The VA mess, bonuses, greed, and the hopeless situation of our veterans

Resigned VA Chief Shinseki: his 

resignation is called for, but it won't

solve anything

So, Erick Shinseki has resigned. He had to go. He seemed, until almost the last millisecond, blind to the problems of veterans waiting for months for appointments. Or not getting them at all. Or dying while waiting to see a doctor.

How did he miss the scandal going on under his nose? Was he blind? Couldn't he at least read a newspaper in the morning?

Alas, like any good General, Shinseki listened to his field commanders. (in this case their equivalent are Veterans Administration managers) when he wanted field intelligence. That’s normally a good practice, based on the assumption that the field commanders are telling the truth. But when they start turning in false intelligence, a good practice becomes a terrible one.

Yes, we can and should punish the VA managers who lied about appointment times and did other egregious forms of book keeping to make themselves look good so they could get bonuses, even as American heroes died awaiting medical care. But simply jailing them all won’t fix the problem, which lies not in the VA but in America's tight-fisted, politically doctrinaire, fact-blind, self-aggrandizing Congress

The real reason vets weren’t getting the medical care to which they’re entitled, and which they’ve surely earned, is that the VA doesn’t have enough medical staff to treat them all in a timely manner. And the reason for that is that Congress won’t appropriate enough money to hire more medical staff.

Until Congress is willing to pay for medical care what medical care needs to cost, we’ll have VA managers without bonuses and we’ll still have American heroes dying waiting for a doctor's appointment.

The people who should really be punished at the penny-pinching agents of the Koch Brothers’ (and other political campaign “donors”) greed.

Yeah, that’ll be the day.