VA Crisis sky needs to fall on more heads

There has never been a time when veterans were properly cared for and the worst thing is that most of them, no matter what happened afterwards, they would still do it all over again. Think about that. They cared that much and still do. So what's our problem? We forget what happened last time we were down the crisis road heading off to the abyss. Blaming the head of the VA did nothing to fix the problems because we blamed others before. This is yet on more VA Crisis but the sky falling on one head misses the point.

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Jeff Miller said

When mismanagement and negligence of this scale go essentially unpunished, it sends a message of cold, hard indifference to veterans seeking care at the VA, as well as the hundreds of thousands of dedicated department employees who go to work every day trying to do the right thing.

He's right but then again there has been a very extensive history of this kind of thing going on.

Bonus money after problems found before? Sure. In the following case it was a matter of life and death back then too. Veterans were being turned away but as you will read it was a matter of no one planning for two wars creating more veterans in need of care afterwards.

Months after a politically embarrassing $1 billion shortfall that put veterans' health care in peril, Veterans Affairs officials involved in the foul-up got hefty bonuses ranging up to $33,000.

The list of bonuses to senior career officials at the Veterans Affairs Department in 2006, obtained by The Associated Press, documents a generous package of more than $3.8 million in payments by a financially strapped agency straining to help care for thousands of injured veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among those receiving payments were a deputy assistant secretary and several regional directors who crafted the VA's flawed budget for 2005 based on misleading accounting. They received performance payments up to $33,000 each, a figure equal to about 20 percent of their annual salaries.

Also receiving a top bonus was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who helps manage a disability claims system that has a backlog of cases and delays averaging 177 days in getting benefits to injured veterans.

The bonuses were awarded even after government investigators had determined the VA repeatedly miscalculated — if not deliberately misled taxpayers — with questionable methods used to justify Bush administration cuts to health care amid a burgeoning Iraq war.

Annual bonuses to senior VA officials now average more than $16,000 — the most lucrative in government.

The VA said the payments are necessary to retain hardworking career officials.

Several watchdog groups questioned the practice. They cited short-staffing and underfunding at VA clinics that have become particularly evident after recent disclosures of shoddy outpatient treatment of injured troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"Hundreds of thousands of our veterans remain homeless every day, and hundreds of thousands more veterans wait six months or more for VA disability claim decisions," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "The lavish amounts of VA bonus cash would be better spent on a robust plan to cut VA red tape."

In July 2005, the VA stunned Congress by suddenly announcing it faced a $1 billion shortfall after failing to take into account the additional cost of caring for veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The admission, months after the department insisted it was operating within its means and did not need additional money, drew harsh criticism from both parties and some calls for Nicholson's resignation.

The investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, determined the VA had used misleading accounting methods and claimed false savings of more than $1.3 billion, apparently because President Bush was not willing, at the time, to ask Congress for more money.

According to the White House Office of Personnel Management, roughly three of every four senior officials at the VA have received some kind of bonus each year. In recent years, the payment amount has steadily increased from being one of the lowest in government — $8,120 in 2002 — to the most generous — $16,713 in 2005.

VA e-mail: Save money, do not diagnose PTSD but James Peake, Secretary of Veterans Affairs at the time had this response.

"A single staff member, out of VA's 230,000 employees, in a single medical facility sent a single e-mail with suggestions that are inappropriate and have been repudiated at the highest level of our health-care organization," he said. "The employee has been counseled and is extremely apologetic."