VA Scandal Demands Decisive Action, not Political Spin

The evident and apparently systemic willingness of Veterans Administration (VA) bureaucrats to knowingly allow veterans to suffer and die to get bonuses tattoos an indelible, shameful stain on our federal government. It despicably denigrates the deeply personal sacrifice and family tragedy of every man and woman who has been traumatized, maimed, or killed in our collective defense and the majority of good people in the VA who honorably serve them.

Failure after failure mounts, grounded in epic incompetence, institutional indifference, self-interest, negligence, and fraud wrapped in a void of accountability so ingrained that it will literally require an act of Congress to permit weeding out the wrongdoers. The VA is not alone in the growing cadre of government agencies trampling the people they purportedly serve, but it is the most contemptible.

The increasingly evident reality as we approach the 70^th anniversary of D-Day is that if the VA healthcare system will treat our veterans with such callous, felonious disregard, imagine what government-run healthcare could do to regular citizens.

If a private entity were to do this, it would fill a prison. Instead, there are a few resignations and early retirements and the rest will be reassigned by politicians protecting their jobs and legacies.

It is time for Congress to step up and exercise its duty to the American people and the active and retired military who sacrifice so much by holding VA employees accountable,break up this behemoth and put the pieces into the private sector and into the capable hands of those who are accountable.

It won’t be perfect, but it will be far less deadly.