By Arnold Ahlert On June 26, 2014
A devastating oversight report from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) reveals that the combination of malpractice and bureaucratic ineptitude infesting the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is far deadlier than previously acknowledged. “Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of VA malfeasance, and the VA has paid out nearly $1 billion to veterans and their families for its medical malpractice,” the report states.
The death total dwarfs the 23 fatalities for which the VA has taken responsibility. Coburn, a physician and three-time cancer survivor, notes the problems at VA facilities go “far deeper” than the phony scheduling schemes that brought this scandal to the national stage. “The waiting list cover-ups and uneven care are reflective of a much larger culture within the VA, where administrators manipulate both data and employees to give an appearance that all is well,” the report reveals.
According to Coburn, that culture is one in which veterans “are not always a priority.” Much of that is attributable to the reality that even as the VA suffers from a shortage of healthcare providers, VA nurses are paid to perform union duties and doctors are allowed to leave work early rather than care for patients. The report further explains that good employees who try to bring attention to the Department’s shortcomings “are punished, bullied, put on ‘bad boy’ lists, and transferred to other locations.”
The report also blows away the VA’s fallback excuse, namely that it suffers from a lack of funding. Coburn notes that spending has increased rapidly in recents years, an assertion backed up by federal budget figures. Inflation-adjusted federal spending shows that the VA budget has increased 92.2 percent over the last decade, skyrocketing from $73.3 billion in FY2003 to $140.9 billion last year, measured in constant 2014 dollars. According to Military.com the VA spends more in inflation-adjusted dollars than it did following WWII and the Vietnam war, when millions of troops were returning home from the battlefield.
Coburn reveals that as much as $20 billion of that spending over the last dozen years has been on “junkets, generous salaries, bonuses, and office renovations for its employees,” even as the Department ends every year with billions in unspent funds. He further notes that most of the construction projects undertaken by the VA are over budget and behind schedule. And even when state-of-the-art facilities are finally constructed, the VA is unable to staff them with a sufficient number of doctors. This reality has forced them to spend millions of dollars sending veterans to clinics in other cities and states, wasting veterans’ time and taxpayers’ money.
Some of the details of patient care illuminated by the report are truly disturbing. One Navy veteran, forced to wait months
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