Home › Forums › Open Discussion › Shinseki Resigns
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May 30, 2014 at 4:30 pm #611496
JTBParticipantI think it’s appropriate that Shinseki resigned. I admire his history of service and his courage for speaking openly about the inadequate preparations for the war in Iraq. I do not believe he deserves blame for the problems in the VA health system. That blame rests squarely on a lineage of legislative and executive terms that tolerated a well-known level of substandard performance. Be that as it may, what Shinseki did not do is what any competent executive administrator should do in stepping into a new assignment, namely obtaining a thorough and reliable assessment of the operation and developing an action plan to remedy the key challenges. Of course, one might reasonably point out that President Obama is similarly culpable for poor executive management and I’d have to agree. So the question now is whether or not the so-called supporters of the military in congress will join with Obama to launch a meaningful restructuring of the VA system to meet it’s shortcomings or continue their preferred course of wrangling without action.
May 30, 2014 at 6:45 pm #808850
metrognomeParticipantI think it a shame Shinseki resigned; he served his country more honorably than the foaming-at-the-mouth hypocrites who lynched him. The VA Insp. General issued 18 reports on scheduling problems over the past 10 years. Any Congressperson who sat on a VA oversight committee over those 10 years and did nothing should resign from Congress immediately.
May 30, 2014 at 6:58 pm #808851
JanSParticipantmetro…agree, agree, agree.he’s a scapegoat only
May 30, 2014 at 8:15 pm #808852
SmittyParticipantThe sad thing to me is that our elected officials have known about this forever yet did nothing until it became political.
Obama ran on this for goodness sake.
McCain? You don’t think he heard about problems at the Phoenix VA before this made national news? Now he is mad as hell?
Come on guys.
May 30, 2014 at 9:24 pm #808853
metrognomeParticipantsmitty – for once, we agree.
I don’t think the VA problems can be resolved by ‘fixing’ the VA. As others have said the best solution is to establish a Medicare-type system for some things so vets can see whichever doctor they want (assuming, as with Medicare, that the doc accepts vets.) Certain procedures would still be done at a VA facility. The VA would then focus on service-connected injuries and whatever else makes sense, esp. as far as social services referrals specific to vets.
This is an oversimplification of a possible solution to a complex problem, but I don’t see retaining the current structure as viable.
May 30, 2014 at 9:32 pm #808854
PLSParticipantI agree with both JTB and Metrognome, in part. It’s a shame that a man like him who’s served well gets tarnished by himself but a change in leadership is needed, too. The only thing he did that made me mad is to say this morning that he just wasn’t aware. That’s crud, as you so well highlighted gnome with timeline of problems. The whole chain is broken and a new objective proven healthcare leader, heaven willing, will be welcome. If someone can come in and set priorities and drive results it will help. They just can’t be myopic – Shinseki did a good job on the backlog, took leadership of it and rammed changes home that helped. But that and some homeless decreases were it. Everything else faltered in the shadows. Now we go crazy on scheduling catch-up, okay great – what about the benefits and claims? What about a three year delay in the opening of the Orlando VA? What about dozens of key leadership positions open around the country? They (VA and Congress together) will need to prioritize and say “we’re going to do this for 24 months and XYZ will happen.” They tried to do that in their strategic plan last year (see here: http://www.va.gov/op3/docs/StrategicPlanning/VA2014-2020strategicPlan.PDF) but it was all gobbleygook. Keep it simple: clear the benefits, scale the facilities, make the people work hard and really, truly serve the veteran patient. Patient first, everything else second.
May 30, 2014 at 10:43 pm #808855
dobroParticipantHere’s a crazy idea-since our military budget is larger than the next 10 nations combined, how about we commit 25% of that nearly 700 billion to veterans services, adding it to the Veterans Affairs budget (the agency that runs the VA, among other things) which I think is around 130 billion. I believe we would still have a plenty robust defense system and might have enough money to straighten out the VA problems.
May 30, 2014 at 11:48 pm #808856
SmittyParticipantI agree that the defense budget is huge, but not sure that throwing more money at the VA will solve it. I don’t have the solution, but more money is not necessarily always the answer. Could be, we will see.
May 31, 2014 at 1:17 am #808857
JanSParticipantwhile I think the man is a scapegoat, this “I was not aware” crap surely does tick me off. It’s all their jobs to be aware. If you and I are aware, where the hell are they?
