The Veterans Affairs Department is firing four senior executives in the wake of a nationwide scandal over long wait times for veterans seeking medical care, and falsified records covering up the delays.
The dismissals are the first since Congress passed a law this summer making it easier for veterans who experience delays to get care outside VA’s nationwide network of hospitals and clinics. The law also made it easier for the agency to fire senior officials suspected of wrongdoing, shortening their appeals process to 28 days.
Among those being fired are Susan Taylor, a top purchasing official at the Veterans Health Administration who was found to have “misused her position” and steered contracts to a private reverse auction company; Terry Gerigk Wolf, director of the Pittsburgh VA Healthcare System, who was found to have engaged in unspecified “conduct unbecoming a senior executive”; and James Talton, director of the Central Alabama VA Healthcare System, for substantiated allegations of neglect of duty. Deputy VA secretary Sloan Gibson said Monday the VA will “actively and aggressively pursue disciplinary action” against any employee who violates VA rules or values.
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Too little too late. Time to make the VA medical system a fiscal entity similar to Medicare but without the copays. VA Hospitals are too few, too expensive to keep inside current technology, too prone to hire should-have-been-shot-instead-of-hiring-them staff.
I spent roughly six weeks going through a series of heart attacks while visiting the Odessa, Texas VA, them putting me on hold, never even took my pulse, blood pressure, never diagnosed what was wrong. Finally had to check into the emergency room of a private hospital to get the good news.
The VA has run in waves of lousy, briefly better, lousy, briefly better since before the Vietnam War. But now there’s a better alternative: Medicare look alike.
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