Veterans Affairs Scandal

[oyarde]

All this had been pushed under the rug for so long.

I somehow think many will be pushed under the rug again . It looks like the best bet is to not live near a facility and then be able to use what you wish , or have a problem they do not work on and they will send you to a private facility .Only cure is to privatize it .

 

[Lucille]

FBI Opens Criminal Probe Into Phoenix VA Scandal
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-11/fbi-opens-criminal-probe-phoenix-va-scandal

Just when the administration thought they had thrown enough people under the bus and the news cycle had moved on to Bergdahl (how did that work out?), WSJ reports:
[...]
FBI Director James Corney says that the Phoenix office of the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the VA scandal, adding that "We're working with the VA IG and we'll follow it wherever the facts take us." We are yet to hear what the over/under on 'pleading da fifs', but we suspect it will be high.

 

[Lucille]

Report: VA Gave $100M in Bonuses As Vets Awaited Care
http://www.wltx.com/story/news/2014...00m-in-bonuses-as-vets-awaited-care/10316521/

ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Even as federal inspectors repeatedly warned that patient wait lists were having a detrimental impact on care, the troubled Veterans Affairs health system handed out $108.7 million in bonuses to executives and employees the past three years, an Asbury Park Press investigation found.
[...]
On Tuesday, the U.S. House voted 426-0 to ban all bonuses through 2016, which would save the VA $400 million annually, according to House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the bill's author. Miller said that money could be used for expanded care for veterans.
[...]
"Here's what the systemic problem is when you look at it all. The way they're measuring success is by a metric that even the (Inspector General) can't tell us how they came up with the numbers," said Rep. Jon Runyan, R-N.J., who represents parts of Ocean County. "That's where these secret lists come in to factor, because if they're not in the computer system, they're not on the clock for getting that patient seen, and so they're cooking the books by not putting them in the computer system. Now they can get their bonuses on the back end."
[...]
Meanwhile, the Phoenix VA Health Care System refuses to disclose how many of its employees received bonuses despite one official's acknowledgment that the information is readily available.
[...]
The data, although incomplete, shows that bonuses ramped up when Helman became director at the Phoenix VA in early 2012. Helman could not be reached to discuss the bonuses.

The number of bonuses given out annually nearly tripled over three years, from 97 in 2011 before Helman arrived, to 161 in 2012 and 286 in 2013.

 

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

the whole VA thing was implemented by design. Use the soldiers for what they're worth, then kill them.

 

[Occam's Banana]

FBI Opens Criminal Probe Into Phoenix VA Scandal
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-11/fbi-opens-criminal-probe-phoenix-va-scandal

How does this keep us safe? Can they spare the manpower?

Don't they have some terror plots to concoct & foster discover & stymie?

 

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

How does this keep us safe? Can they spare the manpower?

Don't they have some terror plots to concoct & foster discover & stymie?

lol like that fbi plot to bomb the federal reserve that they uncovered?

 

[Lucille]

V.A. Punished Critics on Staff, Doctors Assert
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/va-punished-critics-on-staff-doctors-assert.html

The growing V.A. scandal over long patient wait times and fake scheduling books is emboldening hundreds of employees to go to federal watchdogs, unions, lawmakers and outside whistle-blower groups to report continuing problems, officials for those various groups said.

In interviews with The New York Times, a half-dozen current and former staff members — four doctors, a nurse and an office manager in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Alaska — said they faced retaliation for reporting systemic problems. Their accounts, some corroborated by internal documents, portray a culture of silence and intimidation within the department and echo experiences detailed by other V.A. personnel in court filings, government investigations and congressional testimony, much of it largely unnoticed until now.

The department has a history of retaliating against whistle-blowers, which Sloan D. Gibson, the acting V.A. secretary, acknowledged this month at a news conference in San Antonio. “I understand that we’ve got a cultural issue there, and we’re going to deal with that cultural issue,” said Mr. Gibson, who replaced Eric K. Shinseki after Mr. Shinseki resigned over the scandal last month. Punishing whistle-blowers is “absolutely unacceptable,” Mr. Gibson said.
[...]
“The V.A. isn’t a place where you speak out,” Dr. Stout said in an interview.

Dr. Yu called the department’s decision to close his lab “malicious,” and added in an interview that “I fall into a category that the V.A. absolutely abhors — whistle-blowers.”

