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Internal Department of Veterans Affairs data provided by whistleblowers reveals the agency is only filling about half of its capacity to make medical appointments, even as veterans continue to wait an average of at least 30 days before a medical appointment can be scheduled. The VA documents show that between July and September of 2017, the agency only used 51.44 percent of the appointments available across its healthcare system. VA documents also show there are currently 184,520 veterans across the nation waiting longer than 30 days for an appointment and more than 45,000 new veteran patients waiting more than 90...

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) paid Hillary Clinton's campaign lawyer $90,000 for crisis control following a Veteran Affairs facility scandal that engulfed the senator and her staff. Baldwin, who was first elected to the Senate in 2012, was the only member of Congress from Wisconsin to receive an official federal government inspector general report warning of the over-prescription of narcotics given to veterans at the Tomah VA facility in her state. The abuses at the facility ultimately led to the death of a Marine.A memo was first circulated in 2009 warning of the dangerous amounts of narcotics prescribed to veterans...

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald argued no VA hospital is "bad" in a letter to USA Today on Friday, just one day after the publication exposed an internal rating system that showed several clinics in Texas and Tennessee had received low marks. "To be clear, no VA medical facility is bad or failing," wrote McDonald and Sloan Gibson, his deputy, in a letter that was obtained by the Washington Examiner.

While long wait times persisted the VA added 39,454 new positions to their payroll between 2012-2015. Fewer than ten percent of these new positions (3,591) were ‘Medical Officers,’ i.e. doctors.

America’s veterans are forced to drive hours to get to the nearest Veterans Affairs clinic, wait months for doctors’ appointments, and are routinely being subject to shameful service (unsanitary medical equipment, etc.). Few people have been fired as a result of the scandal and VA Secretary Robert McDonald has even minimized the situation by comparing it to the challenges of standing in line at Disney World. In a new statement, Concerned Veterans of America's Vice President of Policy and Communications Dan Caldwell said the VA's treatment of our nation's finest is unacceptable and is urging the passage of an important piece of legislation authored...

President Barack Obama is opposing suggestions the government privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve health care veterans receive. In an interview with the Colorado Springs Gazette, the president said his administration has made progress modernizing the VA and providing veterans with more timely health care following criticism over wait times. Privatizing the agency would delay that progress, he said. The administration came under fire when it was disclosed that secret wait lists were uncovered at a VA health care system in Arizona amid reports that several veterans had died waiting for health care. Government investigations found significant system...

Top Republican lawmakers blasted Attorney General Loretta Lynch Wednesday for clearing a legal path for a former Veterans Affairs official at the heart of the waiting time scandal to get her job back. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the decision by Ms. Lynch not to defend in court a portion of the 2014 VA reform law could result in Sharon Helman, former head of the Phoenix, Arizona VA office, going back to work. “This decision by the Obama administration puts our veterans at further risk,” said Mr. McCarthy, California Republican. “We cannot entrust veterans’ health care to people unwilling...

The scandal at the Veterans Administration may go deeper than first thought. According to a scathing letter from the US Office of Special Counsel, which has authority to probe whistleblower abuse within the executive branch, the VA’s Office of Inspectors General ignored whistleblowers and their complaints, shrugging off evidence of fraud and manipulation of wait time statistics. According to OSC,the IG even attempted to “discredit the whistleblowers by focusing on the word ‘secret,'” rather than try to correct the problems their investigation uncovered: A top government watchdog on Thursday accused the central agency tasked with holding Veterans Affairs accountable of...

How many more of these stories are out there waiting to be told? The Daily Caller has struck again in their ongoing investigation of corruption at the VA, as well as the impossibility of getting rid of anyone who is failing at their job, incompetent or simply breaking the law. This time it’s a story which dates back to 2013. The head of the St. Louis Department of Veterans Affairs hospital at that time was one Rima Nelson. Things didn’t go so well with Rima in charge, and by “not so well” I mean that 1,800 patients were potentially exposed...

In life and leadership, accountability means consequences for bad behavior. In Washington, accountability means yet another congressional meeting about another government scandal perpetrated by tax-subsidized corruptocrats who get away with murder. Literally. This week, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs will hold the 999,999th oversight hearing (give or take a few) on the VA's homicidal, no-fault culture. "In the wake of the biggest scandal in VA history, in which 110 VA medical facilities maintained secret lists to hide long waits for care," the panel notes, "the department has successfully fired just three low-level employees for manipulating wait times. Not a...

