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Family: V.A. Cops Stomped On Veteran’s Head, Killing Him

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan ErnstBy Chuck Ross.

The family of a 65 year-old veteran claims that VA police stomped on the veterans head and neck, causing him to suffer a stroke and die several weeks later, a new lawsuit alleges.

On May 25, 2011, Jonathan Montano was waiting several hours to undergo dialysis treatment at the Loma Linda VA facility when he grew frustrated, reports Courthouse News Service.

With an IV still in his arm, Montano made his way towards the hospital exit, saying that he would get treatment at the Long Beach VA facility instead.

Norma Montano, the veteran’s wife of 44 years, left the hospital to retrieve the couple’s car.

But VA police wouldn’t let Montano leave, the lawsuit alleges.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APTexas VA Run Like a ‘Crime Syndicate,’ Whistleblower Says

By Jacob Siegel.

Last week, President Obama pledged to address allegations of corruption and dangerous inefficiencies in the veterans’ health-care system. But before the president could deliver on his pledge, the scandal has spread even further. New whistleblower testimony and internal documents implicate an award-winning VA hospital in Texas in widespread wrongdoing—and what appears to be systemic fraud.

Emails and VA memos obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast provide what is among the most comprehensive accounts yet of how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system. It shows not only how they manipulated hospital wait lists but why—to cover up the weeks and months veterans spent waiting for needed medical care. If those lag times had been revealed, it would have threatened the executives’ bonus pay.

What’s worse, the documents show the wrongdoing going unpunished for years, even after it was repeatedly reported to local and national VA authorities. That indicates a new troubling angle to the VA scandal: that the much touted investigations may be incapable of finding violations that are hiding in plain sight.

“For lack of a better term, you’ve got an organized crime syndicate,” a whistleblower who works in the Texas VA told The Daily Beast. “People up on top are suddenly afraid they may actually be prosecuted and they’re pressuring the little guys down below to cover it all up.”

“I see it in the executives’ eyes,” the whistleblower added. “They are worried.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Furious Veteran Montel Williams UNLOADS On Obama Over VA Scandal

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An absolutely livid Montel Williams, who served 22 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy, savaged the government, the Obama administration and the American people over the unfolding Veterans Administration scandal, accusing us all of violating our promise to care for those who swore to protect us.

The well-known talk show host and (less well-known) veterans’ advocate appeared on Fox News with Neil Cavuto on Wednesday to vent his anger over recent revelations surrounding the treatment of America’s sick veterans by the VA.

An inspector general report released Wednesday confirmed that at a Phoenix-area VA office, thousands of veterans waited months for much-needed appointments with specialists.

More egregiously (and criminally), 1,700 veterans were kept off the appointment wait-list in order to meet federal criteria for referrals. And many VA whistleblowers are alleging the problems are not confined to Phoenix alone.

Williams was incensed. “I am angry, my friend,” he told Cavuto. “I’m angry because, you know, we made a promise. When I stood with my hand up proudly, I said, ‘I do solemnly swear and affirm to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and I will bear true faith –.’ I went through my oath.”

Read more from this story HERE.

WATCH: After VA Scandal, Even Dems Call Obama ‘Detached, ‘Incompetent’

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Referring to Barack Obama’s “wait and see” statement last week on the growing VA scandal as a “breaking point,” CNN’s John King said Sunday that in addition to Republican criticism, even Democrats are now calling Obama incompetent and detached.

“More and more Democrats in key 2014 races are calling for the president to get a spine, they say, and fire his Veterans Affairs secretary.

And what more and more Democrats are saying privately is scathing, calling the president and his team detached, flat footed, even incompetent.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Pro-Vet “Rolling Thunder” Rally Comes to DC As VA Fails Veterans

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Photo Credit: TownHall By Kevin Glass.

Rolling Thunder, a biker rally in Washington, D.C. created during the Vietnam War to honor American veterans, comes to the Capitol during Memorial Day weekend during the VA health scandal in which the government has been falsifying information about their ability to help America’s veterans.

