{"id":4544,"date":"2005-06-27T10:16:45","date_gmt":"2005-06-27T14:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4544.html"},"modified":"2005-06-27T10:16:45","modified_gmt":"2005-06-27T14:16:45","slug":"losing-sight-of-the-big-picture-at-veterans-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/losing-sight-of-the-big-picture-at-veterans-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Losing sight of the big picture at Veterans Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

We learned on Friday that Bush’s Department of Veterans Affairs has come up $1 billion short<\/a> in meeting the current health care needs for veterans. Today we learn that this is but one of the VA’s many priorities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“As you know,” Deputy Undersecretary [at the Veterans Health Administration] Laura Miller said on the May 27 call, “many of our facilities, medical centers, CBOCs” — that’s community-based outpatient clinics; there are about 850 of them in the country, many in rural areas and some open only one to two days a month — “and [other] offices have a picture of Secretary [Jim] Nicholson prominently displayed.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, however,” Miller continued, “there are many facilities that currently do not have the picture displayed. I am aware that the mailings of the pictures occurred on April 22, 2005.” So that’s more than five full weeks.<\/p>\n

“Dr. Perlin” — that’s Jonathan B. Perlin , undersecretary for health, who revealed the $1 billion shortfall after being grilled by committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) — “and I cannot stress the importance of this enough<\/b>,” she said. “We are asking that you give this your highest priority<\/b>. We will continue to ask for daily updates<\/b> on the status until we are assured that all of our facilities have a current picture displayed.” (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bush administration officials always have their priorities straight, don’t they? When VA officials come up $1 billion short on meeting health care needs, they sheepishly admit it under pressure from lawmakers. But when isolated medical facilities fail to post a picture of VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, this<\/i> is has to be the “highest priority” for hospitals’ administrators.<\/p>\n

Then again, as Al Kamen noted<\/a>, it is important to be able to recognize the head of the agency. After all, this is the same Nicholson who insisted in April, “I can assure you that VA does not need [additional funds] to continue to provide timely, quality service….”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We learned on Friday that Bush’s Department of Veterans Affairs has come up $1 billion short in meeting the current health care needs for veterans. Today we learn that this is but one of the VA’s many priorities. “As you know,” Deputy Undersecretary [at the Veterans Health Administration] Laura Miller said on the May 27 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}