CanwemakeeveryhospitalaVAhospital?

Can we make every hospital a VA hospital?

posted at 1:01 pm on June 14, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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On Friday I went on Twitter and tossed out what seemed like a fanciful if not terribly practical idea.

New plan. Move all members of Congress onto VA healthcare. No private care options.

— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) June 13, 2014

Well, we may not be able to do that, but the GOP has already cooked up a plan which is nearly as good. The Prince of Twitter, Andrew Malcolm, brings us this weekend’s GOP message from Tom Coburn.

In some locations, like Boston and Pittsburgh, VA care is top notch. At others, such as at Phoenix, it is very sub-par.

High death rates and complication rates are occurring at more and more VA centers. And this information is not being shared with our veterans.

I never served in the military, but like all Americans, I have the wonderful benefit of living in a great country because of those who put on our uniform.

It is unacceptable that the men and women who bravely fought for our freedom are losing their lives, not at the hands of terrorists or enemy combatants, but from neglect by the very government agency established to take care of them…

There’s a simple cure to achieve these goals: Make every hospital a VA hospital.

VA hospitals serve an important and unique role, but veterans should be allowed to choose where, when and from whom they receive treatment.

If a VA center is inconveniently located, veterans should be free to choose another doctor.

This week the Senate approved a bipartisan bill to empower veterans with the freedom they deserve.

Under this plan, veterans living over 40 miles away from VA clinic would be able to receive their care somewhere closer if they so choose to do so. Those who cannot receive a timely VA appointment would automatically have the option to see another doctor outside of the VA.

Coburn goes on to list a number of other facets of the bill which would hold VA employees accountable for their actions (or lack thereof) and provide more oversight. Those are all important ideas, of course, but the number one priority still has to be getting veterans in to see a doctor now… not next year. And while my plan – to force members of Congress to only get appointments and help at VA hospitals through the same application and waiting channel as veterans – might spur them to quicker action, it doesn’t provide a solution. Maybe this will. But how do you handle the payment end of it?

I’m not sure how practical it would be, but could the veterans be issued some form of Medicare / Medicaid ID card which would allow them to go to any doctor or hospital and have their bill processed in such a way that the VA reimburses the other agencies for the incurred charge? I suppose I’m rather naive about the entire system, but it doesn’t really sound like it should be all that difficult to do that. If they are too far from a good VA center or if the wait time is too long, let them go to whoever they can find locally and get the ball rolling. We manage to foot the bill for tens of millions of people seeking medical care every day in this country. Is it so crazy to think that a few strokes of the pen could roll our wounded warriors into the same tent?

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Tags: Tom Coburn, VA scandal, veterans affairs

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Sorry,Mr.President.Youdon’tgetcreditfor

Sorry, Mr. President. You don’t get credit for Shinseki resigning

posted at 10:01 am on May 31, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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Ed covered the breaking news yesterday, as the compassionate Feeler in Chief accepted the resignation of embattled VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki with considerable regret. But even as I read Ed’s coverage of the breaking news, one point in particular stood out to me.

“We’ve got to deal with Congress,” Obama said to explain that Shinseki would likely be distracted by Congressional demands for his resignation. This is the same Congress that increased the VA budget by 78% over the past six budget cycles. Shinseki was also “offended” that bad news didn’t get to him fast enough, Obama said, and used the passive voice to explain that “the structures didn’t exist” to deliver it. Er, Shinseki was in charge for more than five years. Whose fault was that?

Yes.. whose fault was that, exactly? Ed’s comments brought into focus one of the key quotes from Obama’s remarks. (Emphasis mine)

Speaking after a meeting with Shinseki at the White House, Obama said Shinseki had offered him his resignation.

“With considerable regret, I accepted,” Obama said. “We don’t have time for distractions,” he added. “We need to fix the problem.”

More than anything, this reminded me of the opposite of the West Wing episode, “Here Today” when Toby, having been caught betraying the nation, comes to offer his resignation to the president.

TOBY: Sir, I’ve drawn up a letter of resignation.

BARTLET: What is that, the third one? Rip it up.

TOBY: Sir?

BARTLET: I can’t accept your resignation. I have to fire you. For cause.

The one thing that would have improved that scene is if Bartlet had said, “Your ass is fired.”

The President is not without fault in all of this mess because, much like a ship at sea, the Captain is always responsible if they slam into an iceberg whether he’s on the bridge at the time or not. But the direct line of fault lies with Shinseki. Not during his first few months in office, mind you, because you’ve got to let a guy (or gal) get their feet under the table before they can really dig in. But after this much time, the period of forgiveness for not finding and fixing obscene, major problems has long since passed. And if Barack Obama wanted to have any credibility in cleaning up this mess he would not only be actively working on a long term fix for the problem, but he would have taken a page from Bartlet’s book and refused this resignation. He would have fired him in a very public fashion, and well before this.

No, President Obama. You get no credit for this. You allowed yet another villain in this tragic play to slither off into retirement, much as you did with Lois Lerner. And if you only accept their resignation with regret, then that means you wish they were still there. And it only logically follows that if you accept them and wish they hadn’t left, then you accept the full responsibility for the actions of your minions. You didn’t have the spine to put the culpible up against the wall, so now you can stand there in their place. So for the VA scandal, you can – as the cops in The Wire were fond of saying – eat the whole meal yourself.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Eric Shinseki, veterans affairs

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Report: $8.8 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses at seven accused VA facilities since 2011

Report:$8.8millionintaxpayer-fundedbonusesatseven

Carney:Obama?Detached?Suchasilly“Republicanmeme.”

