.html


Working in the world of privatization, one objection I get all the time to privately operating in a here-to-for public space is that government officials are somehow more "accountable" to the public than are private companies.

This strikes me as an utter disconnect with reality. If I screw up, I make less money or even go out of business. When government agencies or officials screw up, they generally remain unchanged and unpunished forever. There are no market competitive forces just waiting to shove a government agency aside -- they have a monopoly enforced at the point of government guns. [...]

Take the Phoenix VA. Congress eventually rewarded the VA with more money, almost no one was fired, and the one of the worst managers in the VA system, a serial failure in multiple VA offices who would have been fired from any private company I can think of, was put in charge of the struggling Phoenix VA.

Well, it turns out that firing nobody and giving the agency more money is really a poor way to fix things.


Patients in the Phoenix VA Health Care System are still unable to get timely specialist appointments after massive reform efforts, and delayed care may be to blame for at least one more veteran's death, according to a new Office of the Inspector General probe.

The VA watchdog's latest report, issued Tuesday, says more than two years after Phoenix became the hub of a nationwide VA scandal, inspectors identified 215 deceased patients who were awaiting specialist consultations on the date of death. That included one veteran who "never received an appointment for a cardiology exam that could have prompted further definitive testing and interventions that could have forestalled his death."

The report portrays Phoenix VA clerks, clinicians and administrators as confused and in conflict about scheduling policies despite more than two years of reform and retraining.

"Unexpectedly" as a famous blogger would say.

[Lucille]

Failing Government Managers Are Never Fired, They Are Just Moved (Or Even Promoted)
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/09/failing-government-managers-are-never-fired-they-are-just-moved-or-even-promoted.html


After the scandalous management practices in the Phoenix VA which were proved to sacrifice patient well-being, and even patient lives, in favor of artificially pumping up managers' metrics and bonuses, someone with experience in the private sector might have expected the agency to clean house. Hah!

First, Congress rewarded the failing VA with more budget and headcount, the very things that motivate most government managers.

Now, the VA has assigned what appears to be their worst manager from a tiny, overseas branch of the agency to run the sensitive Phoenix office.


The Department of Veterans Affairs has named a new director to its beleaguered Phoenix VA Medical Center, and the decision instantly came under fire because the appointee left a previous hospital leadership post after it got the lowest satisfaction rating of any facility in the VA system.

RimaAnn Nelson, who most recently headed a tiny VA clinic in the Philippines, is expected to take charge of a Phoenix VA Health Care System that was the epicenter of a national crisis over its treatment of veterans. She is the seventh director during the past three years to enter a revolving leadership door at Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center....

Nelson, who began her career as a nurse, was sent to the Philippines in 2013 after a series of incidents under her leadership at the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The Daily Caller, a non-profit, investigative news organization, said the incidents included two closures of the hospital due to medical safety issues, and potential exposure of HIV to hundreds of veterans.

How is this person even still employed, much less being rewarded with a larger, more responsible post?

[Suzanimal]

It Turns Out That Firing Nobody and Giving the Agency More Money is a Really Poor Way to Fix Things
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/10/it-turns-out-that-firing-nobody-and-giving-the-agency-more-money-is-a-really-poor-way-to-fix-things.html

Ya don't say?!:eek:

[jllundqu]

I have my own horror story about the VA here in Arizona... I'll post it one day.

[DamianTV]

Failing Government Managers Are Never Fired, They Are Just Moved (Or Even Promoted)
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/09/failing-government-managers-are-never-fired-they-are-just-moved-or-even-promoted.html

Peter Principle, if you are good, or even too good at your job, there is a tendancy to give promotions to incompetent people just to get them out of the position where they can just fuck up less, but cause way more damage.

[Lucille]

VA Whistleblower Ignites Firestorm Over Vets’ Illnesses
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?413836-VA-Whistleblower-Ignites-Firestorm-Over-Vets%92-Illnesses

[Suzanimal]

Wisconsin VA dentist failed to meet proper cleaning standards

TOMAH, Wis. – The health of hundreds of veterans is in question because a dentist at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center failed to meet proper cleaning standards.

Tomah VA acting medical director Victoria Brahm said Tuesday 592 veterans that received care from the dentist can receive free screenings for Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV.

At a news conference, Brahm said a dental assistant reported last month that the dentist had not properly cleaned equipment, so an investigation was launched. Brahm says the dental equipment may have been cleaned, but it didn't meet VA standards.

Fifty-four veterans that had bridge and crown work done received phone calls about the problem. The others affected will receive letters.

...

