Free Republic

The chief of staff to Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin altered an email and made false statements so that taxpayers would foot the bill for the secretary’s wife on a luxury, 10-day trip to Europe last summer, according to the agency’s inspector general. Vivieca Wright Simpson, the VA’s third-most senior official, doctored language in an email from another aide who was planning the trip to make it look like Shulkin was getting an award from the Danish government.

The leader of the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system unexpectedly stepped down from her position effective Saturday, leaving three top VA positions unfilled by permanent undersecretaries. Dr. Poonam Alaigh, the acting undersecretary for health since May, sent a message to VA employees last week informing them she was resigning for family reasons. “I have made the difficult decision to step down,” Alaigh wrote. “I want you to know that it has been my greatest honor to serve [VA Secretary David Shulkin], each one of you and all of our veterans. As I prepare to now leave Washington, I...

Nearly 600 patients who received dental care at a Wisconsin Veterans Affairs medical center may have been exposed to HIV, hepatitis B and C and now face an anxious wait to find out if they were infected. Earlier this week, officials said a dentist at the Tomah VA Medical Center improperly re-used his own dental equipment instead of using the sterilized, disposable tools as VA rules require. "It was purposeful that he was violating VA regulations," said Victoria Brahm, acting medical director at the Tomah VA Center in a press briefing earlier this week. "During all of the orientation, he...

For years veterans across the country have languished in VA hospitals, with thousands dying waiting for care. Suicide hotlines go unanswered and at least one hospital in Illinois, dead bodies were left in the morgue for months. Other hospitals are filled with black mold and roaches. Since the VA scandal broke two years ago, wait times haven't improved. At some hospitals wait times are now double what they were in 2014. But it gets worse. According to a local news report from WEAU News 13, as many as 600 veterans may have been infected with life threatening, lethal and incurable...

According to WEAU News 13, 592 veterans who received care at the Tomah VA in Wisconsin may have been infected with several types of disease due to violations of infection control procedures. In other words, they received the horrible level of care we have sadly come to expect from the VA. During a press conference on Thursday, acting Medical Center Director Victoria Brahm said a dentist at the VA was using his own equipment … which should actually be illegal. But we digress.

Since the Veteran's Affairs scandal broke in 2014, exposing the hospital system and government employees left thousands of veterans on long waiting lists leading to death, the agency has received an increase in spending to deal with the backlog and wait times. Things have gotten worse, not better. Wait times have doubled and now, a horrifying report out of Illinois shows bodies of deceased veterans were left in the hospital morgue for months.

A 76-year-old veteran committed suicide on Sunday in the parking lot of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Long Island, where he had been a patient, according to the Suffolk County Police Department. Peter A. Kaisen, of Islip, was pronounced dead after he shot himself outside Building 92, the nursing home at the medical center. The hospital is part of the Veterans Affairs medical system, the nation’s largest integrated health care organization, which has been under scrutiny since 2014, when the department confirmed that numerous patients had died awaiting treatment at a V.A. hospital in Phoenix. Officials there had...

The secretary of veterans affairs, Bob McDonald, refused to apologize for comparing VA wait times to Disneyland wait times earlier today on MSNBC. "Wait times are important but it is not the only measure of veterans experience. That's what veterans are telling us. We talked to a lot of veterans. It is important and if I were misunderstood or said the wrong thing, I am glad i have to correct it," said McDonald.

A Department of Veterans’ Affairs hospital on Long Island was forced to close its five operating rooms after air ducts began to emit sand-size black particles. The air ducts are part of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center’s HVAC system, which provides heating, ventilating, and air conditioning and therefore controls air quality and helps mitigate germ transmission. New York Times reported: An environmental analysis of the air quality at the Northport hospital by Environmental Analysis Associates, a San Diego firm that specializes in the identification of indoor air-quality problems associated with dust contamination, found that the particulates came from oxidizing...

... There appears to be a troubling trend within the VA. As of December 2015, almost 99 percent of the names listed on the 'mental defective' category for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, otherwise known as the national gun-ban list, are from the Veterans Administration. Once a person's name is on that list, they are banned from owning or possessing a firearm. Their Second Amendment rights are completely null and void...

A vermin infestation has overrun the kitchen of a suburban Chicago Veterans Affairs hospital and is reportedly so severe that cockroaches routinely crawl across countertops as cooks prepare meals. The insects have even found their way into patients’ food, employees say. The bug invasion has attracted the attention of a U.S. senator who is demanding to know how the VA is fixing the problem. It’s just the latest scandal at an agency rocked by allegations of abuse, incompetence and the needless deaths of veterans who wait years for medical appointments.

Health Care: In the summer of 2014, President Obama promised swift changes to resolve chronic delays and cover-ups at the Veterans Health Administration. Today, veterans are still waiting months to see doctors and the VHA is still doctoring wait times, an audit finds.

As if local veterans enduring endless waits for government benefits don't have enough to worry about, now there's this: Officials are investigating whether documents were inappropriately shredded at the Department of Veterans Affairs center in Philadelphia, which processes benefits claims from the Lehigh Valley. If a veteran's paperwork is shredded instead of added to a claim file, that could result in disability or pension benefits' being denied or delayed. The Philadelphia office and nine others were inspected without warning last month by the VA inspector general's office. The checks occurred because the inspector general discovered a claims center in Los...

A Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hiring manager said in a sworn deposition “thank God” they don’t give veterans hiring preference for well-paying jobs. The statement came when a VA dentistry chief was asked if being a veteran helps someone get a dentist job in the agency. His response was “not really. And thank God,” The Daily Caller News Foundation recently discovered in a court filing. Being a scout master in the Boy Scouts would do more to help someone get a top job at the VA than serving in the armed forced, Dr. Gonzalo Solis Sanchez of the VA...

After two years of investigations, the inspector general for Veterans Affairs has found that 40 VA facilities around the country are guilty of deliberately falsifying reports on wait times for clients. To date, only 4 low level VA staffers have been fired despite the fact that supervisors ordered the falsifications of records in almost all instances.

Two senior officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs have pleaded the Fifth Amendment in front of a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on relocation bonus corruption. Philadelphia and Wilmington VA regional offices director Diana Rubens and St. Paul VA regional office director Kimberly Graves pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer any of the numerous questions put forward by HVAC chairman GOP Rep. Jeff Miller. “Sir, I’ve been advised by counsel not to answer that question to protect my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,” Rubens repeated multiple times. The five employees from the VA involved in...

A veterans advocacy group is criticizing the plan to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released by Donald Trump. Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) said the plan was “heavy of rhetoric, light on specifics” in a statement on Saturday.

There is only one guaranteed way to get fired from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Falsifying records won’t do it. Prescribing obsolete drugs won’t do it. Cutting all manner of corners on health and safety is, at worst, going to get you a reprimand. No, the only sure-fire way to get canned at the VA is to report any of these matters to authorities who might do something about it. That, at least, is what the U.S. Office of Special Counsel recently reported to the president of the United States. The Special Counsel’s office is the agency to which government...

Two huge billboards in Central Florida paid for by a Marine veteran are advertising the message that the Veterans Affairs Administration is lying about their improved service for veterans.Roger Gagnon, of Orange City, paid $775 for an Orlando billboard and $1,400 for another near Daytona Beach to send his message for one month. The billboard, boasting a bright yellow background, read, “VA is lying, veterans are dying.”Gagnon asserted, “It’s not about me, I’m all set. This is about the people who are in the service and the ones who are fixing to go in the service.” He said of the...

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