Carney: Obama? Detached? Such a silly “Republican meme.”

posted at 6:41 pm on May 21, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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Granted, I’m sure it is challenging for a president to stay personally apprised of the wealth of mismanagement, incompetence, and downright corruption that takes place in the massive machine we now have for a federal bureaucracy, a machine that President Obama didn’t create all on his own — but… if one of your basic premises for governing is that we should be expanding and empowering that bureaucracy further and further, you should perhaps make just a bit more of an effort with the accountability on, oh, I don’t know — your crowning legislative achievement. Or maybe by not sending signals to government employees everywhere that disastrous ineptitude and/or fraud will basically be met with a shrug of the executive’s shoulders, on both the Veterans’ Affairs fiasco and other actually deadly scandals. Via RCP:

REPORTER: What about this criticism of his management style? Is he too detached from some of the nuts and bolts of running the government, running an administration –

JAY CARNEY: I know that’s a Republican meme, and –

REPORTER: — [inaudible] catching him off guard. The healthcare website, now this.

CARNEY: I think that if you look at how the president handles a challenge like the website and handles this challenge, he responds by demanding action, demanding that Americans who are counting on benefits and services — whether it is a functioning website or benefits through the VA — that they are taken care of. And you saw that with the efforts that were undertaken to fix the website and you’ve seen that with the efforts that are already underway to investigate the problems and allegations that have arisen here with regards to the waiting times for appointments at facilities around the country. And he expects results and he holds people accountable. And when we see whether or not some of these allegations prove to be true, he will insist that misconduct, mismanagement will be met with consequences.

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Tags: Barack Obama, big government, Jay Carney, Obama administration, veterans affairs

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Video:Obamaroutinelyshocked,angeredbythingshappening

Video: Obama routinely shocked, angered by things happening within his own administration

posted at 12:01 pm on May 20, 2014 by Guy Benson

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In case you missed it in last night’s QOTD, the RNC plucks some low-hanging fruit:

This White House’s “we found out on the news” formulation has become such predictable boilerplate that Allahpundit didn’t even have to spell it out in his earlier headline, and the “anger” charade is its inevitable counterpart.  Nobody is madder — “madder than hell” in this case — than the president, you guys.  But as MKH noted last week, the president’s ostentatious fury generally recedes into “we can’t comment on an ongoing investigation” territory, followed by “only wing-nuts are still talking about this phony scandal — which, by the way, happened a long time ago, brah.”  ABC News’ Jonathan Karl pressed Jay Carney about the Robert Petzel kabuki “resignation” yesterday, which Carney deflected by hiding behind a statement from the American Legion:

Karl specifically asked Carney not to invoke the American Legion in his answer (he’d already done so several times), but the former unbiased journalist did so anyway and decided to “leave it at that.”  Punchline: Here.  Oh, and for a fun fact about Petzel’s nominated replacement, click through.  I wrote an analysis for Townhall explaining why the president’s Renault routine is uniquely problematic for the White House in this instance:

The Washington Times reports that Obama’s 2008 transition team was alerted to concerns about this exact practice years ago, which presents both a headache and an opportunity for the Obama spin team. On one hand, they can Blame Bush — another staple of their crisis management handbook. On the other hand, the fraudulent scheme appears to have metastasized on O’s watch…after he made a big deal out of improving conditions at the VA as a candidate. It was a virtuosic political play at the time, of course. Obama could run against the Bush-tied GOP for starting a war that had grown highly unpopular, while twisting the knife by attacking the outgoing administration for failing to “do right by our veterans.” The unsubtle message: These Republican ‘chicken hawk’ cowboys sent our boys abroad to die in an ill-advised war of choice, then didn’t even have the decency to make sure the maimed were taken care of back home. An Obama administration would be different. No more foolish foreign entanglements that fail to advance American national security interests, plus a new emphasis on restoring our sacred commitment to the men and women who’ve worn the uniform once they’ve returned from the battlefield. That’s a winning message, perfectly suited for the country’s mood. Neither promise has been kept, alas, the latter one especially. If Obama cares as much about fixing the VA’s dysfunction as he’s claimed, his own due diligence would render the “I didn’t know” excuse moot. The other option is that the well-being of our wounded and sick veterans wasn’t quite the priority he wanted us to believe it was. Either choice is ugly.

The media swears that this is the scandal, finally, that will really hurt the administration.  They’re all over it.  But they were “all over” previous scandals, too, before they lost interest and eventually started playing defense for the administration.  Will (at least) dozens of dead veterans hold the press’ attention long enough to leave a lasting mark?  We’ll see, but in the meantime, please excuse my skepticism.  I’ll leave you with two tweets.  You’ve already seen the first one, circa Obama’s first presidential campaign. Four years later, more promises:

“When 400,000 veterans are stuck on a waiting list for claims, we need a new sense of urgency,” said Sen Obama in 07: http://t.co/HlayjGUWsd

— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) May 19, 2014

Obama to VFW in July 2012: “The VA will work harder… so new veterans aren’t just piled on to the backlog.” http://t.co/jQnCAyogD2

— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) May 19, 2014

It’s almost as if Team Obama’s pressing and solemn commitment to our veterans becomes somewhat less pressing and solemn after election season passes, at which point numerous recommendations, red flags and overt failures go unnoticed or un-addressed. Without his knowledge, natch.  Weird.

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Tags: Barack Obama, scandal, veterans affairs

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Report: Obama transition team was warned about unreliable wait times at VA in 2008

Report:Obamatransitionteamwaswarnedaboutunreliable