The Dirty Not-So-Little-Not-So-Secret Secret of the VA Scandals

The last two years, I’ve taken to Memorial Day to write about the VA abandoning their duty of caring for our Nations Veterans. USA Today and other news organizations over the last few days have published findings that show NOTHING has changed. I want to bring to light three statistics reported recently by these news organizations and then give you a fourth. The first three should outrage any American. The last should make you want to cry.

1. Reports show that up to 307,000 Veterans may have died waiting for medical care at VA hospitals.
2. VA Bosses in at least Seven states manipulated wait times to hide the failures of the system.
3. A grand total of 29 People have had discipline initiated against them.

I’m not sure how anyone can not demand that more be done against those that have, at best, committed essentially manslaughter against our veterans. Right now, using those statistics, we’ve decided that the negligent murder of our veterans is the culpability of poor training for most people and 29 that MAY be guilty. So much like the proverbial “how many licks does it take to get the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?” (Three), we can now answer by dividing the number of estimated deaths by disciplinary cases , “How many Veterans have to die before a single VA employee may get sacked?” (TEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SIX). 

The two solutions everyone tends to espouse are to either reform from within (anyone want to guess how well this is working when almost three years later, a grand total of 29 people have had disciplinary items started against them?) or to move the VA health care side to private industry. The same private industry that currently is struggling with massive losses under Obama Care. There is a third option – abolish the VA and move Veteran care to the Department of Defense, with active duty personnel providing a core of support. There are many people who will say this can’t be done. That this will affect readiness. But who is more likely to support a veteran than those that will become veterans in the future?  And if we can’t afford care for those that put their lives on the line for this country, what can we afford? And this brings me to the statistic that should make everyone shocked, angered and yes, cry.

4. Approximately ONE THIRD (32.4 % in 2013) of VA Employees are Veterans themselves.

That’s right. For all we talk about VA scandal, Veteran Suicides with the statistic of 22 a day and other disgraces, VETERANS are complicit in their own scandal. While I am sure there are honorable veterans at the VA that are not part of this, it goes against belief to think that one-third of the VA employees have NO ability to fix this. This leads me to believe that reform at the VA is really not possible – if 1/3 of the employees of an institution cannot fix the very institution that is short-changing their brothers and sisters in arms, what does changing a few names at the top matter? The career bureaucrats have failed the VA.

Yet what we have here with this Veteran genocide of negligence and cover up are veteran organizations blasting any attempt to do away with the VA and we have, of course the government union making sure that no government employee loses their job because, of course, this is a training issue, and not a moral one.

Signed, A Veteran.