Hundreds of thousands of veterans listed in the Department of Veterans Affairs enrollment system died before their applications for care were processed, according to a report issued Wednesday

In has been almost a year since the director of the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System was firedafter numerous reports of mismanagement and malfeasance were exposed. Among them: · Manipulation of veteran patient scheduling data was pervasive, as a national-high of more than 57 percent of employees reported that managers instructed them to change appointment times to artificially hide chronically long waits; · More than 1000 patient X-Rays, some showing malignancies, went missing for months and years; · A pulmonologist was caught twice falsifying more than 1200 patient records, but somehow given a satisfactory review; · An employee took...

While his favorability rating took a hit, a new poll shows that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s comments about Senator Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)’s war record are not the silver bullet many in the GOP and media hoped. A YouGov poll taken after Trump’s ill-considered remarks show his support among Republican voters has surged by double digits and well-ahead of Scott Walker and Jeb Bush, his two closest competitors. During the week of July 4-6, Trump was in first place, with 15% choosing the billionaire businessman over the rest of the field. Bush sat at 11%, which tied with Kentucky...

I do realize that everyone from Charles Krauthammer to the recently escaped Mexican drug lord, El Chapo, is piling onto Donald Trump for his straight-forward remarks. Well, being the contrarian that I am, I am going to come down on the side of Mr. Trump! Do I like him? No. Never have. I don't like his swagger, his cockiness, his arrogance. And I certainly don't care for that mop of comb-over fake hair. But they say the difference between egotism and self-assurance is the ability to produce. By any measure, he certainly wins that contest, both at home and abroad....

Donald Trump appears to have gotten under the skin of not only Democrats, but also fellow Republicans and the news media. Has that subjected Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, to unfair and/or inaccurate reporting? An article in the Washington Post today is headlined, “Trump slams McCain for being ‘captured’ in Vietnam.” The article’s lead sentence states, “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump slammed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran, on Saturday by saying McCain was not a war hero because he was captured by the North Vietnamese [emphasis added].” Is this report accurate? In fact, Trump’s actual quote...

I am not a fan of John McCain because he has done so little for our Veterans and he should know better than anybody what the Veterans need, especially in regards to the VA. He is yet another all talk, no action politician who spends too much time on television and not enough time doing his job and helping the Vets. He is also allowing our military to decrease substantially in size and strength, something which should never be allowed to happen. Furthermore, he was extremely disrespectful to the thousands upon thousands of people, many of whom happen to be...

According to a leaked internal document from the Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly one-third of veterans awaiting healthcare coverage at the VA have already died. The April 2015 report, leaked to the Huffington Post by VA whistleblower Scott Davis, indicates that 238,657 of the 847,882 veterans waiting to be enrolled in VA healthcare are already dead, suggesting that over 28 percent of veterans applying for health coverage perished while waiting for it. VA spokeswoman Walinda West played down the number, insisting that some of those listed as having “pending” status may well have not completed their applications for healthcare coverage...

An internal Veterans Affairs Department report states that about one-third of the veterans waiting to receive medical care from the agency have already died. ... as of April, 847,822 veterans were awaiting healthcare and that of those, 238,647 were already deceased. The report was handed over by Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta He also sent copies to the House and Senate VA panels and to the White House. ... VA wants you to believe, by virtue of people being able to get health care elsewhere, it's not a big deal. But VA...

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it may have to shut down some hospitals next month if Congress does not address a $2.5 billion shortfall for the current budget year. The VA told Congress Monday that it needs to cover shortfalls caused by an increased demand by veterans for health care, including costly treatments for hepatitis C. …

Veterans Affairs employees in Aurora, Colorado, who played a role in the agency’s expanding scandal, have found a way to escape punishment – they’re retiring. In May, the building of the Aurora Veterans Affairs department was $1 billion over budget and more than a year behind schedule, ABC News reported. Taxpayers were forced to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it back on track. Contributing factors to the project's slow progress included "changes to veterans' health care needs, site-acquisition issues, and a decision in Denver to change plans from a medical center shared with a local medical university to a...