Author Topic: VA Nickel and Dimed Vets to Death While Running a Surplus for 5 Years  (Read 347 times)

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VA Nickel and Dimed Vets to Death While Running a Surplus for 5 Years

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On May 27, 2014 @ 2:05 pm In The Point | 3 Comments




The only parts of the government that refuse to spend money are the ones that deal with things that Obama Inc. doesn’t like.

Like taking care of wounded veterans. The VA managed to blow $500 million on office furniture while denying life-saving tests.


Dr. Richard Krugman, former associate chief of staff at the Veterans Affairs health care system based in Harlingen, Texas, said his boss implemented a policy in 2010 that colonoscopies would only be approved if the patient tested positive in three successive screenings for bloody stools.

“That was done because of dollars and cents. For the VA, they have to be bleeding out of their rectum before they would authorize a colonoscopy. That was the standard of care,” he said.

But the VA did have money for medical care. Unlike the rest of the government, it was running a surplus.


The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) expects to have more money for medical care than it can spend for the fifth fiscal year in a row, The Daily Caller has learned.

VA expects to carry over $450 million in medical-care funding from fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2015. VA received its full requested medical care appropriation of $54.6 billion this fiscal year, which is more than $10 billion more than it received four years ago.

This is part of an ongoing trend.

VA carried over $1.449 billion in medical-care funding from fiscal year 2010 to 2011, $1.163 billion from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2012, $637 million from fiscal year 2012 to 2013, and $543 million from fiscal year 2013 to 2014.

While vets were dying to save money on tests (an ongoing theme among liberal health care “reformers” who insist that too much money is being wasted on tests) the VA’s management was living well and running on that profit motive that liberals claimed wouldn’t apply to government health care.


Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/va-nickel-and-dimed-vets-to-death-while-running-a-surplus-for-5-years/