Lying, misdirection and cover-ups: What does it take to get fired at the VA?

After lying to members of Congress, VA caught hiding the truth AGAIN.

A report late last week said the Department of Veterans Affairs purposefully withheld information from the country’s largest veterans’ group about how many veterans were still waiting for a decision about their eligibility for VA health care.

The American Legion  asked the VA’s national Health Eligibility Center in 2013 point blank how many veterans were waiting on the VA for an eligibility decision.  They refused to answer.

It seems that the pattern for the Obama administration is to forget that there is an email thread of their cover-up.

 

In an email to staff obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Deputy chief business officer Lynne Harbin wrote,

“I don’t think I want to go into the total number of pending records and will try to skirt the issue, should they try to raise it.”

It seems that the VA firing policy is like those for reporters for the weather:  No matter how many times they get something wrong, they still keep there jobs.  But at least they are considering firing somebody.

For the last few weeks, the VA has said it is considering firing four senior VA officials. But since then, two have retired, as the VA has created a process not mandated by Congress to give officials the option of retiring instead of being thrown out.)

We may actually have the number, as it appears that as many as 896,000 veterans health applications were stuck in an administrative limbo without an enrollment decision from the VA. Veterans can’t use a VA medical care until they have been approved for eligibility.

Of the almost 900,000 neglected veterans, as many as 47,786 of veterans in the backlog were deceased as of 2012, raising the very real probability that some veterans died before they could access care.

VA officials posted information to a blog on the VA’s official website — under the heading “VA Fact” — that claimed the backlog contained only 216,736 applications, a quarter of what it had reported to Congress the previous month.

Moral of the story: Don’t believe any numbers from the Obama administration.

 

Copy */
Back to top button