The number of claims of retaliation by V.A. whistle-blowers is among the highest of any federal agency, said Carolyn Lerner, who runs the Office of Special Counsel, and have been documented by Congress going back at least two decades.

In 1992, a congressional report concluded that the V.A. discouraged employees from reporting problems by “harassing whistle-blowers or firing them.” In 1999, a House subcommittee hearing on “Whistleblowing and Retaliation in the Department of Veterans Affairs” found little had changed.

Today V.A. employees and whistle-blower lawyers say the problem has only gotten worse.

VA priorities:

 

[Lucille]

The Obama Administration is Trying to Cover up the VA Scandal by Issuing Subpoenas to Whistle-Blower Sites
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/0...by-issuing-subpoenas-to-whistle-blower-sites/

One of the most significant realizations to emerge since the Edward Snowden revelations, is the understanding that we need more secure tools for would be whistle-blowers to more easily provide sensitive information in a secure and anonymous manner. As such, we have seen the deployment of encrypted drop boxes by several media outlets. I highlighted one of these a little over a year ago called Strongbox, which was a project announced by the New Yorker and was what Aaron Swartz was working on just before his death.

Recently, the Washington Post and the Guardian have released something similar called SecureDrop. The Washington Post described it as such:

Users may have noticed a button on The Washington Post homepage called “SecureDrop.” The new feature enables confidential sources to contact The Post and share documents in an encrypted fashion. The Post launched this feature to offer even more security and anonymity to sources.

Naturally, this sort of potential transparency and ease of exposing corruption and criminality is not welcome within the halls of government. As such, the reaction from Obama Administration lawyers is to issue subpoenas for information so that they can avoid cracking the encryption and the U.S. legal system altogether.

ArsTechnica reports that:

It’s not shadowy spies or engineers from the National Security Agency secretly reading the hundreds of tips about government fraud that the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has received in less than a month.

Instead, it’s lawyers from the President Barack Obama administration employing the power of the administrative subpoena in a bid to siphon data from POGO’s encrypted submission portal. POGO’s site encourages whistleblowers to use Tor as the gateway and has garnered more than 700 tips about abuse and mismanagement at the US Veterans Administration after less than a month of operation.

“If they are successful, that defeats the purpose of trying to improve our online security with encryption,” Joe Newman, the project’s communications director, said in a telephone interview.

The administrative subpoena, which does not require the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, comes as the number of so-called drop boxes from media organizations and other whistleblower groups is on the rise in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. The Washington Post and the Guardian were among the latest to deploy drop boxes on June 5. But no matter how securely encrypted the boxes might be, the subpoena is an old-school cracking tool that doesn’t require any electronic decryption methods.

Typical response from a “constitutional lawyer” President.

POGO launched its submission tool in the immediate aftermath of the disclosure of the Veterans Administration scandal, which on Monday blossomed to revelations that as many as 57,000 vets have been awaiting treatment for as long as three months each because of 1990s-era scheduling technology. The agency is also accused of trying to cover that up.

The subpoena from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Inspector General demands from POGO records related to “wait times, access to care, and/or patient scheduling issues at the Phoenix, Arizona VA Healthcare System and any other VA medical facility.”

On Monday, POGO told the Obama administration that it would not comply with the subpoena. Most government agencies have such subpoena powers, and they have been doled out hundreds of thousands of times, all with the signature of federal officials as no judge is required. The subpoenas demand that utilities, ISPs, telecommunication companies, banks, hospitals, and bookstores cough up information if the authorities deem it relevant to an investigation.

If the VA doesn’t drop its subpoena, POGO said it would never turn the data over, even if ordered to by a judge.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-...n-forcing-local-cops-stay-silent-surveillance

The criminality of the Obama Administration is at this point almost beyond description. Earlier this week I highlighted a shocking discovery in my post titled: The Obama Administration is Trying to Cover up the VA Scandal by Issuing Subpoenas to Whistle-Blower Sites. In that piece, it was noted that:

Instead, it’s lawyers from the President Barack Obama administration employing the power of the administrative subpoena in a bid to siphon data from POGO’s encrypted submission portal. POGO’s site encourages whistleblowers to use Tor as the gateway and has garnered more than 700 tips about abuse and mismanagement at the US Veterans Administration after less than a month of operation.

The administrative subpoena, which does not require the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, comes as the number of so-called drop boxes from media organizations and other whistleblower groups is on the rise in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. The Washington Post and the Guardian were among the latest to deploy drop boxes on June 5. But no matter how securely encrypted the boxes might be, the subpoena is an old-school cracking tool that doesn’t require any electronic decryption methods.

