RE: VA Scandal Rocks Obama Administration
May 26, 2014 at 12:18 pm
(This post was last modified: May 26, 2014 at 12:38 pm by Creed of Heresy.)
(May 25, 2014 at 9:08 am)Darth Wrote:(May 24, 2014 at 11:19 am)Raeven Wrote: In the black-and-white world of the reflexive Republican/Libertarian, all problems are this, or they are that. Their inability to see and appreciate the complexity in any issue is the basic problem. As liberals, we're able to see those shades of gray -- long-term, systemic problems, not attributable to just this Administration and/or this Congress, problems with understaffing and in some cases, underfunding... but to guys like AF, it's this, or it's that. So if he can't process his way through all these multiple, complicated causes, it must be OBAMA'S FAULT. Because what else, yeah?
I love how you bemoan the black and white worldview of (people of enemy political persuasion) while stating that (people of my political persuasion) can see shades of grey, and in so doing reveal your own black-and-white thinking of the world and how you believe people of various political persuasions think. It's called irony, and you sir are a fuckwit.
Quote: The VA IS mismanaged. Why is that? Well, the only thing I can rationally think of is the financial issues, because the VA wasn't struggling nearly so much until the republicans started nixing legislation for funding allocations to them.
And the idea that a lack of funds is somehow contributing to the problem of mismanagement is beyond ludicrous. If anything the mismanagement is contributing to any lack of funds. After all, if they reported that everything was a-ok, why would they then get more funds to play with?
Either way, the blame lies with those who lied, and those who let them get away with it.
This is both for you and AT.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/va-hosp...ks-n101781
Quote:“This was basically an elaborate scheme to cover up patient wait times, and cover up patients that we didn’t have providers for,” said Foote. “The main problem was, we had a huge demand and we had a relatively limited supply of service. And rather than admit to the problem, they were just covering it up.”
Wonder why that is.
Well, let's look at the blocked funding thing again, shall we? Cash-strapped agency. Lots of veterans are republicans. Republican congress that is on a spree of cutting anything and everything they possibly can, claiming it's to trim the national deficit...when an increase of taxes on those who are really not struggling financially at all [I hate being a broken record, but, just saying...1% of the country holding 40% of its overall wealth...] could do far, far more at alleviating it than cutting programs that are vital to this nation's social health. No offense to veterans, but let's face it, soldiers don't typically join up because they're extremely intelligent. They have other qualities to make up for this, of course; bravery, balls, and beastly bad-assness. But politically informed? Not so much. The VA goes "we're unable to provide the necessary care," the republicans go "YOU'RE NOT EFFICIENT ENOUGH. CUT THE NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES, THAT'LL GIVE YOU MORE RESOURCES!" Why do I think this would happen?
*figuratively gestures at the legislation thing* And this was before the supposed whistle-blowing.
Quote:Dr. Katherine Mitchell, who still works for the Phoenix VA, alleges that a fellow employee told her the VA began destroying some of those paper records -- so-called "secret" appointment records -- in the days before the VA’s Inspector General began investigating last month. She says she has direct knowledge that VA administrators had attempted to alter another electronic data list of appointment requests.
"A friend of a friend told me they're destroying these paper records. ... I have direct knowledge of this bad thing happening ..."
So naturally, testimonials can be trusted. We have lots of those. No evidence, though. At least Snowden provided documents up the wazoo. These guys? Where the fuck is the evidence? Would it really have been so hard for this supposed whisteblower to grab a few of these documents to show to the public before going public with it??
Quote:An email from a VA staffer in Cheyenne, Wyo., that was obtained by NBC News seems to describe the same practice. On June 19, 2013, the staffer, a coordinator, appears to be advising scheduling clerks how to make the desired date match the actually available date, thus eliminating wait time and getting off what the nurse calls “the bad boy list.”
