The Patriot Post® · Coburn Discovers VA Problems Worse Than Thought
We’ve said it before: If you think the Veterans Affairs health care system is bad, wait until the government gets its hands fully into the health care system with ObamaCare. A study conducted by the office of Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) shows how far the VA health system has strayed from its mission. In short, it shows a bureaucracy out of control.
“The Administration and Congress have failed to ensure our nation is living up to the promises we have made to our veterans,” Dr. Coburn said in a press release. “While it is good that Congress feels a sense of urgency we are at this point because Congress has ignored or glossed over too many similar warnings in the past. Our sense of urgency should come from the scope of the problem, not our proximity to an election.”
Among some of the findings, Coburn’s report shows:
More than 1,000 veterans died because of VA hospital misconduct over a period of 10 years – not just the 40 vets who languished on the secret waiting list in Phoenix.
For its misconduct, the VA paid $845 million over the decade in malpractice and wrongful death claims. About a quarter of that amount went to families whose beloved veterans died because of the VA. “$36 million was used to settle 167 claims in which the words ‘delay in treatment’ were used to describe the alleged malpractice,” the report said.
At least one VA doctor sexually abused female patents. A male neurologist gave five women “breast examinations.” It took the VA two years to fire the man, who is now a registered sex offender.
Another VA employee sold cocaine and ecstasy to patients who were undergoing treatment for substance abuse. For that act, the 28-year-old in Massachusetts basically got a slap on the wrist: three months at a halfway house, another three months of home confinement, followed by three years of probation.
Meanwhile, the VA isn’t running out of money, spending $489 million on “office makeovers” and curtains over four-and-a-half years. In Puerto Rico alone, the VA spent $1.8 million on office furniture. Nationwide, the VA spent $10.7 million on curtains and draperies.
The Government Accountability Office first noted the problem of wait times in May 2000 and the VA needed better information to diagnose the disease, even before the events that propelled the U.S. into a full on war against terror. The situation festered as veterans from the Vietnam War aged and the newest generation of vets returned form the Middle East with IED injuries and PTSD.
In an institution so large, of course people spoke out – about the wait times and about other abuses and shortcomings. According to The New York Times, Dr. Ram Chaturvedi spoke out about “shoddy patient care” at the Dallas VA hospital in 2008. In one instance, a nurse marked the wrong kidney for a procedure, while in another case, the wrong patient was brought to the operating table. Chaturvedi’s boss told him to “let some things slide,” but he continued to complain and he was fired in 2010.
Chaturvedi’s story is one of many where the VA silenced whistleblowers. According to Coburn’s report, Lisa Lee received a suspension of two weeks without pay because she didn’t go along with the wait time procedure at the hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. After the Office of Special Council, a federal organization that protects whistleblowers, caught wind of the story, it began investigating 37 instances where the VA muzzled employees who dared speak.
Meanwhile, VA executives just kept patting themselves on the back. Last year, the bureaucracy gave itself $2.8 million as “performance awards” to executives. If you asked the executives, nothing was less than “fully satisfactory,” just like every single one of the executive’s performance ratings from 2010 to 2013. Yet veterans waited and some endured care that would be considered criminal at a veterinary clinic.
In a USA Today op-ed, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds describes American writer Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy: “In every organization there are two kinds of people: those committed to the mission of the organization, and those committed to the organization itself. While the mission-committed people pursue the mission, the organization-committed people take over the organization. Then the mission-committed people tend to become discouraged and leave. As a result, the strongest priority of most bureaucracies is the welfare of the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats it employs, not whatever the bureaucracy is actually supposed to be doing.”
The problem with the VA is the problem with ObamaCare and any other government monolith: It’s a bureaucracy. This malpractice is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.