Basically, the feds are so concerned that more truth about the VA scandal will get out there they have resorted to subpoenas to cover up as much as possible. Of course, considering that the entire Administration, and indeed the entire status quo in America, appears to be essentially a criminal syndicate, there is a naturally an endless stream of abuses that must be concealed from the plebs.

 

[Lucille]

The Ruling Class refuses to take care of the injured veterans they made thus far, so of course they're agitating to make some more in Iraq.

New PTSD report documents known lapses in veteran care
http://www.stripes.com/news/us/new-ptsd-report-documents-known-lapses-in-veteran-care-1.289932

Guyton, 57, said the Department of Veterans Affairs originally claimed the visions, which at times have been so violent they’ve led to injuries, were the result of “battle fatigue” or “shellshock.”

In 2000, the agency diagnosed him as having PTSD, but the New York native said the VA didn’t start treatment until March, when he began meeting a psychologist at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center weekly to unlock decades of dormant stress.

“I’m doing well with her. I trust her very much,” Guyton said of his psychologist. “She acts as an intermediary between me and the staff.”

Guyton’s difficulty finding collaborative care is not uncommon, particularly those diagnosed with PTSD, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

The report, released Friday, found the VA and Defense Department do not encourage the use of best practices in programs and services for preventing, screening for, diagnosing and treating PTSD. In the DOD, leaders at all levels are not regularly held accountable for implementing policies and plans to manage the disorder, the institute observed in its study, the second of a two-phase assessment of PTSD services.

Further, the review stated the VA has established policies on minimum care requirements and guidance on treatment, but that it is unclear whether leaders adhere to the policies, encourage staff to follow guidance or use the data available from its specialized PTSD programs to improve the way it manages the disorder. As a result, only 53 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who had a primary diagnosis of PTSD and sought VA care in 2013 received the recommended eight sessions within 14 weeks.

Samo samo:

The Veterans’ Administration Has Been a Disaster Since Its Inception
http://blog.independent.org/2014/06...tion-has-been-a-disaster-since-its-inception/

In her modern, exceptional biography of President Calvin Coolidge, Amity Shlaes (Coolidge, HarperCollins, 2013) documents the very blemished history of today’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), illustrating the trite, but nevertheless very true old saw that the more things change the more they remain the same.

That department of the federal government, now embroiled in controversy for falsifying records about the excessive times the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are required to wait for appointments to treat their combat-related injuries, both physical and psychological, was born during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. At the time, “bonuses for veterans dominated all budget talks” (p. 230). In order to deflect pleas for spending taxpayers’ money on American soldiers returning from the trenches in mud of Belgium and France — “a new commitment to such a large group [that] would be ‘a disaster to the Nation’s finances’ — President Harding negotiated a compromise with Congress to abolish the existing War Risk Bureau and replace it with a new Veterans Bureau. Headed by Harding’s friend, Charles Forbes, the bureaucratic reorganization doubled federal budget outlays from $300 million a year to $600–$700 million. Harding’s Veterans Bureau, among other things, was supposed to “build hospitals in fourteen regional offices to serve the vets all over the country” (p. 231).

Soon thereafter, “the bureau was expanding at an alarming rate”, but unsurprisingly “the veterans were finding that they “were not getting what was promised”, in part because “the prices in the contracts for the buildings Forbes was constructing seemed inflated” (p. 233). Nevertheless, “the Veterans Bureau continued to spend and [in 1923] was set to outgrow the navy in size, with a budget of $455 million” (p. 236), representing about one-seventh of the total federal budget of that long-ago time.
[...]
Many people, including me, think that caring for the veterans of America’s foreign wars, no matter how ill conceived they may be, is a national responsibility. (Truth in advertising: I am a veteran of the U.S. Navy). Quite plainly, though, that responsibility should not be delegated to a distant, inefficient and often corrupt federal bureaucracy. Such responsibilities should be devolved to state and local levels of government — or, more ideally, to the private sector (under a voucher scheme) — whereby the taxpayers who finance veterans’ benefits are better equipped than the federal government to monitor the charitable and patriotic purposes for which their hard-earned incomes are spent.

 

[Lucille]

Good enough for government work!

