Lies About VA Reform Come To Light

Sharon Helman, director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System in which vets needing medical care languished on secret lists, finally got sacked last week. She was the face of the VA scandal. Yet firing her took seven months.

Unions have the Department of Veterans Affairs in a headlock, and nothing in the phony reform law passed by Congress last August changed that. Nearly all managers guilty of manipulating waiting lists, lying to vets and covering up are still getting paid. They have their jobs, or they’re collecting paid leave, or they retired with full benefits ahead of the ax. As for vets getting their promised Choice cards to escape wait lists and see a civilian doctor, don’t hold your breath.

A whistle blower exposed the dirty tricks at the Phoenix VA last April, forcing Congress to deal with a problem it had allowed to fester for a decade. Earlier investigations had uncovered how managers manipulated waiting lists to make themselves look good and collect bonuses, while vets suffered. But few members of Congress bothered to read those earlier reports.

Last May, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., offered a bill enabling the VA secretary to fire senior managers linked to the secret lists. Rubio said the secretary has to be able to “fire executives underneath him if they haven’t done their job.” But Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-described socialist whose top campaign contributors are unions, killed the bill. Sanders insisted on protecting “due process” rules that make firing federal workers as hard as firing incompetent public school teachers.

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