Today, May 31, 2014, Eric Shinseki resigned as Secretary of the Department of Veterans' Affairs. While that, and the earlier firings of the heads of the Phoenix VA hospital may bring immediate gratification, it won't be the magic wand that puts Humpty Dumpty back together again.
The VA started in various forms during our country's history, with the noblest of intentions...to care for with dignity the soldiers who sacrificed to defend our nation from enemies foreign and domestic. Starting in 1776, Congress established pensions for Continental soldiers who fought for independence. In 1811, the first incarnations of VA hospitals was conceived (but in a harbinger of things to come, wasn't implemented until 1834).
The American Civil War created a new generation of vets and accompanying maladies. Ironically, during this period, the government was on the ball...but subsequent wars saw the VA slip into a feast or famine mode, depending on the national and political mood.
My first experience of the VA in any form was the movie "Coming Home"...about a Vietnam vet struggling through rehab. As a son of a vet myself, this film made an indelible mark on me. It showcased what kind of battles returning vets had to face. With advances in modern medicine, however, more of those vets are returning...with steeper hills to climb. You would think a department created for helping vets would make this easier. Instead, veterans are finding themselves as disposable heroes...tossed in the garbage with the false promise of help and hope.
The Phoenix VA was just the tip of a massive iceberg of deception and incompetence. Some 1,700 soldiers were "lost"...kept off the official "wait list" for appointments for care. Forty died waiting. And the cherry on top, and a plot that could come from a Robert Grisham novel...two sets of records, one "official" (read "cooked"), the other a more acurate list. The subsequent IG investigation has revealed a systemic cancer...Phoenix is just one of many facilities. Even in my state, 29 families, representing 29 veterans, received compensation for incidents occuring since 2001.
Whatever role Eric Shinseki played in these mishaps is still being argued...but his subsequent resignation may not really bring about the much needed change the VA needs to provide the help and care that veterans require. The VA and it's recent sister program, the "Wounded Warriors" project, has seen egregious abuse and neglect. Case in point...Sgt. Jerrald Jensen, who battled back from an IED attack, only to be re-injured in his second stint, and saved only by former top brass of his WW unit. While Shinseki could have "hired and fired" the guilty parties, the fact is even a competent administrator would have a challenge navigating 50 states, and the myriad facilities and bureacracies of each. Throw in the perverse incentive to come in under budget and up to speed, and the corner cutters will get inventive.
The devil is in the design...the VA is a multitude of feifdoms, and relatively little oversight. Only when things go wrong, and in bunches, and at a bad time, will it get noticed. It seemed like yesterday that there was the scandal of Walter Reed, and yet here we are again. We are making the same mistakes, and it is still taking lives. While people do need to be fired, the fix that we really need must be as systemic as the disease itself...protocols should be put in place to prevent such conditions from forming, such as consistent and thorough inspections, an overview board, and maybe even scrapping the VA and giving veterans medical vouchers for private care.
Whatever the solution, it has to be more than the usual "fire the man in charge"...because if the system doesn't change, we will just be doing the same dance further down the road, only with different partners.