Lawmakers outraged: Despite VA scandal, senior execs rated ‘fully satisfactory’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/06/20/house-committee-challenges-va-bonuses/

Members of a House committee want to know why an agency that has come under fierce attack for covering up long delays in service to veterans says all of its senior executives are “fully satisfactory” or better.

That and the performance awards given to Senior Executive Service members in the Veterans Affairs Department were the focus of incredulous representatives at a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing Friday.

Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) said he called the hearing to examine “the outlandish bonus culture at VA and the larger organizational crisis that seems to have developed from awarding performance awards to senior executives despite the fact that their performance fails to deliver on our promise to our veterans….”

“These performance awards went to at least 65 percent of the senior executive workforce at the Department. In fact not a single senior manager at VA, out of 470 individuals, received a less than fully successful performance review for the last fiscal year…. I wholeheartedly disagree with VA’s assessment of its senior staff.”

This one's behind a pay wall:

The Second VA Scandal
The latest non-reform could cost taxpayers $50 billion more a year.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-second-va-scandal-1403131818

The Veterans Affairs scandal has exposed a failing bureaucracy, so naturally Congress's solution is to give the same bureaucracy more money. The underreported story is that taxpayers could end up paying $50 billion each year so Congress can claim to have solved the problem.

 

[Lucille]

Even at the VA Your Federal Bureaucrats Are Stellar Enough for Government Work
http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/22/even-at-the-va-your-federal-bureaucrats

Defenses of public sector salaries often rest on the idea that better pay attracts better candidates, while low turnover is chalked up to government workers being so good at their job nobody gets fired or wants to leave. The low turnover, of course, can also be attributed to union protections, and even in the absence of a public union governments often have stricter rules on managing employees than the private sector. It's difficult to compare or even gauge job performance, too, as so many government jobs don't have an equivalent in the public sector, while government employees often get stellar reviews from government supervisors.

For example, The New York Times reports that in the last four years, each of 470 senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was reviewed as being "fully successful" (or better!) in their jobs, this while the department's employees were actively covering up criminal negligence in veterans' healthcare. The Times reports:

The data also showed that in 2013, nearly 80 percent of the senior executives were rated either "outstanding" or as having exceeded "fully successful" in their job performance, and that at least 65 percent of the executives received performance awards, which averaged around $9,000. Only about 20 percent received the middle of the five ratings.

Veterans Affairs officials sought to play down the data, saying that only 15 senior executives across the federal government had received either of the two lowest ratings in the most recent year

That someone paid to spin things to the media would really think pointing out that every supervisor in the federal government gets a good review would help illustrates how disconnected from reality federal employees have become. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising though, given the Obama administration's insistence that the scandals they're embroiled in are fake and the willingness of Obama apologists to eat that narrative up.

The data The Times quotes came out in testimony by a VA assistant secretary last week who defended the system of performance bonuses by saying it was needed to retain talent—as lawmakers pointed out, there wasn't a mass exodus from the department after bonuses were suspended. Her testimony also revealed that the outstanding performance reviews are likely written by the people being reviewed. Government's just that good.

 

[Suzanimal]

Veterans neglected for years in VA facility, report says


(CNN) -- Two veterans in a Veterans Affairs psychiatric facility languished for years without proper treatment, according to a scathing letter and report sent Monday to the White House by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, or OSC.

In one case, a veteran with a service-connected psychiatric condition was in the facility for eight years before he received a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation; in another case, a veteran only had one psychiatric note in his medical chart in seven years as an inpatient at the Brockton, Massachusetts, facility.

Examples such as those are the core of the report released Monday by the OSC, an independent government agency that protects whistleblowers.

...

According to the OSC, at a VA hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, the Office of Medical Inspector substantiated a number of allegations, including "improper credentialing of providers, inadequate review of radiology images, unlawful prescriptions for narcotics, noncompliant pharmacy equipment used to compound chemotherapy drugs, and unsterile medical equipment."

"In addition, a persistent patient-care concern involved chronic staffing shortages," which led to the creation of "ghost clinics" in which veterans were scheduled for appointments without an assigned provider and as a consequence were leaving the facility without receiving treatment.

Despite the numerous lapses in care at the Jackson VA, the Office of Medical Inspector did not acknowledge any impact on the health and safety of veterans, according to the OSC letter.

Monday's letter also outlined whistleblower complaints ranging from unsterlized surgical equipment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to neglect of elderly residents at a geriatric facility in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a pulmonologist in Montgomery, Alabama, who "copied prior provider notes in over 1,200 patient records, likely resulting in inaccurate health information being recorded."

