There are many more reasons to fire VA Sec. McDonald other than his terrible Disney comparison

Last updated on: May 31, 2016 at 8:34 am by Mark Meckler

There are many more reasons to fire VA Sec. McDonald other than his terrible Disney comparison 2016-05-31T08:34:36-06:00 Mark Meckler

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This week, Robert McDonald, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, said something so incredibly stupid that many are calling for his resignation. However, there are a slew of other more damning reasons as to why he deserves to be fired.

The latest controversy started Monday during a press conference where McDonald compared the long wait times at VA hospitals to waiting in line at Disney theme parks. He was saying that the time spent waiting for an appointment is irrelevant in comparison to the overall satisfaction of the patient once he or she receives treatment.

“What really counts is how does the veteran feel about their encounter with the VA,” McDonald said. “When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? What’s important is what your satisfaction is with the experience.”

But what McDonald failed to recognize in his reckless comment was exactly what House Speaker Paul Ryan alluded to in his scathing rebuke on Twitter: “Veterans have died waiting in those lines.”

As careless as his comment was, it pales in comparison to the many egregious ways veterans have been treated — that is, mistreated — by Veterans Affairs up to this point. Let’s look at just a few of them.

It’s obvious the VA isn’t at all concerned with patient wait times, as indicated by reports published in April that found supervisors instructing employees to falsify wait times and other manipulations at VA centers in at least seven states. These reports uncovered a decades-worth of veteran wait times reduced to zero minutes in the official books all across America and Puerto Rico. In many of these cases, the manipulation happened after the VA department promised to remedy the falsifications after its practices came to light in the Eric Shinseki-era of VA leadership. That’s when an investigation into the Phoenix VA system revealed gross negligence on the part of the federal government leading to the death of 35 veterans left waiting for care that never came.

When McDonald took over Shinseki’s scandal-ridden chair in 2014, he promised to bring a level of trust that was previously lacking. However, it’s clear that wait times aren’t decreasing at all, and if they are, it’s very subtle. McDonald says that the average time a veteran waits for an appointment is three to six days. Yet, the VA calculates wait times very differently than the patients do. The VA begins counting days once a scheduler returns the veterans call for an appointment, while the patient would obviously begin counting the second he hangs up after making the request.

The VA even came up with a $10 billion program that would help veterans who live over 40 miles away from a VA hospital get treatment at a non-VA facility. But at least 70,000 of those appointments took a month or more to transpire.

The budget for the VA is well over $160 billion, but even that can’t prevent severely misguided attempts at great care for our veterans. When a new VA hospital was completed in Aurora, Colorado last year, the department had overspent by at least $1 billion. Adding insult to injury, it was learned that over $6 million was spent on art. VA Committee Chairman Jeff Miller clarified that this was spent on “art and consulting services.” He further embarrassed the VA by pointing out that one art display cost nearly $300,000.

“[It] displays quotes by Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt in — wait for it — in Morse code,” he said. “It actually lights up.”

So, yes, comparing the pain our veterans are experiencing while not receiving care to happy children impatiently awaiting a ride on “It’s a Small World” is unforgivable. But McDonald has proven in myriad and far worse ways that he isn’t the leader our veterans need, nor his he the leader he promised he’d be.

Don’t fire him over this one thing, fire him for all of them.

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