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/12/02/wisconsin-va-dentist-failed-to-meet-proper-cleaning-standards.html

[Lucille]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/04/4-quit-after-oklahoma-veteran-with-maggots-in-wound-dies.html


TALIHINA, Okla. – Four staff members have resigned from a southeastern Oklahoma veterans facility rather than face the possibility of getting fired, after a resident was found to have maggots in a wound.

Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs executive director Myles Deering said the maggots were discovered while the patient was alive at the facility in Talihina, about 130 miles southeast of Tulsa. Deering said the maggots were not the cause of his death.

Deering said the veteran came to the center with an infection and died of sepsis, the Tulsa World reported.
[...]
"During the 21 days I was there ... I pled with the medical staff, the senior medical staff, to increase his meds so his bandages could be changed," Parker said. "I was met with a stonewall for much of that time."

Go somewhere else for treatment, for crying out loud!

[Lucille]

Exclusive: Internal documents detail secret VA quality ratings
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/07/internal-report-details-secret-quality-ratings-veterans/94811922/


WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs has for years assigned star ratings for each of its medical centers based on the quality of care and service they provide, but the agency has repeatedly refused to make them public, saying they are meant for internal use only.

USA TODAY has obtained internal documents detailing the ratings, and they show the lowest-performing medical centers are clustered in Texas and Tennessee.

VA hospitals in Dallas, El Paso, Nashville, Memphis and Murfreesboro all received one star out of five for performance as of June 30, the most recent ratings period available.

Many of highest-rated facilities are in the Northeast — in Massachusetts and New York — and the upper Midwest, including in South Dakota and Minnesota. Those medical centers scored five out of five stars.

The VA determines the ratings for 146 of its medical centers each quarter and bases them on dozens of factors, including death and infection rates, instances of avoidable complications and wait times.

USA TODAY Network is publishing the ratings in full for the first time so that members of the public — including patients and their families — can see how their local VA medical centers stack up against others across the country.
[...]
The documents obtained by USA TODAY detail those averages, and when asked about them, VA officials agreed to provide updated statistics. Overall, the data show something of a mixed bag, with improvements in some areas and declines in others.

On average, veterans are dying at lower rates and contracting fewer staph and urinary tract infections from catheters in VA medical centers since 2014. Veterans are not staying as long in VA hospitals and they are being readmitted within 30 days at lower rates.

At the same time, veterans are experiencing higher rates of preventable complications during hospital stays, on average, than they did in 2014. Those on ventilators suffered more problems, such as catching pneumonia, and the rate of turnover for nurses has increased.

The VA has also seen increases in the percentage of veterans who have to wait longer than 30 days for appointments when they are new patients. Overall, more than 500,000 veterans were still waiting longer than 30 days to be seen as of Nov. 15. More than 125,000 of them were waiting longer than two months, and 46,000 were waiting more than six months.
[...]

HOW DOES YOUR VA STACK UP?

...Search for a state, town, hospital name or star rating below.


You'll have to search at the link.

[Jamesiv1]

TALIHINA, Okla. – Four staff members have resigned from a southeastern Oklahoma veterans facility rather than face the possibility of getting fired, after a resident was found to have maggots in a wound.

Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs executive director Myles Deering said the maggots were discovered while the patient was alive at the facility in Talihina, about 130 miles southeast of Tulsa. Deering said the maggots were not the cause of his death.

Deering said the veteran came to the center with an infection and died of sepsis, the Tulsa World reported.
[...]
"During the 21 days I was there ... I pled with the medical staff, the senior medical staff, to increase his meds so his bandages could be changed," Parker said. "I was met with a stonewall for much of that time."
what's wrong with maggots? Isn't that what the African guy put on Russell Crowe's wound in Gladiator?

VA hospitals are on a tight budget. Home remedies are often the best.

[Lucille]

That’s Government Health Care
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/thats-government-health-care/

807979127986880512


First they moved the dead body into a hallway. Then they took it into a shower room.

There it remained, ignored, for more than nine hours. No one showed up to take it to the morgue because no one called the dispatchers.

Not much is known about the unidentified veteran who died in hospice care at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System outside St. Petersburg, Fla. But a hospital investigation made public Friday by the Tampa Bay Times criticizes staff members for leaving the veteran’s body unattended for such a long time and then trying to cover up their mistake.

The veteran died in February, and the Times obtained the report from the hospital’s Administrative Investigation Board through a Freedom of Information Act request. Investigators interviewed more than 30 witnesses, the Times reported, finding that hospice staff members “demonstrated a lack of concern, attention and respect” for the veteran and subjected the veteran’s body to “increased risk of decomposition.”

