Tweet
VA Scandal: This Is What Death Panels Look Like
FrontPage Mag
Matthew Vadum
5/21/2014
Excerpt:
The Veterans Administration hospital scandal that has claimed the lives of at least 40 U.S. military veterans continues to expand, adding to the image of a president who neither knows nor cares what happens to those who shed their blood on the battlefield for their fellow Americans.
With a little under six months before the crucial midterm elections, it is a helpful reminder to voters of the horrors that are not glitches, but essential features, of government-provided health care. The problems at the VA are omens, sneak previews of what the delivery of all health care in America will look like under Obamacare, and so it is fortuitous that the scandal should surface now.
President Obama is predictably, perfunctorily, outraged about these bad things that have been happening in the government he controls. He is shocked and promises to get to the bottom of the issue and do better in the future. It is tedious stuff.
The happenings at the VA are also more evidence, Obama critics say, that the president despises the military. Obama has been moving to reduce soldier pay and benefits and hollow out the military to mid-century staff levels. He has also been going on a human resources rampage, firing flag officers at a rate that alarms military observers. And like any good leftist, Obama believes that the only good American soldier is one who is functioning as a social worker, not a war-fighter.
Meanwhile, Obama VA officials have been working overtime covering up the various waiting list atrocities that have been popping up cross the country.
A whistleblower who exposed the waiting list scandal in Fort Collins, Colorado, says she was suspended after she refused to falsify records.
Lisa Lee, who was employed at that clinic, said she was placed on two weeks of unpaid leave for not following a directive that involved “cooking the books” on scheduling medical appointments to create the false impression that appointments were made closer to the time veterans requested.
“Why are they throwing me under the bus when I’m trying to say what the problem is?”
At least 40 U.S. veterans have died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix, Ariz., Veterans Affairs Health Care system, CNN reported April 30. Many of the dead had been put on a secret waiting list.
That list was reportedly part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Administration officials who were attempting to conceal the fact that between 1,400 and 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a physician.
The VA requires its hospitals to provide care to patients in a timely manner, usually within 14 to 30 days, according to Dr. Sam Foote who just retired after working at the Phoenix facility for 24 years. He said officials destroyed evidence to cover up the existence of the bogus waiting list.
VA officials “wouldn’t take you off that secret list until you had an appointment time that was less than 14 days so it would give the appearance that they were improving greatly the waiting times, when in fact they were not,” Foote said.
Foote said the waiting times in Phoenix that were reported to VA headquarters in Washington were make-believe. “So then when they did that, they would report to Washington, ‘Oh yeah. We’re makin’ our appointments within — within 10 days, within the 14-day frame,’ when in reality it had been six, nine, in some cases 21 months,” he said.
Like the Benghazi scandal and the IRS targeting of conservative and Tea Party nonprofits, the VA scandal has legs.
Yet President Obama, who nowadays seems barely aware of what his administration is doing, claimed through a spokesman that he learned about this controversy that is rocking his administration from news reports.
It cannot be true. In fact Obama’s team was briefed on the long-running problems at the VA by the outgoing Bush administration during the transition process in 2008.
.................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mat...els-look-like/
FrontPage Mag
Matthew Vadum
5/21/2014
Excerpt:
The Veterans Administration hospital scandal that has claimed the lives of at least 40 U.S. military veterans continues to expand, adding to the image of a president who neither knows nor cares what happens to those who shed their blood on the battlefield for their fellow Americans.
With a little under six months before the crucial midterm elections, it is a helpful reminder to voters of the horrors that are not glitches, but essential features, of government-provided health care. The problems at the VA are omens, sneak previews of what the delivery of all health care in America will look like under Obamacare, and so it is fortuitous that the scandal should surface now.
President Obama is predictably, perfunctorily, outraged about these bad things that have been happening in the government he controls. He is shocked and promises to get to the bottom of the issue and do better in the future. It is tedious stuff.
The happenings at the VA are also more evidence, Obama critics say, that the president despises the military. Obama has been moving to reduce soldier pay and benefits and hollow out the military to mid-century staff levels. He has also been going on a human resources rampage, firing flag officers at a rate that alarms military observers. And like any good leftist, Obama believes that the only good American soldier is one who is functioning as a social worker, not a war-fighter.
Meanwhile, Obama VA officials have been working overtime covering up the various waiting list atrocities that have been popping up cross the country.
A whistleblower who exposed the waiting list scandal in Fort Collins, Colorado, says she was suspended after she refused to falsify records.
Lisa Lee, who was employed at that clinic, said she was placed on two weeks of unpaid leave for not following a directive that involved “cooking the books” on scheduling medical appointments to create the false impression that appointments were made closer to the time veterans requested.
“Why are they throwing me under the bus when I’m trying to say what the problem is?”
At least 40 U.S. veterans have died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix, Ariz., Veterans Affairs Health Care system, CNN reported April 30. Many of the dead had been put on a secret waiting list.
That list was reportedly part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Administration officials who were attempting to conceal the fact that between 1,400 and 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a physician.
The VA requires its hospitals to provide care to patients in a timely manner, usually within 14 to 30 days, according to Dr. Sam Foote who just retired after working at the Phoenix facility for 24 years. He said officials destroyed evidence to cover up the existence of the bogus waiting list.
VA officials “wouldn’t take you off that secret list until you had an appointment time that was less than 14 days so it would give the appearance that they were improving greatly the waiting times, when in fact they were not,” Foote said.
Foote said the waiting times in Phoenix that were reported to VA headquarters in Washington were make-believe. “So then when they did that, they would report to Washington, ‘Oh yeah. We’re makin’ our appointments within — within 10 days, within the 14-day frame,’ when in reality it had been six, nine, in some cases 21 months,” he said.
Like the Benghazi scandal and the IRS targeting of conservative and Tea Party nonprofits, the VA scandal has legs.
Yet President Obama, who nowadays seems barely aware of what his administration is doing, claimed through a spokesman that he learned about this controversy that is rocking his administration from news reports.
It cannot be true. In fact Obama’s team was briefed on the long-running problems at the VA by the outgoing Bush administration during the transition process in 2008.
.................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mat...els-look-like/