And Then There Were Nine: Albuquerque VA Accused of Wait List Manipulation, Destroying Evidence

Photo Credit: WNDObama Briefed on VA Problems as Far Back as 2005

By Aaron Klein.

Documentation and testimony reviewed by WND reveals that as far back as 2005, Barack Obama, as a U.S. senator, was briefed on dangerously long wait times for returning veterans to receive health treatment.

Obama was a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. On numerous occasions he publicly chastised President George W. Bush about the wait times, treatment shortages and lack of funding to the Veterans Administration’s medical programs.

On June 28, 2005, for example, Obama complained at a hearing on the VA medical care budget that “somehow it seems that we’re willing to trot in front of flags and take photographs with soldiers, but when it comes to the appropriations process, we’re not there.”

Obama said he heard from veterans of a problem with receiving treatment.

“One final question that I’ve got, specific to some of the issues that I’m hearing back in Illinois,” he told the Senate. “I’ve heard some constituents complaining that veterans’ clinics have been reducing hours. Is there any association – if that’s the case, is that one strategy to handle the shortfall? Are we reducing hours as a way of handling the shortfall?”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: TownHall Number Nine: Albuquerque VA Accused of Wait List Manipulation, Destroying Evidence

By Guy Benson.

These “isolated cases” (Sec. Shinseki) that may or may not be indicative of a larger problem (Jay Carney) certainly are piling up. The latest is out of New Mexico, via The Daily Beast:

Add Albuquerque, New Mexico’s to the growing list of VA hospitals accused of keeping secret waiting lists to hide delays for veterans seeking medical care. And it may already be too late to get to the truth and find out what harm, if any, was done to veterans there—VA officials are already destroying records to cover their tracks, a whistleblower inside the hospital tells The Daily Beast…“The ‘secret wait list’ for patient appointments is being either moved or was destroyed after what happened in Phoenix,” according to a doctor who works at the Albuquerque VA hospital and spoke exclusively with The Daily Beast. “Right now,” the doctor said, “there is an eight-month waiting list for patients to get ultrasounds of their hearts. Some patients have died before they got their studies. It is unknown why they died, some for cardiac reasons, some for other reasons.” There’s no proof yet that veterans died while waiting for treatment, like what allegedly happened in Phoenix. But the doctor says it’s quite possible that some veterans would still be alive if they hadn’t been pushed through a record-keeping trap door that buried their requests for medical care.

Can you imagine how shocked the president must have been when someone forwarded him the link to this story? This quote makes it sound as if the VA’s book-cooking scheme was a relatively open secret:

When another of the doctor’s colleagues, a physician in a managerial position at the Albuquerque VA, saw the initial story about secret wait lists break he heard him say, “I always knew that Phoenix was better than us at playing the numbers game.”

Read more from this story HERE.