VA official doesn’t know whether it’s appropriate to fire people who commit wait-list fraud
posted at 2:01 pm on May 15, 2014 by Ed Morrissey
Erick Shinseki may have lucked out in today’s hearing on wait-list fraud at the VA, thanks to a deputy who stuck his foot in his mouth during a discussion about disciplinary action. When Sen. Johnny Isaakson (RT-GA) pressed VA Undersecretary of Health Robert Petzel for an answer on whether manipulating the scheduling system to commit wait-list fraud — as alleged at seven VA facilities so far — would be a firing offense, the answer appears to be It depends:
ISAAKSON: What do you do if you uncover one? Surely you’ve uncovered one. What do you do to hold them accountable?
PETZEL: The individuals are, as you mentioned, held accountable. I can’t give you an example specifically, but if someone were found to be manipulating inappropriately the scheduling system, they would be disciplined.
ISAAKSON: Would that — would they lose their job?
PETZEL: I don’t know whether that’s the appropriate level of punishment or not.
This prompts a couple of questions, especially given the context of the 40 veterans in Phoenix who died waiting for medical care while officials falsified records and destroyed evidence. First, what constitutes an appropriate manipulation of the scheduling system? Second, if facilities are evaluated based on wait list times and the employees are falsifying the records of wait list times, doesn’t that demonstrate an overt motive to cover up bad performance? And third, if this isn’t a firing offense — especially with dozens of veterans dying while being denied treatment — what exactly does constitute a firing offense at the VA?
Shinseki also catches a break from Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN), who blames “cultural issues” of the VA and says Shinseki should stay:
A trio of Republican senators have called for Shinseki’s resignation amid reports that veterans were denied healthcare services. But Indiana Republican Sen. Dan Coats cautioned that the VA chief oversees a dysfunctional organization: “Just by firing the coach doesn’t solve the problem … I want to take a much broader look than just simply satisfying people [to] say, ‘Oh we fired the top guy and now everything is going to be fine.”
Coats, a veteran, added that “there’s cultural problems that go way down deep in the VA system.”
No doubt that there are cultural issues at the VA, and that firing Shinseki won’t solve the problem on its own. But Shinseki has been there for more than five years. Clearly the fact that the VA is “so dysfunctional” has escaped Shinseki and/or goes beyond his capacity to address it. Why would anyone think that the man who spent five years not addressing the culture of incompetence and cover-up should stick around now that it’s been exposed?
Source from: hotair
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