“So here is how I handle it. Patient comes to me and says I want to see Dr. Smith. I pull the patient up in appointment management and see Dr. Smith (sic) appointments. I see that Dr. Smith’s first open visit is August 15th. So I say Dr. Smith’s first available is August 15th, when would you like to be seen? Patient says August 15th. I then back out of that screen, and go back in with desired date of August 15 and book the patient. “
“Yes, it is gaming the system a bit. But you have to know the rules of the game you are playing.”
So apparently this staffing coordinator was trying to work to ensure that wait times weren't showing up so much because they were directly booking the appointments based on availability, rather than doing it on a per-availability basis. Basically, they're not putting them on the wait list. They're just giving them the actual dates during the call, rather than the waiting list, wherein the patients are not booked, but are rather placed in a queue for the appointments to be booked. The "bad boy list" thing is what I mentioned earlier; a facility showing poor performance, even if it's not their fault, will be penalized.
Now, I also read through this: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/ho...va-firings
Stripping away the biased comments and just reading the article's meat, yeah, I can see there's a serious problem...regarding bonus-protection. Now, my stance on that, there? Bonuses are bullshit. You should be paid to do the job you're supposed to do and that's it. There shouldn't be a bonus paid for doing it right; that's supposed to be expected of you to earn what they're paying you. "Incentives" only lead to shit like this, everywhere, all the damn time.
There's also this: http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/26/cn...a-scandal/
I'm not surprised the democrats are being quiet right now, and in the overarching scheme of things, I'm not surprised Obama isn't acting yet. The facilities are still under investigation, and Obama doesn't want to fire the secretary in charge because if he does and it turns out the incidents were isolated, then the secretary was unaware of a select few as opposed to a much larger problem that he should have caught, which would mean having to hire a new secretary that he has less experience with, who would have to be brought up to date on everything regarding the VA, and as we all know, bureaucracy is a hell of a thing to get a grasp on. You fire the guy who already knows the bureaucracy when he was simply unaware of a few problems. Then you have to find someone else, then you have to go through the arduous task of getting them fully in touch with everything, and you have to wait for them to catch up on everything going on afterwards. It's a tedious process, and it causes problems in the meantime because until the administrator is brought up to speed, any issues that arise meantime have to be put on hold, so then there's a backlog to catch up with.
Obviously, the congress doesn't care, either side of the aisle, and that's not surprising; their jobs are on the line with the elections coming up and they have to show they're acting, and the issue of bureaucratic sluggishness is simply not their problem. However, for the senate, it is, because they DO have to deal with the administrators on a more direct level, especially the chairmen and members of the committees that deal with that kind of thing.
On top of this, Shinseki is handling this as he should. He's got the Inspector General and Criminal Inspector Generals doing a thorough review of all the facilities after he was made aware of the problem. There's no evidence to suggest he was aware of the problem and was simply not doing anything. He's not being inactive; he's being very active in addressing the issue, in fact, hence why Obama isn't acting; the guy already is. If he had delayed in acting upon being informed of the problem, then he probably would've been fired on the spot.
If nobody informs you of a problem, you must ask yourself, how are you supposed to address it? People are basically calling for the guy to step down or be fired because nobody was telling him there was a problem to begin with. These whistleblowers, for their part, sure seemed to take their fucking time, and I'm not calling this a conspiracy or anything, but it's making me wonder why on earth, if this was happening for two years, nobody said anything until we're months away from the elections. They probably had their reasons, though, so I'm not gonna call foul or anything there, and correlation doesn't equal causation, so unless something pops up to suggest there was a stinker there, I'm gonna let it slide...though I'm going to state that the people who were aware of the problem should have acted much, much sooner. Maybe they were worried about their jobs, but at least one of these whistleblowers is still working, and the others haven't said they were fired for bringing the nation's attention to the issue.
Securing more funding for the VA, to go back to what I was talking about, would mean that these resource-strapped facilities wouldn't have had to game the system to begin with, because they could have more doctors and facilities to provide care. The bonuses, however, are not as destructive to the VA's resource pool as you, Darth, imply. $8.8 million is a lot of money for an individual, but in an agency that receives $157.2 billion a year, that's pocket change. It isn't helping, obviously, and the fact these guys collected bonuses while hiding the problems is heinous, but it's negligible all the same in the broad scheme of things regarding financial resources. Still should (and will) be punished, though.
