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No one at the VA has gotten the ax for falsifying records that showed veterans waiting months for medical care. And no one will probably be fired for continued incompetence at the VA. Washington Times: The number of veterans seeking health  care but ending up on waiting lists of one month or more is 50 percent higher now than it was a year ago when scandal over false records and long wait times wracked the Department of Veterans Affairs, The New York Times reported. The VA also faces a budget  shortfall of nearly $3 billion, the Times reported in a story posted...

Fired Tammy Baldwin staffer Marquette Baylor filed an ethics complaint Monday with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics against her former boss alleging the Democratic Senator made “false statements and representations to cover up actions by her Chief of Staff and protect her political career.” Baylor’s complaint details what she calls a “misinformation campaign” meant to lay the blame for the failure of the office to properly react to whistleblower complaints about opioid abuse at the Tomah VA facility. Baylor’s complaint also details for the first time the rejected severance package and confidentiality agreement that would have paid Baylor...

And some of them never lived to see their rightful benefits from service to our nation. The VA in Oakland, California routinely ignored the query letters from veterans seeking various benefits, despite regulations requiring a response. When the issue came to the attention of VA leadership in 2012, they assigned a team to go through the records — and then deep-sixed those records when it became obvious that something very wrong had taken place. In fact, as one whistleblower tells CBS News, the cover-up lasted until “a few months ago,” cheating thousands of veterans:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) But whether the veteran was dead...

The head of the Department of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald is under fire today after admitting to the Huffington Post that he lied about serving in the Special Forces. Robert McDonald, the secretary of veterans affairs, wrongly claimed in a videotaped comment earlier this year that he served in special operations forces, the most elite units in the armed forces, when his military service of five years was spent almost entirely with the 82nd Airborne Division during the late 1970s. U.S. special operations forces (SOF) are composed of exhaustively trained and highly capable troops from each military service, including the Green...

President Barack Obama is joining with lawmakers and government leaders to cast a spotlight on the issue of suicide among veterans. Obama on Thursday will sign the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act into law. […] The measure is named for a Marine who struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. …

resident Obama’s Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch was a charter member of an all-black Harvard sorority — and so was Eric Holder’s wife. ... can Lynch as an investigator really be objective when it comes to her predecessor, who is currently in contempt of Congress over Fast and Furious scandal document obstruction and would probably warrant investigation from an unbiased successor? After all, Lynch goes way back with Holder’s wife. “The Xi Tau Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority,

According to Medical data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Washington Free Beacon, the Veterans Administration admitted that more than 500 military veterans died as a result of errors made at Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals across the country between fiscal years 2010 and 2014. During this time the VA admitted there were 1,452 “institutional disclosures of adverse events” that resulted in the deaths of 526 patients. The VA identifies “adverse events” as cases in which improper care results in the serious injury or death of a patient. They are defined as “…untoward incidents, diagnostic or therapeutic...

The head of the troubled Phoenix veterans’ hospital was fired Monday as the Veterans Affairs Department continued its crackdown on wrongdoing in the wake of a nationwide scandal over long wait times for veterans seeking medical care and falsified records covering up the delays. Sharon Helman, director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System, was ousted nearly seven months after she and two high-ranking officials were placed on administrative leave amid an investigation into allegations that 40 veterans died while awaiting treatment at the hospital. Helman had led the giant Phoenix facility, which treats more than 80,000 veterans a year,...

It’s been six months since President Obama vowed there would be major changes to the Department of Veterans Affairs. A new VA Secretary is on the job and has said he plans to fire up to 1,000 people in the agency and hire nearly 30,000 medical professionals. But Pete Hegseth, CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, explained this morning that when it comes to long wait times for a doctor’s appointment, nothing has changed. […] … The head of the Phoenix VA, where the whole scandal started earlier this year, is still on paid administrative leave. “No justice, no accountability...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Veterans Affairs says investigators have found no proof that delays in care caused any deaths at a VA hospital in Phoenix, deflating an explosive allegation that helped expose a troubled health care system in which veterans waited months for appointments while employees falsified records to cover up the delays. Revelations that as many as 40 veterans died while awaiting care at the Phoenix VA hospital rocked the agency last spring, bringing to light scheduling problems and allegations of misconduct at other hospitals as well. The scandal led to the resignation of former VA Secretary...

