It was bad enough when the mistreatment of veterans came to light in news accounts in 2013. But misleading information from officials had been going on for years in this scandal surrounding President Barack Obama.
These six facts on the Veterans Affairs controversy show how the problems for vets continued to be ignored.
1. At least 35 veterans died while waiting for appointments to get into VA medical facilities in the Phoenix area alone, it has been confirmed by VA officials. Another 24 died at other locations because of delays in obtaining care. There are also cases of permanent medical problems because of the delayed appointments.
2. Eric Shinseki, the VA secretary when the Barack Obama scandal first broke, finally resigned in May 2014 after months of calls for his firing by vets and representatives in Congress. He was replaced by Robert McDonald, who promised to help fix the abuse and mistreatment throughout the VA with the $17 billion bill signed by Obama following the fiasco.
3. Many VA officials had been warning Obama of the problems in health care for veterans since he took office. They even wrote to the Obama transition team about it when he was elected in 2008. The officials pointed out that there were problems with quality of care in “delaying — and potentially denying — deserving veterans timely care.”
4. The VA had known its medical centers couldn’t handle the care of veterans because of huge backlogs in patient appointments going back to 2011. The Government Accountability Office for Congress even found incompetence of VA bureaucrats in handling waiting time records in 2012.
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80295846/
5. The situation is even worse because a growing list of VA facilities that falsify information has been uncovered. Many VA centers throughout the country designed secret waiting lists to avoid notice of actual waiting time.
6. Obama himself was fully aware of the backup in treatment and care for veterans long before he claimed he first heard about it from news reports. During his early presidential campaign efforts in 2007, he even spoke of denied health care for vets. He pointed out that “400,000 veterans” were stuck on “a waiting list for claims.”