May 31, 2014 at 7:57 am #808858
dobroParticipant“…but more money is not necessarily always the answer.”
Not necessarily, but if they need more hospitals and doctors, more infrastructure, updates to antiquated systems,more people to staff administrative offices, counselers, etc, what do think would be the number one item that would make these things possible? Yep, that’d be money.
You know, like was in a bill the Repubs killed last month.
On the other hand, if firing somebody is good enough to solve the problems then I guess the problems must be solved now, right?
May 31, 2014 at 2:33 pm #808859
SmittyParticipantSome graphs (“consider the source, yada, yada, yada”). The reason you have to source it from conservative sights is because you can’t find these in the MSM.
May 31, 2014 at 3:20 pm #808860
dobroParticipant“My immediate take was that “They didn’t report it until the Obama administration said it would be okay to report it.” The AP denied it; unfortunately for the self-described “essential global news network,” another news organization confirmed that it and AP “both had versions of it independently early & were asked to not publish til end of Iran talks.” There’s not a chance in Hades that the AP would have similarly accommodated a Republican or conservative administration.”
These sentences from the link pretty much sum up why these are not facts, but rather a bunch of cherry picked stats supporting an agenda of Repub victimhood and”liberal” press under Obama’s control.
May 31, 2014 at 3:26 pm #808861
dobroParticipantIt’s certainly true that the VA budget has increased over the past few years but the amount of veterans they serve has also increased dramatically. The question isn’t “have we increased the VA budget” it is “do we have enough money budgeted to accomodate the needs of the VA.”
I don’t know the answer to that question but I do know that we have an unbelievable amount of money allotted to the military and, IMHO,a mighty large chunk of that should be devoted to veterans care.
May 31, 2014 at 3:27 pm #808862
JTBParticipantSmitty, an interesting thing about this issue is that only the most cynical types insist on politicizing it. I suppose the awareness that well-intended, patriotic citizens have been sent into harms way and come back damaged for life tends to make most decent people reluctant to resort to the same sort of mean-spirited finger pointing that has been embraced by politicos for far too long.
May 31, 2014 at 8:35 pm #808863
metrognomeParticipantone of the bits of info that sheds a little light on the situation is that Shinseki wanted Congress to pass a bill giving him more authority to fire managers. Wait, really? The VA Secretary doesn’t have a free hand to hire and fire? No wonder there are problems.
Maybe Bush43, Rummy and Dick should have done a better job of planning for casualties when they lied us into the Iraq War. Of course, they pretty much screwed up everything else about that war (and the Afghan war by starting a second front), so it’s no surprise they screwed veterans here too. Wonder how long Bush43 had to wait to get into a VA facility for his knee replacement.
May 31, 2014 at 9:03 pm #808864
SmittyParticipant“Smitty, an interesting thing about this issue is that only the most cynical types insist on politicizing it.”
I agree with that completely and wish people would stop blaming prior administrations to deflect. As I said earlier, McCain must have know about the Phoenix issues long before this came to the public eye, yet has not shown any outrage until now.
The only reason I posted the link was to show that since 2009 the caseload has increased 12.5% while the funding has increased 78%.
May 31, 2014 at 10:24 pm #808865
waynsterParticipantyou can point fingers all day long the thing is the VA has been is underfunded and understaffed for years. I can remember vets in the 70’s saying they would rather die at home then go to the VA for help. Then you have those who have no choice but to go. The quality of nurses and doctors counselors are piss poor and admin staff included. Now if they had the funding that harborview has in the hospital system it would be 100% a improvement. The elected party’s on both sides isle know just how f… up it is. The defense dept won’t give up funding in the budget because it takes away a weapons system oh my take just one tank.. one ship.. one plane… one missile.. and they cant fight a war. They can how ever send in troops and sailors to combat zones. Come back and have mental issues get wounded and die.. oh yes they will bury you give you a head stone… they just don’t want to support them after the fact. This is not the first time VA has been under fire won’t be the last. Until they fund it like a real medical system the way the privet sector does… unfortunately until then the vet gets screwed over and over and over……
June 1, 2014 at 4:11 am #808866
JanSParticipantsome history…it’s only a scandal now because Pres. Obama is in office? We seriously need to get our collective heads out of our arses…and that goes double for the McCains, the Boehners, the Eric Cantors (shudder) of the world !
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/23751-focus-a-grateful-nation-or-just-bohica
June 1, 2014 at 4:34 am #808867
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