So, in conclusion, the administration was not aware of the problem because nobody brought it up until now. They're aware of the problem and they're investigating the extent of it, and they're not acting rashly or prematurely until they have all the information. The inspector generals report to both the secretary and the administration, so if it turns up there's shenanigans afoot, the administration will know, the public will know, and Shinseki will be out on his ass. Obama won't keep him around because, in practical regards, having to bring someone up to speed on things and having someone around who is incompetent are two different matters; one is a temporary thing, one is a thing that will continue to cause problems.
It's another day in DC, basically. We'll see the extent of it soon enough. I'm not calling out the administration for inactivity, because I can understand why they're not acting against Shinseki yet.
Bet your ass that if it turns out this thing was widespread and the result of gross incompetence and Obama keeps him around, though, I'll be in a raging fury. My brother's a veteran, and if Obama leaves a proven-incompetent official in charge, it'll piss me off on a personal level.
(May 26, 2014 at 8:56 am)A Theist Wrote:(May 26, 2014 at 12:26 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote:
In the meantime the Repubs and TPs should stop whining about having to pay taxes to support the system. They are simply full of crap.
No. This is about gross mismanagement and corrupt VA administrators cooking the books and scamming the system to line their pockets as well as a job security scheme. People have died because of that. Why is the left so naive to think that dumping more money and more money into a corrupt and mismanaged bureaucracy without first cleaning it up is the answer? The only ones full of crap are those of you who believe that we should continue pouring money into a system without question. Essentially, given all the information that's surfaced about the corruption within the VA, and saying that the "...Repubs and TPs should stop whining about having to pay taxes to support the system", you're okay with funding corruption and mismanagement.That's what you're supporting.
*klaxon* EHHH! Wrong. The republican refusal to provide funding took place long before this whole mess was made public.
Additionally, why did Congress wait an entire week to issue a preservation order? Just saying. As for cleaning up the VA, how exactly do you propose they should do that? Just fire every administrator, including the ones who didn't partake in the corruption, who for all we know could be a grand majority of them? Not everybody who is working as VA admins are doing it for the money and job security; do you really think that most people who went in to administrate VA centers did so for that alone? No, people go into careers [and that's what those are] because it's what they want to do; in this case, they want to help veterans. I wouldn't be a doctor just for the money; if I wanted the money, I'd go into business, where I wouldn't HAVE to care about shit, and where I could potentially make far more. I'm not going to be entering into the restaurant business by starting up a restaurant because I just want money, I'm gonna be doing it because I want money AND I love to cook and I want people to enjoy my cooking and recipes.
But back on point; you're calling for a clean-up before funding can be allocated. Well, the process of determining what to clean up is taking place, and in the meantime, the VA is still strapped for cash, and the money that's being diverted to corrupt officials isn't even a drop in the water of the overall budget currently directed to the VA. You're saying that rather than continue increasing medical and nursing staff and medical treatment facilities in the meantime, we should just leave the veterans to continue dealing with these absurd wait times while we let political games play out. In other words, you want many veterans to suffer, to keep a few from taking pinches from the budget. The swipers should be punished, but to say that the veterans should be punished for some officials being corrupt (and who will be out of jobs soon anyways) is a direct contradiction of sensibility. In fact, it's completely counterproductive...which is funny considering you're whining about administrative mismanagement. Even if the rest of the administrators get away with what they've done, the means by which they've done what they've done is highly likely to be removed, since it's beyond obvious how they did it now.
So, in short, you're supporting inaction towards veterans while bitching about inaction against a few corrupt officials. Good job, AT, that's so ironic that I could probably build a Jaeger* or two with all that iron.
(*Pacific Rim reference; the giant 300-foot-tall mechas' frames were built of pure iron)