Other facilities with substantiated complaints include Grand Junction, Colorado; Buffalo, New York; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Harlingen, Texas.

The OSC said all these cases are "part of a troubling pattern of deficient patient care at VA facilities nationwide, and the continued resistance by the VA, and the OMI in most cases, to recognize and address the impact of health and safety of veterans."

...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/23/politics/veterans-care-va-report/index.html

 

[Lucille]

A few from Griffin's Unfiltered News:

US: The Senate proposes to spend an additional $50 billion over and above its current budget to fix the problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs. [This is a disgusting example of how, no matter how badly a government operation fails or how much corruption creeps into it, we can be sure that politicians will claim that the primary problem is that it doesn't have enough money. They seldom fire the corrupt managers or trim the fat. The VA's budget more than doubled from $61 billion in 2001 to $125 billion in 2012, and now it will get a big pay raise as a reward for failure.] PPJ 2014 Jun 25 (Cached)

US: Senator Tom Coburn published an explosive report on the Veterans Administration. [It cites examples of criminal activity by VA employees that include murder, rape, theft of veterans' belongings, and drug dealing. Over 1000 veterans have died as a result of poor management, and almost $1 billion has been paid out in malpractice settlements over ten years] Senator Coburn 2014 Jun 24 (Cached)

Key findings in the report include:

A CULTURE OF MANIPULATION PERMEATES THE DEPARTMENT.

• The cover up of waiting lists for doctor’s appointments at the VA is just the tip of the iceberg, reflecting a perverse culture within the department where veterans are not always the priority and data and employees are manipulated to maintain an appearance that all is well.
• Bad employees are rewarded with bonuses and paid leave while whistleblowers, health care providers, and even veterans and their families are subjected to bullying, sexual harassment, abuse, and neglect. For example, female patients received unnecessary pelvic and breast exams from a sex offender, a noose was left on the desk of a minority employee by a co-worker, and a nurse who murdered a veteran harassed the family of the deceased to get them to admit guilt for the death.
• The care at more centers is getting worse and some VA health care providers have lost their medical licenses, and the VA is hiding this information from patients.
• Delays exist for more than just doctors’ appointments—disability claims, construction, urgent care, and registries are also slow or behind schedule.
• Despite a nursing shortage, many VA nurses spend their days conducting union activities to advocate for better conditions for themselves rather than veterans.

VA MADE WAITING LISTS WORSE.

• As waiting lines were growing, the VA expanded eligibility in 2009 to those who already had insurance without any service related injuries, making the delays longer.
• Despite having the authority to do so, the VA was reluctant to let vets off the waiting lists by freeing them go to doctors outside of its system while sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars intended for health care that went unspent year to year.
• VA doctors are seeing far fewer patients than private doctors and some even leave work early.

VA EMPLOYEES BEHAVE AS IF THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW.

• Criminal activity at the department is pervasive, including drug dealing, theft, and even murder. A VA police chief even conspired to kidnap, rape and murder women and children.
• Many VA doctors and staff are overpaid and underworked, some are paid not to work and more and more employees are not even showing up for work.

THE VA WASTES AND MISMANAGES BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

• The report identifies $20 billion in waste and mismanagement that could have been better spent providing health care to veterans.
• The federal government has paid out $845 million for VA medical malpractice since 2001.
• Most VA construction projects are over budget and behind schedule, inflating costs by billions of dollars.

 

[Lucille]

Dear US Soldiers And Veterans: Avoid The Following Hospitals Like The Plague
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-29/dear-us-veterans-avoid-following-hospitals-plague

The VA scandal was just the beginning.

According to Internal documents obtained by New York Times, US military healthcare is "a system in which scrutiny is sporadic and avoidable errors are chronic." As the NYT reports In Military Care, a Pattern of Errors but Not Scrutiny, "the military system has consistently had higher than expected rates of harm and complications in two central parts of its business — maternity care and surgery."

Among the findings:

• More than 50,000 babies are born at military hospitals each year, and they are twice as likely to be injured during delivery as newborns nationwide, the most recent statistics show. And their mothers were more likely to hemorrhage after childbirth than mothers at civilian hospitals, according to a 2012 analysis conducted for the Pentagon.
• In surgery, half of the system’s 16 largest hospitals had higher than expected rates of complications over a recent 12-month period, the American College of Surgeons found last year. Four of the busiest hospitals have performed poorly on that metric year after year.