The rally is held every year during Memorial Day, and they expect over 500,000 motorcyclists to participate this year.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty VA scandal fits an established Obama narrative: skilled politician, lousy manager

By Doyle McManus.

We don’t normally expect our presidents to pay close attention to how long veterans are being asked to wait for care in the vast medical system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

But we do expect presidents to appoint Cabinet officers and other aides who can run the federal government well — well enough, at least, to prevent full-blown scandals from erupting.

That’s what the VA’s long-running scheduling problems have turned into after reports that veterans died while waiting for medical care — and bureaucrats apparently manipulated records to make their performance look good when it wasn’t.

No one can read the stories of individual veterans who suffered at the hands of the bureaucracy — like Edward Laird, a 76-year-old Navy veteran who lost half of his nose because he had to wait two years for cancer tests — without feeling helpless fury.

And those stories are certain to keep coming.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ben Shapiro: The VA Scandal Proves That Democrats’ Approach To Healthcare Doesn’t Work

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Photo Credit: IJ Review The on-going V.A. scandal has outraged many people across the country, both Democrats and Republicans alike. President Obama himself is “madder than hell” about the cooked and secret waiting lists, some of which may have led to the deaths of dozens of veterans and delayed care to many more.

In a column Thursday at Truth Revolt, Ben Shapiro writes that many Democrats and left-wing pundits actually lauded the V.A. as their model of a single-payer, government run healthcare system that could replace America’s current healthcare system.

Among those who idolized the V.A., Nobel Prize Winning economist and commentator, Paul Krugman:

Multiple surveys have found the VHA providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers…the VHA is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Where VA Has Taken Veterans, Obamacare is Leading All Americans

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Photo Credit: Cliff Owen, APBy Kevin OBrien.

The White House says Americans can’t draw any conclusions yet about just how screwed up is the Department of Veterans Affairs medical care system.

Well, yes, Americans can. And if they have any sense — always a debatable proposition — Americans will.

One conclusion we can draw is an old, familiar one: No matter what the issue or activity, bureaucracy’s first and strongest instinct is to protect itself in the face of a perceived threat.

Another conclusion is probably just dawning on those Americans with the wit to see it, because so very few of us have had a brush with a medical system of which government is the sole proprietor: Putting a government bureaucracy in charge of one’s health is a gamble likely to end badly.

And yet, if Obamacare stands, that is precisely the gamble each and every American eventually will take.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP / Susan WalshObama: ‘We All Know It Often Takes Too Long for Veterans to Get the Care They Need’

By Susan Jones.

“Even if we had not heard reports out of this Phoenix facility or other facilities, we all know that it often takes too long for veterans to get the care that they need,” President Obama said Wednesday in his first public comments on the growing scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“That’s not a new development. It’s been a problem for decades. And it’s been compounded by more than a decade of war. That’s why, when I came into office, I said we would systematically work to fix these problems, and we have been working really hard to address them.”

The president noted that he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee when he was a U.S. senator — “and it was one of the proudest pieces of business that I did in the legislature.”

Bringing the VA system into the 21st Century “is not an easy task,” Obama said. He also touted the “progress” made during his presidency — including record levels of VA funding, expanding the number of veterans eligible for disability benefits, improving care for women veterans, reducing homelessness among veterans, and helping millions pursue higher education, training, and jobs.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Miami VA Whistleblower Exposes Drug Dealing, Theft, Abuse

By Jim DeFede.

When asked why he would risk his job and speak publicly, Detective Thomas Fiore considered the question carefully before answering.

“People are dying,” he finally said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.”

Fiore, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida, contacted CBS4 News hoping to shed light on what he considers a culture of cover-ups and bureaucratic neglect. Among his charges: Drug dealing on the hospital grounds is a daily occurrence.

“Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all,” he explained.

