VA Scandal—a Battlefield of Deceit, Delays and Death for Veterans
The VA has many truly dedicated doctors,
nurses, and health professionals who
do their best to genuinely serve America’s
veterans. I salute their conscientious work
and commitment
under difficult conditions,
often in a culture
of fear and intimidation
if they identify
News headlines
since the Phoenix scandal
first broke in late
April, however, clearly
show a dark underbelly
in the VA that is the
antithesis of dedication
to patients. It speaks of a “Code of
Corruption,” not the Military’s Code of
Honor that America’s veterans have upheld.
The U.S. military has an admirable code
of ethics: duty, honor, and sacrifice. Their
Code is to protect the vulnerable, shield
civilians when possible, watch their fellow
soldier’s back, and leave no one behind in
combat. Our soldiers, holding themselves to
these standards, trusted that the country
they served would also honor its commitment
to them for medical care when needed.
Now we see VA bureaucrats, administrators,
and politicians whose only “Code”
seems to be the opposite of the military
ethos: lie, cover up, cheat to protect my
income at all costs, even if veterans die while
I cook the books.
Recent headlines tell the story eloquently:
• “VA Internal Audit: Wait-list Fraud
Found at 64% of VA Facilities”
• “VA Denies Coverage for US Air Force
Veteran with Malignant Brain Tumor”
• “VA IG report confirms: 1,700 vets
seeking care weren’t on official wait
list at Phoenix VA, wait times for others
averaged 115 days”
• Do Not “…send out any more non-VA
care GI requests for endoscopy until
further notice”
• “Deaths at Phoenix VA Hospital May
Be Tied to Delayed Care”
When I worked in a VA early in my
career, there were problems with wait times,
busy emergency departments, overloaded
doctors and nurses, and a shortage of specialists.
Overall, however, veterans were
treated with compassion, concern, and
appropriate care.
Now, however, the VA has seemingly
become a Machiavellian extension of the
very battlefields veterans thought they were
leaving when they came home. Today’s
whistleblowers describe a degree of callousness,
deceit, greed, nest-feathering, denial
of proper care, and outright malevolence at
multiple VA hospitals that is orders of magnitude
worse than anything I ever saw in
the VA years ago.
Across the U.S., the Code of Corruption
means that administrators set up secret
waiting lists to hide outrageously long wait
times. The falsified wait times improved
their “outcomes” to qualify for financial
bonuses. Corrupt, self-interested actions are
common in government-run systems that
have no accountability and little oversight.
Good employees who want to speak out are
threatened with job loss and career damage.
Not everyone has been silenced by the
intimidation. Courageous whistleblowers
continue to come forward with more disturbing
data almost daily. They provide a
portent of what is to come for all Americans
under the government-run Obamacare,
when its full impact hits after 2016 elections.
Here are some recent examples:
• In Phoenix, 40 veterans died while
waiting to see a doctor, 1700 were confirmed
to be on a secret waiting list,
and others’ average wait times were
almost 4 months. Yet the hospital
administrator was paid a $9,000 bonus
for her “quality outcomes.”
• Falsified records about wait times have
been reported so far in Ft. Collins,
Wyoming, San Antonio, Austin,
Albuquerque, and Chicago.
• Pittsburgh VA employees have been
accused of covering up veterans’ deaths
from contaminated water supplies.
• Los Angeles kept more than 60 veterans’
bodies in a morgue for over a year
without proper burial.
• Currently, it takes veterans about 160
days to access health benefits once
back in the U.S. There is a backlog of
close to 350,000 benefits claims to be
• According to the Cato Institute,
appeals of VA decisions have an average
wait time of 1,598 days—that is 53
months, or 4.4 years!
This is the same “death by bureaucracy”
that we have seen in Canada and England
under medical systems controlled by government
agents rather than medical professionals
answering to the needs of patients.
Will YOUR life be next when we move
into “the-VA-for-all” of Obamacare?
As a Nation, we must restore our Moral
Compass that values individual life as God’s
gift, not the Government’s.
