Veteran Affairs letting Vets Die to get Bigger Bonuses

[Kaitzilla]

Surprised I haven't heard a peep about this yet, so I'll start the thread.

The story first showed up in April.

About 40 vets died while on a secret waiting list to get medical care at the Phoenix Veteran Affairs place.
The whistleblower was a doctor named Same Foote who had been practicing there 24 years and just retired.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014...ist-linked-to-seperate-scandal/2571398376910/

The person in charge of the Phoenix office, Sharon Helman, was placed on administrative leave, but is still collecting her $170,000 salary (as of June 19th) and big bonuses Bonus was rescinded May 22nd.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs...ts-died-received-8500-bonus-april_793434.html

The director of the Phoenix VA hospital where 40 veterans died while waiting for care received an $8,500 bonus last month, according to Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System, "got an $8,500 bonus last month while there was an open [inspector general] investigation into Phoenix," Chairman Miller told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview Wednesday.

It had been previously reported that Helman received more than $9,000 in bonus pay in 2013 on top of her annual salary of $169,900. The VA office of inspector general began investigating the Phoenix VA for wrongdoing in December 2013, months before Helman received the additional $8,500 bonus.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, Secretary Eric Shinseki "is the final decision maker regarding performance ratings and awards." VA spokesmen did not immediately respond to an inquiry from THE WEEKLY STANDARD asking if Shinseki signed off on Helman's $8,500 bonus in April.

The Inspector General's Report from May 28th which they had been working on since December(Guess the doc came forward quietly months ago):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-confirms-allegations-at-phoenix-va-hospital/

http://www.rightwingnews.com/column...er-discredits-obamas-big-government-policies/

As the VA inspector general’s report makes clear, there was a widespread conspiracy to keep veterans off the official waiting lists. Dozens if not hundreds of VA employees must have cooperated and colluded.

Each of them knew what was going on. Each knew that they were cheating and violating the rules. And many understood that bonuses and promotions hinged on the success of their conspiracy.

So the Phoenix VA hospital reported that the average waiting time for medical appointments was 24 days — short of the Obama administration’s 2011 goal of 14 days but within ballpark range.

But the actual waiting time, according to the inspector general’s report, was 115 days. That is orders of magnitude greater than the 14-day goal.

When Obamacare was under consideration in Congress, liberal bloggers like Ezra Klein, then at the Washington Post, called the VA health system “one of the most remarkable success stories in American public policy.” It was an example of “when socialism works in America.”

The Secretary of the VA who signed off on the latest bonus resigned on May 30th:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/va-secretary-eric-shinseki-resigns-obama-announces/story?id=23926277

Apparently, the managers in Veteran Affairs get to write their own performance reviews.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/all-t...te-long-delays-patient-deaths/article/2550017

Every top manager of the Department of Veterans Affairs received a positive performance evaluation for the past four years, and 78 percent got a bonus in 2013, despite a string of patient deaths and falsification of records related to patient wait times, according to congressional testimony Friday.

Agency executives write their own performance evaluations, which seem to receive only cursory reviews from their supervisors, several committee members said in questioning the VA’s top personnel officer.

While everyone was deemed at least “fully successful” in meeting their performance goals, 57 percent of top managers were rated to have exceeded expectations and another 21 percent were found to be “outstanding,” according to testimony from Gina Farrisee, assistant secretary for human resources and administration at VA.

Those who exceeded their baseline requirements got bonuses. The figures include administrators in the Senior Executive Service and certain medical personnel.

Past evaluations cannot be rescinded, even in light of new revelations that hospital administrators nationwide engaged in “systemic” falsification of patient wait lists to hide backlogs in medical care, Farrisee said.

Meeting agency deadlines for delivering care weighs heavily in the performance goals that lead to bonus awards.

In Phoenix and other cities, the agency's inspector general and independent Government Accountability Office have found widespread practices, such as secret waiting lists, were used to falsely make it appear patients were seen within the VA's 14-day appointment deadline.

Outraged members of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs called VA’s bonus-driven culture “reprehensible,” “outlandish,” “scandalous” and “criminal.”

An audit on June 9th revealed more shocking news:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ampaign=va-audit-finds-more-secret-wait-lists

The audit found that 70 percent of Veterans Affairs facilities surveyed placed patients on alternate wait lists, meaning many of those veterans probably weren’t recorded in the official reports back to headquarters and were used to dole out bonuses to VA executives.

The FBI has joined the Inspector General's investigation as of June 11th:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/politics/va-fbi-probe/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

The coverup continues:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/23/us/phoenix-va-deaths-new-allegations/

Records of dead veterans were changed or physically altered, some even in recent weeks, to hide how many people died while waiting for care at the Phoenix VA hospital, a whistle-blower told CNN in stunning revelations that point to a new coverup in the ongoing VA scandal.

"Deceased" notes on files were removed to make statistics look better, so veterans would not be counted as having died while waiting for care, Pauline DeWenter said.

DeWenter should know. DeWenter is the actual scheduling clerk at the Phoenix VA who said for the better part of a year she was ordered by supervisors to manage and handle the so-called "secret waiting list," where veterans' names of those seeking medical care were often placed, sometimes left for months with no care at all.

For these reasons, DeWenter is among the most important and central people to the Phoenix VA scandal over a secret wait list, veterans' wait times and deaths. Despite being in the center of the storm, DeWenter has never spoken publicly about any of it -- the secret list, the altering of records, the dozens of veterans she believes have died waiting for care -- until now...


...Beginning early last year, DeWenter said she was also instructed to hide the crisis at the Phoenix VA medical center by concealing new requests for treatment. This was at a time when the VA was paying bonuses to senior staff whose facilities met the goals of providing care in a timely manner for veterans, typically within 14 days.

New requests by veterans wanting treatment were actually stuffed into a drawer, to make the books look better, according to DeWenter.

Asked what happened to the new requests for appointments, DeWenter said: “They went into a desk drawer…. That would be the secret list.”

There was “no doubt” it was, in fact, a secret list, she said.

I could link this stuff all day as the thing is rotten to the core.
70% of the VA is doing secret waiting lists?

Is this the death of single-payer government-run health care in the USA?

How many dozens of whistleblowers were silenced or punished the last few years?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/05/politics/va-scandal-fear-secret/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

How many more vets died so the Sharrons of the world could get big bonuses?

 

[Farm Boy]

It goes to show that the dangers of crony capitalism are present in government cronyism as well. "White collar" crime like this is one of the few sorts that almost makes me wish I could stand for the death penalty.