Questioning if Secretary Shinseki Fell on His Sword Too Quickly

Rep Miller, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman, loves having as many Congressional hearings as he can, searching for a 'scandal' that will stick so it raises his political stature and tough legislator guy persona. This recent 'scandal' as to Veterans Affairs scheduling and even deaths, tens of thousands of Veterans have died from long ignored or denied issues in the wake of our wars with few of those served raising an eyebrow about, they'd have to actually Sacrifice and pay for the care that should have been, was actually a decades long running problem, especially from the previous executive administration and these two recent wars and including Desert Storm even.

Fact: “Why in 2009 were we still using paper?” VA Assistant Secretary Tommy Sowers “When we came in, there was no plan to change that; we’ve been operating on a six month wait for over a decade.” 27 March 2013

This looked like a typical Rep Miller sought out 'scandal' and with insider help with facts and spin, politics should never cross the thresholds of Veterans facilities, Never!! And now, though you probably won't hear much from the media now, it looks like some of the real facts are surfacing.

VA investigation shows Shinseki's resignation regrettable

Foote never provided the evidence – actual names of the victims of shoddy VA health care services.

September 4, 2014 - Just a few months back, reputable news services relied on reputable sources to confirm rumors and reports of a secret list of at least 40 former service members who died while waiting for care in the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system.

But last week, the Veterans Administration debunked that claim, citing "purported error" by retired VA physician Dr. Sam Foote as the source. He alleged that the Phoenix branch hid that patients waited months to be treated for care from the VA's Electronic Wait List.

This was breaking national news on network television and likely responsible for President Barack Obama's dismissal of the agency's head.

snip

As it turns out, the majority of the veteran patients whose cases were reviewed were on official or unofficial wait lists and experienced delays involving access to primary care. Some cases of pressing clinical issues required specialty care, which some patients already were receiving through VA or non-VA providers.

For example, a patient might have been seeing a VA cardiologist while on a wait list to see a primary care provider when he died.

"While the case reviews in this report document poor quality of care, we are unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely quality care caused the deaths of these veterans," the reviewers of the "alleged deaths" admit. read more>>>

As to the cooking the books in scheduling, that seems to be a not wide spread throughout the system problem, but was being done in some of the facilities. Easy to talk about when gathering at functions within a group of like minded people, political, already found in the years working in and telling them 'hey you should try this, it's working great for me and my bonuses and enhanced professional records'.

“We are dealing with veterans, not procedures—with their problems, not ours.” —General Omar Bradley, First Administrator of the Veterans Administration