Even inside the hospital, he says he was stopped from doing his job – investigating reports of missing drugs from the VA pharmacy. When the amount of a particular drug inside the pharmacy doesn’t match the amount that the pharmacy is supposed to have, a report, known as a “discrepancy report” is generated. Normally it was his job to investigate the reports to determine if they were the result of harmless mistakes or criminal activity. But all that changed, he said, about two years ago.

Read more from this story HERE.

Miller: VA Scandal Part of ‘Pattern of Deceit’

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Photo credit: APJoe Miller today stated that the VA scandal is just the latest in a pattern of deceit emanating from the Obama Administration, and that U.S. Senator Mark Begich is part of the problem.

Reports recently surfaced revealing that certain Veterans Administration medical facilities around the country have been “gaming” the system to give the appearance that veterans are receiving better and more timely care than they are. Tragically, while VA officials have been propagating this false information, veterans have been denied the critical care they need, which, in several known instances, resulted in the loss of life.

“What we have learned over the last days and weeks about the unfolding scandal at the VA, fits a pattern of deceit that has permeated the Obama Presidency,” said Miller. “As a veteran who has used VA services and as a citizen, I am outraged that once again the actions of this Administration have cost American lives.”

The VA scandal does not reflect well on this President or Senator Begich, who want us to trust the federal government to continue to oversee the healthcare of our entire nation through ObamaCare.

From the IRS, to Benghazi, to the NSA, to Fast and Furious, to the AP wiretapping scandals, the President who promised to lead the “most transparent” Administration has instead led one that operates in the shadows.

Where has Begich been during the trail of scandals that have plagued the Obama Presidency? He has carried the water for the most lawless Administration in United States history, voting with the President 97 percent of the time last year. What is Begich’s answer to making the executive branch more accountable to the people? He voted for the “nuclear option” with Harry Reid and the Democrats, taking away a century-and-a-half precedent of the right of the minority to check overweening executive power.

“President Obama and Mark Begich’s five years in office have undermined the Constitution and further eroded the faith and trust of the American people in their government. As Alaska’s next United States senator, I will do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of the VA scandal and support my fellow veterans. It is imperative that the next Congress begins the hard work of restoring the faith and trust of the people in their government,” said Miller.

Joe Miller is a husband, father, combat veteran, and advocate of Constitutional liberty who believes in individual rights, private property, free markets and the sanctity of human life.

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

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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.

Lessons of the VA Scandal

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Photo Credit: National Review If our government has any obligation to fulfill its many promises on health care, it should be first and foremost to the men and women who served in our armed forces. But the scandal over hidden waiting lists at a growing number of veterans’ hospitals (seven so far) — wherein dozens of veterans died while waiting months for vital treatment, and the VA covered up the lengthy wait times — should make everyone wonder whether we can place our trust in a government-managed health-care system. The Dayton Daily News reported on Sunday that its investigation of a database of claims paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs shows that the words “delay in treatment” were used 167 times. The VA paid out a total of $36.4 million to settle the claims. There could well be many more cases of “death by delay” at the VA that never came to light.

Are there lessons in the VA scandal for the rest of us if Obamacare survives and even expands?

You betcha. The first lesson is that as government expands taxpayer subsidies for health care, the demand will always outstrip supply. Here is President Obama in a speech to disabled veterans in August 2013:

The last time I was with you, I pledged to cut the backlog, slash those wait times, deliver your benefits sooner. And I’m going to be honest with you; it has not moved as fast as I wanted. Part of it is all these new veterans in the system who came in — Agent Orange, PTSD. It means a lot more claims, and despite additional resources, it’s resulted in longer waits. And that’s been unacceptable — unacceptable to me, unacceptable to [Department of Veterans Affairs] Secretary [Eric] Shinseki.

A few weeks later, President Obama had to admit that he found the fiasco of the HealthCare.gov website also “unacceptable.” Last week, his aides told reporters he was “madder than hell” over the veteran waiting-list scandal.

Read more from this story HERE.