The past couple of years have exposed horror after horror in our nation's Veterans Affairs clinics. Most recently, we learned that a dentist in the Tomah, Wisconsin VA accidentally infected hundreds of patients with HIV. Katie wrote up another disturbing piece of news today that VA employees left the body of a deceased veteran in a shower for 9 hours. On top of these revelations, we find that other clinics have been manipulating schedules and hundreds of veterans have died waiting for care.
The VA has also managed to screw up in its attempts to turn things around. The agency had been using a rating system to rate the country's clinics. The problem is they hid the results from the public because they didn't want to deter veterans from going to their one-star clinics.
With all of these unbelievable examples of neglect and failed attempts at damage control, VA Secretary Bob McDonald had the nerve to said this in an email to USA Today on Friday: "To be clear, no VA medical facility is bad or failing."
This isn't the first time McDonald has appeared to turn a blind eye to the poor care of our vets. Over the summer, he essentially minimized the scandal by comparing VA wait times to standing in line for a ride at Disney World.
Virtually no accountability has been enforced for these failing clinics. That dentist who infected patients with HIV? He was simply demoted to a desk job.
Change needs to start at the top.
Trump is reportedly considering former Sen. Scott Brown for VA secretary, Gov. Sarah Palin and Pete Hegseth, former chief executive of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), to replace McDonald.