Via CNN:
Appointment wait times at the Department of Veterans Affairs are not getting better.
Despite billions of extra dollars poured into the agency in the last year and numerous reforms intended to improve veterans’ access to care, whistleblowers and internal documents obtained by CNN reveal some VA facilities continue to grapple with appointment wait times of months or more.
Even at the Phoenix VA medical center, where CNN learned last year “secret” appointment lists were hiding how veterans were dying waiting for care, sources say complicated wait-time calculations obscure ongoing appointment delays.
“The reality is veterans are waiting months — three, six months at a time, sometimes more — for care at the Phoenix VA,” said one source in Phoenix who agreed to speak to CNN anonymously because of fears of retaliation.
The source said this includes veterans waiting for potentially critical health procedures, such as colonoscopies, and other categories of specialty care that require timely attention.
This illustrates the central problem with “government run” anything: bureaucracies tend to break themselves and then apply bureaucratic fixes that don’t work. It’s like trying to stop someone from choking by tightly wrapping a scarf around his neck.
It also points to the fact that the Democrat mantra of “more money” is rarely, if ever, the solution to problems in a government agency.
Bureaucracies are inherently bloated and inefficient, which means they can’t really ever fix bloat and inefficiency when it reaches crisis proportions.
That this is happening to those who served our country is unconscionable, but we all know that the current Commander-in-Chief has different priorities.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member