President Obama touted the newly passed Veterans Affairs reform bill Thursday as he signed the measure into law and lamented the scandal that triggered it. But a review of records by Fox News shows the president – despite the urgency he placed publicly on the crisis – only met one-on-one with then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki once during the scandal. The records, provided through a Freedom of Information Act request, showed they met on May 30, the day Shinseki resigned.

The Senate gave final approval Thursday to sweeping legislation aimed at fixing the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs, marking a rare moment of bipartisan accord triggered by the widespread treatment delays veterans faced at agency facilities. The legislation passed 91-3 a day after the House overwhelmingly approved the package. It now goes to President Obama’s desk. The $17 billion measure is intended help veterans avoid long waits for health care, hire more doctors and nurses to treat them, and make it easier to fire senior executives at the Veterans Affairs Department. …

There is a Twitter campaign on now to generate support for our veterans by tweeting messages with the hashtag #VAsurge. I'm calling on FReepers with Twitter accounts to help out by posting supportive messages with the #VAsurge hashtag.

WASHINGTON — Jose Mathews became chief of psychiatry for the VA in St. Louis and quickly realized the department’s reported wait times for veterans seeking treatment did not match reality. Deeply troubled by what he saw, Mathews raised $60,000 from private donors to conduct his own survey to help determine whether patients were getting timely psychiatric care at the city’s Department of Veterans Affairs facilities. The VA launched an investigation of the doctor and immediately moved him from the management position to a new job evaluating compensation for mental disorders, said Mathews, who testified before the House Veterans Affairs Committee...

Bipartisanship has broken out in Washington. This isn’t usually a good sign. Faced with the ongoing scandal in the VA health-care system, Democrats and Republicans have joined together to rush through legislation in near-record time. The Senate passed legislation, sponsored by Bernie Sanders and John McCain, in early June — just two months (or a blink in D.C. terms) — and the House has followed suit. The margins in both chambers were overwhelming: 93–3 in the Senate, and 421–0 in the House. A conference committee will now work out the differences between the two bills. The legislation sounds great: bipartisan,...

Former Marine and anonymous street artist “Sabo” uses paint and provocative posters to compel Americans to think outside the box of political correctness. Sabo is not a “kid-friendly” artist. His art incorporates the middle finger, a topless Wendy Davis “Barbie” doll, and Nancy Pelosi twerking in latex lingerie. But Sabo uses incendiary language and images solely to get Americans to think about hard issues rather than sweeping them away with political correctness. Sabo’s use of provocative words and images (as seen on his poster of a shirtless, tattooed, and smoking Sen. Ted Cruz) is in the vein of famous artists...

The Public and Intergovernmental Affairs Office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is very concerned. No, the communications specialists in the agency are not concerned with veterans in need. They're not concerned with citizens and public officials requesting public information. They're not concerned with journalists seeking the truth. What these entrenched government employees care most about, above all else, is the business of spin and stonewalling. The VA mouthpieces are preoccupied with covering their ample bureaucratic backsides, withholding data, monitoring critics, fending off watchdogs and running constant interference for their corrupt, negligent agency. In a string of internal...

The Veterans Affairs Department is apologizing to a Massachusetts woman for offering an appointment to her husband almost two years after he died. Suzanne Chase, of Acton, tells WBZ-TV her Vietnam veteran husband, Doug, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011. …

The VA suffers from “significant and chronic systemic failures” that must be addressed by department leadership, according to a White House report delivered to President Barack Obama on Friday, giving urgency to congressional legislation aimed at reducing veterans’ wait times for health care and holding officials more accountable. Among the problems cited are a “corrosive culture” that has led to personnel problems within the Department of Veterans Affairs, exacerbated by poor management and a history of retaliation toward employees raising issues. The report is the latest stinging assessment of the VA, which operates 1,700 hospitals and clinics. White House Deputy...

Imagine how much better off America's veterans would be if the federal government spent more time delivering actual care and less time compiling tyrannical lists. The death-inducing secret waiting lists for patients are just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know, for example, that the VA keeps a database on "disgruntled" and "disruptive" vets that results in arbitrarily restricted care? Disabled Air Force veteran and veterans advocate/attorney Benjamin Krause has been raising questions about the system for months and warning his peers. Under the VA policy on "patient record flags" (PRFs), federal bureaucrats can classify vets as "threats"...