As the NYT observes, "based on Pentagon studies, court records, analyses of thousands of pages of data, and interviews with current and former military health officials and workers, indicates that the military lags behind many civilian hospital systems in protecting patients from harm. The reasons, military doctors and nurses said, are rooted in a compartmentalized system of leadership, a culture of interservice secrecy and an overall failure to make patient safety a top priority."

One would think that when caring for the nation's veterans, the healthcare system - whose very existence one can say is a direct function of the US military's intervention around the globe - would pay particular attention. One would be wrong: the military’s reports show a steady stream of the sort of mistakes that patient-safety programs are designed to prevent.

The most common errors are strikingly prosaic — the unread file, the unheeded distress call, the doctor on one floor not talking to the doctor on another. But there are also these, sprinkled through the Pentagon’s 2011 and 2012 patient-safety reports:

• A viable fetus died after a surgeon operated on the wrong part of the mother’s body.
• A 41-year-old woman’s healthy thyroid gland was removed because someone else’s biopsy result had been recorded on her chart.
• A 54-year-old retired officer suffered acute kidney failure and permanent hearing loss after an incorrect dose of chemotherapy.
• In 2011, 50 unexpected deaths were identified but only 25 analyses submitted.
• The next year, the center was informed of 110 deaths but received only 44 root-cause analyses.
• In 2013, the report documented 79 deaths and 31 root-cause analyses.

The NYT slams a system rife with abuse: "The patient-safety system is broken," Dr. Mary Lopez, a former staff officer for health policy and services under the Army surgeon general, said in an interview.

“It has no teeth,” she added. “Reports are submitted, but patient-safety offices have no authority. People rarely talk to each other. It’s ‘I have my territory, and nobody is going to encroach on my territory.’ ”

In an internal report in 2011, the Pentagon’s patient-safety analysts offered this succinct conclusion about military health care: “Harm rate — unknown.”

In short, America's veterans and military forces: proud recipients of the worst health care America has to offer.

We sincerely urge US veterans to avoid the following military hospitals like the plague.

 

[bunklocoempire]

No worries, Mr. Proctor and Gamble CEO to the rescue. What could possibly go wrong-er?

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-nominate-former-p-g-ceo-bob-mcdonald-200500118.html

 

[Suzanimal]

Just no words...

VA Offers Doctor's Appointment To Veteran 2 Years After He Died

ACTON, Mass. (AP) — The Veterans Affairs Department is apologizing to a Massachusetts woman for offering an appointment to her husband almost two years after he died.

Suzanne Chase, of Acton, tells WBZ-TV her Vietnam veteran husband, Doug, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011.

In 2012, she tried to move his medical care to the VA hospital in Bedford. They waited four months and never heard anything. He died in August 2012.

Suzanne Chase says two weeks ago she got a letter addressed to her husband, saying he could call to make an appointment.

She says the VA had to know her husband was dead because she applied for funeral benefits and was denied.

The department said in a statement: "We regret any distress our actions caused to the veteran's widow and family."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/...fter-death_n_5548330.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

 

[Lucille]

Shocker. Throwing money at the VA doesn't change their behavior.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/09/brickbat-quality-care

A man, who wasn't identified by local media, died after he collapsed in the Albuquerque Veterans Affairs hospital cafeteria and had to wait 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. The cafeteria is just 500 yards from the hospital's emergency room, which is where the ambulance took him. Officials say hospital staff followed procedures when they called 911 rather than take the man to the ER themselves.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/veteran-dies-waiting-for-ambulance-in-va-hospital-in-new-mexico/

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veterans Affairs hospital cafeteria, 500 yards from the emergency room, died after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance, officials confirmed Thursday.

Officials at the hospital said it took a half an hour for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five minute walk.

VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived.

She says staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday. "Our policy is under expedited review," Brown said.

 

[Lucille]

"May have?" Obama hates all whistleblowers, so the smart money's on he did.