According to the heavily redacted report, the veteran died while receiving treatment in the hospice unit at the sprawling medical complex on Florida’s Gulf Coast. When staff members learned the veteran had died, the report says, they asked a transporter to carry the body to a morgue. The transporter allegedly told them to contact dispatchers instead.
[...]
The body sat in a hallway for an unspecified amount of time before staff members moved it into a shower room, according to the Times. They left it there unattended for more than nine hours, investigators reportedly found.
[...]
When the veteran’s body was finally moved, Bay Pines staff members “falsely documented” the incident and tried to blame their mistakes on a communication breakdown that never happened, according to the Times. Staff members also tried to pin blame on a lack of clerical staff in the hospital, and they failed to update an organizational chart to make it harder to determine who was in charge, investigators found.
[...]
“I am deeply disturbed by the incident that occurred at the Bay Pines VA hospital, and even more distressed to learn that staff attempted to cover it up,” Bilirakis said in a Facebook post Friday. “Unsurprisingly, not a single VA employee has been fired following this incident, despite a clear lack of concern and respect for the Veteran. The men and women who sacrificed on behalf of our nation deserve better.”

[Lucille]

Sweet gig.

VA Rehires ‘Bad Boss’ It Paid Settlement of $85k To Resign
http://dennismichaellynch.com/va-rehires-bad-boss-paid-settlement-85k-resign/


Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) fired hospital director for misconduct, paying him $85,000 to resign, then rehired him at a new location and allowed to keep his resignation settlement.

Terry Atienza, CEO of the VA’s Grand Junction hospital in Colorado, was dismissed from his position after being chronically absent. In a report on Tuesday from The Daily Caller, the VA negotiated a settlement of $85,000 for him to resign “from federal service voluntarily, completely and irrevocably, as stated in the signed Atienza settlement. He was also forced to withdraw “complaints of discrimination, appeals before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), claims to the Office of Special Counsel, administrative grievances, civil actions, [and] claims for worker’s compensation.”

In exchange, the VA “agreed to give a letter of recommendation saying he was ‘excellent’ — a false letter, given that it actually believed he should be fired.”

After his resignation, Atienza began seeking employment at other VA hospitals.
[...]
It has been reported that Atienza filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint despite him having the highest-ranking position. He claims that the VA was “guilty” and had “ethical” problems, though failed to produce any examples of racism. He rarely had interaction with his boss – Rocky Mountain regional office director Ralph Gigliotti – whom he waged allegations against. If Atienza’s statements are true, then this settlement would be deemed, “wildly unethical because Gigliotti is the one who authorized and signed it.” Basically, a boss can pay someone off in an effort to prevent their misconduct from being exposed.

When The Daily Caller asked a VA spokesperson about the settlement, they commented that “all parties agreed that it provided the correct outcome for Veterans, employees and stakeholders.”

Additional remarks by The Daily Caller highlight the lack of common sense and blatant mishandling of this case:


It would have been better if VA merely lit the $85,000 on fire. Instead, the agency’s idiotic policies resulted in wasting taxpayer dollars by reinforcing the fact that agency employees, especially its leaders, are above the law. No amount of misconduct or criminality will result in termination in most instances.

Atienza is being allowed to keep his resignation settlement, maintain a regular paycheck, and will not be held accountable for chronic absenteeism. He has since been hired as facility planner in the director’s office at the Shreveport VA facility.

[Suzanimal]

848290313026150400

[Suzanimal]

VA hospital cancels dozens of surgeries due to insect infestation: report


A Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Los Angeles was forced to close operating rooms for 22 days between 2016 and 2018 due to a persistent infestation of insects.

A local CBS News investigation found that the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center has installed at least 200 flytraps to deal with an infestation of Phorid flies in operating rooms that has plagued the building since at least November of 2016.

The infestation has gotten so bad that multiple operating rooms have been forced to close for days at a time, delaying surgeries and stymieing doctors seeking to treat wounded and chronically suffering veterans.


Etymologists told CBS that the Phorid flies are attracted to open wounds, where they seek to lay eggs. They are also known for transmitting dirt and bacteria, causing an additional health risk.

A former investigator for the House Veterans' Affairs Committee told the news station that the failure to clean up the years-long infestation represents a failure at the "highest levels" of the agency.

...

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/385863-va-hospital-cancels-dozens-of-surgeries-due-to-insect-infestation-report

[tod evans]

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/385863-va-hospital-cancels-dozens-of-surgeries-due-to-insect-infestation-report

Betcha pensions and 'salaries' were paid......

[angelatc]

Etymologists told CBS that the Phorid flies are attracted to open wounds, where they seek to lay eggs. They are also known for transmitting dirt and bacteria, causing an additional health risk.


ewwww