EDITORIAL: To fix VA, privatize hospitals, benefits

President Barack Obama says he is “madder than hell” about the widening Veterans Affairs scandal. In fact, if the administration is to be believed, nobody is madder about it than the president — not the American people, our fighting men and women, or even the families of at least 40 veterans who died while waiting for treatment at mismanaged VA hospitals.

The president has been mad about a lot of things. Before he was mad about the VA scandal, he was mad about the rollout of Healthcare.gov, the IRS targeting scandal and the Secret Service prostitution scandal. Mad, mad, mad.

In front of the White House last week, the mad president spoke about his latest outrage — and came across as remarkably indifferent.

“When I hear allegations of misconduct — any misconduct — I will not stand for it,” he said. “If these allegations prove to be true, it is dishonorable, it is disgraceful, and I will not tolerate it — period.”

President Obama wants us to believe that he just found out about malfeasance within the VA system when, in fact, he has known about it — and, to borrow his word, tolerated it — since before becoming president.

According to briefing materials obtained by the Washington Times via the Freedom of Information Act, Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in 2008 that incorrectly reported wait times and scheduling problems at VA facilities were compromising veterans’ access to timely health care. Although the documents show the problems date back to the Bush administration — and perhaps even earlier — they raise serious questions about the Obama administration’s lack of action in correcting them since taking office.

More recently, additional reports have indicated the presence of secret wait lists at VA facilities across the country, including the VA’s Phoenix hospital, where officials are accused of proving a false set of books to hide excessive wait times, and where some veterans died as a result.

Veterans all across the country have been screaming about long waits and a resulting lack of care for years. Late last year, a 78-year-old blind veteran in agonizing pain was forced to wait six hours in the emergency room at the North Las Vegas VA Medical Center before being seen.

Like so many times before, President Obama is outraged and pledging to get to the bottom of this problem and fix it. And like so many times before, there’s little reason to believe he will. The VA system is vintage Washington: too much bureaucracy and too little accountability. The men and women who’ve proudly defended our nation will continue to wait far too long for routine medical treatment — or get none at all. Veterans’ disability claims still take many months, or more than a year, to process.

Embattled VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, who’s been in charge since the president took office, supposedly is working on a nationwide review of patient access to care, and the president’s deputy chief of staff, Rob Nabors, is compiling a list of recommendations on how the VA can improve. Wow.

No matter how many studies are conducted, the fact remains that the government-run VA system simply doesn’t work — because no government-run health care system works. Such systems are incapable of being nimble and responsive to the individual needs of millions of different patients. Take a number. We’ll get to you when we can.

While there is no perfect health care system, there is a more perfect option. It’s way past time to radically reform the VA. Veterans should be given cards equivalent to vouchers that allow them to receive health care wherever they choose, minus the politics and dangerous wait times. Privatize VA hospitals. Anything less should make us all madder than hell.