The Veterans Hospital system run by the federal government organized its patients into groups called "panels" with the stated goal of getting quick and full treatment to the members of each panel through physicians assigned to that task. For quite some time, the VA has been touting how vets who are members of these panels get wonderful care with little delay. Today, the other shoe dropped. We learned the story of a doctor assigned to treat members of certain panels who complained because many of the vets listed as panel members turned out to be deceased. That's right, a significant percentage of the vets supposedly getting this wonderful care are already dead. When the doctor complained about being assigned dead men as patients, he was fired by the VA.
Think about this mess. In order to make the VA system look like it is working, the bureaucrats put dead people in the panels. Obviously, these dead veterans needed no medical care, so the system was able to provide care for a much smaller number of vets while claiming to serve a much larger number of vets. Can you say fraudulent bonuses? That is what was going on.
The real question now is just how this systematic corruption could have been established in the system and allowed to fester for years without any corrective action being taken. Remember, in 2008, candidate Barack Obama told the nation that there were serious problems at the VA and that he would correct them if elected president. Then, once in office, Obama ignored the problem completely.
This latest mess threatens to be swallowed up by the ongoing mess in Iraq or at the border or at the IRS, etc. But it should not be allowed to get lost in the shuffle. America's vets deserve to get the medical treatment that they were promised. The VA system should be shut down now and the resources put instead into providing vouchers for health insurance to the vets who ought to be covered. Let's put these vets into a system that at least works in part rather than keeping them in a corrupt system that runs for the benefit of government employees rather than the vets who the system is supposed to serve. All those VA employees should find other jobs.
Think about this mess. In order to make the VA system look like it is working, the bureaucrats put dead people in the panels. Obviously, these dead veterans needed no medical care, so the system was able to provide care for a much smaller number of vets while claiming to serve a much larger number of vets. Can you say fraudulent bonuses? That is what was going on.
The real question now is just how this systematic corruption could have been established in the system and allowed to fester for years without any corrective action being taken. Remember, in 2008, candidate Barack Obama told the nation that there were serious problems at the VA and that he would correct them if elected president. Then, once in office, Obama ignored the problem completely.
This latest mess threatens to be swallowed up by the ongoing mess in Iraq or at the border or at the IRS, etc. But it should not be allowed to get lost in the shuffle. America's vets deserve to get the medical treatment that they were promised. The VA system should be shut down now and the resources put instead into providing vouchers for health insurance to the vets who ought to be covered. Let's put these vets into a system that at least works in part rather than keeping them in a corrupt system that runs for the benefit of government employees rather than the vets who the system is supposed to serve. All those VA employees should find other jobs.
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