GOP should have aimed at VA, not Obamacare

Yet, Capitol Hill could not muster a sustained response and eventually the 24/7 news media moved on.

That first scandal affected injured veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars living all over the country. Almost exactly one year ago I wrote a news story about Dave Denhardt of Shelby Township, an Army National Guard infantryman who narrowly survived a rocket attack on his base in Afghanistan.

Denhardt suffered severe head and brain injuries that led to seizures, memory loss, headaches, hearing loss and numbness in his left arm. Forced to use a wheelchair, Denhardt was told by the VA that he would need a service dog to assist him, but it would take four to six years for the VA to acquire a dog. He was also told by the Army that his application for a full medical retirement would take 405 days.

For the vets who have battled with the VA bureaucracy repeatedly, the lack of prompt service goes beyond red tape – it’s more like red razor wire that is impenetrable.

Yet, congressional Republicans, constantly irked by the federal government’s involvement in health care, spent the past five years shooting in the wrong direction.

Instead of taking on the second-largest federal bureaucracy, a VA system that operates very much in the mold of European-style socialism, they flailed away at an Obamacare system that provides a private-sector marketplace and individual tax breaks to make health coverage more affordable for the uninsured.

Investigation-minded Republicans should take a look at mid-level bureaucrats within Veteran’s Affairs who decided that new standards for patients’ wait times were impossible to meet. They developed a method of cheating, creating phony wait lists. And the result was an estimated 40 deaths of untreated vets. In some cases, this cruel deception, practiced at VA facilities nationwide, was motivated by bonus pay granted to middle-managers if they documented prompt care for vets.

Yes, this is disgraceful, as all of our political leaders seem to agree. But what’s also disgraceful is that the health care system supplied to our wounded warriors has been a failure for decades.

Military observers who have no interest in scoring political points have noted that disturbing reports about VA incompetence have circulated periodically since the Eisenhower administration. Numerous documents warned of severe problems within the VA’s sclerotic bureaucracy but each time, the outrage eventually faded.

Internal reports in 2001 and 2011 revealed that the VA wait times could prove medically dangerous for neglected vets. The scandal in 2007 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington showed, in shocking detail, that even the “crown jewel” of the VA system, was mismanaged badly.

According to Congresswoman Candice Miller, a Harrison Township Republican whose husband is a former Selfridge base commander, the problem plaguing the VA is not a lack of money.

VA funding has tripled since the pre-9/11 period, Miller said, including a 40 percent increase over the past three years. As much as $1.6 billion for medical care has gone unspent by the VA in some years.

If it’s true that more VA funding hasn’t solved the problem, then an intense nuts-and-bolts effort to revamp the entire agency may be needed. And the Republicans are just the ones to do it.

This is not a Nixon-to-China moment but the GOP has traditionally been viewed as more in-tune with the troops and the veterans organizations than many Democrats. A Republican select committee could dig deep, propose wholesale reforms, and withstand criticism from vets who protest the changes.

After all, many GOP lawmakers who like to wear green military jackets when visiting the troops also feel at home wearing green eyeshades when fly-specking a budget.

In addition, Democrats point out that Republicans were the most outspoken supporters of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that produced so many of these broken bodies that need VA assistance.

The first goal might be replacing the VA’s archaic data management process. Relying upon paper documents and utilizing computers with decades-old technology, the VA’s ways actually make the embarrassing 6-week glitch at the healthcare.gov exchange seem like a minor blip.

At the same time, the massive agency needs a structural overhaul. That could mean switching to a hybrid system, with VA facilities and specialists handling injuries directly related to combat, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, traumatic brain injuries and the loss of limbs.

Routine medical matters, including old wartime injuries that became a nagging problem during old age, could be handled by a privatized VA system that would finance a vet’s chosen health insurance. Miller and others in Congress point out that it makes little sense that a vet awaits an appointment at a VA facility 80 miles away when first-rate health care is available where they live.

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government recommens scrapping the entire system of VA applications. The feds eventually approve about 90 percent of claims from newly returning veterans, so why wouldn’t it be more efficient to approve them all and then audit a representative sample, retroactively, in order to reduce fraud?

President Obama, who has demonstrated a disturbing lack of alertness, a lack of attentiveness, over the past year, has clearly failed to create the “21st Century VA” he promised as a presidential candidate.

Maybe the White House should put the GOP’s hard-nosed “repeal and replace” attitude directed at Obamacare to work on the laundry list of problems at VA hospitals.

The Veteran’s Affairs maladies, after lingering for many years, hadn’t crystalized in the same way that the bumbling rollout of Obamacare focused the GOP mind on riding the healthcare reform issue for all it’s worth.

Well, that ride may be ending but duty calls in another facet of American healthcare.

To be sure, there is a substantial difference between a long wait for online insurance that may not be used for months and waiting for hands-on treatment of a chronic, debilitating medical condition.

This job will require more than dozens of meaningless House votes and a few political slogans. This will require solid solutions.

No death panels at work here.
But it is a life-and-death situation.