VA whistleblower: Retaliation followed after telling White House about abuses
hxxp://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/09/va-whistleblower-retaliation-followed-after-telling-white-house-about-abuses/

Did the White House leak whistleblower identities during its investigation of abuses at the VA? Last night, one such whistleblower testified to Congress about what happened after he sent information to White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors, and it wasn’t pretty. Scott Davis got challenged by his manager, had his work record altered, and got kicked out of his assignment and eventually placed on involuntary leave — and he’s not alone in suffering retaliation

“The harassment I’ve experienced at the HEC from top levels of management include: my whistleblower complaint to White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors was leaked to my manager … who stated in writing that she was contacting me … My employment records were illegally altered … I was illegally placed on a permanent work detail … I was placed on involuntary administrative leave, curiously, at the same time … Unfortunately, my experience is not unique at VA. Darren and Eileen Owens who work at the Atlanta VA medical center have experienced the same retaliation for reporting medical errors and patient neglect as well as misconduct by senior VA police officials.

“Our local 518 union president … is routinely harassed as a direct consequence of assisting me and other disabled federal employees with retaliatory action by members of management.”

How exactly did Davis’ name get from Nabors’ office to his manager? Congress had better take a close look at that leak, because it strongly suggests that the White House may have interfered with the investigation rather than tried to solve the problems at the VA. That could be a case of incompetence, or it could be something else entirely — but either way, Congress needs to hold the White House accountable for it, even if that only means public exposure for now.

ABC calls whistleblower retaliation the “VA’s newest scandal,” and the cases are rising after the exposure of wait-list fraud two months ago:

The Veterans Affairs scandal is taking a new turn as a special counsel is receiving a growing number of complaints from employees that the agency retaliated against them for attempting to expose problems.

Carolyn Lerner, special counsel with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee Tuesday night that her office is investigating 67 cases of alleged retaliation against whistleblowers at the VA.

“The number increases daily,” Lerner said, adding that since June 1, her office has received 25 new complaints of retaliations from employees claiming they were whistleblowers.

Scott Davis wasn’t alone among whistleblowers who suffered retaliation at the hearing, either:

Among the other witnesses at the hearing was Christian Head, a physician and quality-assurance official for the VA’s Los Angeles health system, who said one of his bosses used an embarrassing slideshow presentation to punish him for aiding an investigation of her alleged time-card abuses. He said the supervisor is still serving in the same capacity for the VA, even though an inspector general recommended that she be removed.

Head held up a copy of one slide that his supervisor showed at the event. It contained a picture of him on his phone, and it said: “If all else fails, he reports you to the inspector general at the VA.”

“In front of 300 individuals, I was labeled a rat,” the physician said. “I was labeled the person who ratted out this person.”

Another offered a warning to doctors — don’t fill out an employment application at the VA:

Katherine Mitchell, who works at the Phoenix VA, told the committee that the agency has intimidated any employee who raises information that could be detrimental to the agency, discouraging new doctors from considering the VA for employment. “Just because someone has an MD doesn’t mean they have ethics,” Mitchell said. “I wouldn’t recommend that people get a job at the VA as physician until there are changes.”

The newest scandal may be retaliation, but it’s now looking like the White House isn’t just a passive (and incompetent) player in the scandal.

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

"May have?" Obama hates all whistleblowers, so the smart money's on he did.

VA whistleblower: Retaliation followed after telling White House about abuses
hxxp://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/09/va-whistleblower-retaliation-followed-after-telling-white-house-about-abuses/

Yeah, the damn propaganda WHITE HOUSE turned around and threw the whistle-blower right under the bus of his boss... how criminal of the LIAR and CHIEF.

I wonder what Bathhouse Barry is attempting to hide... he's only making it all much worse. Betcha it's a deflection from Benghazi CIA terrorist arming and training, IRS targeting innocent civilians, IRS discrimination, droning/killing round the world, rigged racketeering stock markets, gun running Fast and Furious.... frigin covering-up and hiding everything. But Obama and company don't give a shit, he's and the WH gang are lame ducks. The only thing he's putting effort into, is attempting to save some Liberal-Progressive-Marxist politician 2014 and 2016 elections through fundraisers. It amazes me how ignorant and/or brainwashed liberal-progressives stand when Obama travels to wealthy Lake Forest, Il(northern Chicago) for another elitist fundraiser @ JP Morgan's Jamie Diamond's former castle. Clueless American morons...

 

[Occam's Banana]

A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veterans Affairs hospital cafeteria, 500 yards from the emergency room, died after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance [... It] took a half an hour for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five minute walk. [... Staff] followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday. "Our policy is under expedited review," Brown said.

[emphasis added - OB]

SMH @ "expedited" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk