Vets deserve answers, quality care

It is ironic indeed that our nation’s veterans, many of whom have survived the rigors of combat, may well feel as if they are being sent “into harm’s way” once again when they enter the Veterans Affairs health system.

Ironic and disturbing.

It is hard to wrap your head around the notion that Veterans Affairs hospitals may have even developed “secret waiting lists” to inexplicably keep some veterans from receiving the life-saving care they need.

Thank goodness Congress has opened hearings into the allegations of treatment delays and preventable deaths at a Phoenix veterans hospital. As many as 40 patients supposedly died while awaiting treatment. We need to find out exactly what was done, and hold people accountable.

Whether that accountability should remain at the local level or rise to the level of demanding the resignation of Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, we think, it is still too early to say. Shinseki said all the right things at Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee, but that doesn’t mean he has been doing the right things. Time will tell.

For its part, the White House has assigned deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors to do his own investigation into policies on patient scheduling and safety. And Thursday, the inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs told lawmakers that his office is working with federal prosecutors to determine if criminal charges are warranted.

Thank goodness. But let’s not imagine that this is an isolated problem. We must go beyond the specific problems in Phoenix or other hospitals and consider whether the nation as a whole has reneged on its promise to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and other military personnel. It should not have come as any surprise that an aging population of veterans was going to need a panoply of medical services in this and the next decade. Add to that the wounded vets who came home from two major wars over the last 13 years, and you have a system that is seriously overburdened.

In fact, the VA serves nearly 9 million veterans a year at 152 hospitals. Perhaps what we need to be studying is whether or not we have enough facilities to serve such a huge population adequately in the first place.

Hopefully, the example of the VA hospitals as a vast government bureaucracy delivering health care is not reflective of what we can expect going forward from a national medical system that is being pushed more and more toward government control.

Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.