A few years ago marked a dark time in the history of America concerning the men and women who wake up every day to serve and protect the American people. In the spring of 2012, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs came under heavy fire when “whistleblowers”, people who exposed the illegal activity from the inside, released incriminating evidence against the bureaucracy and its leadership for the way it was being run. Documents were leaked stating that the workers were instructed to “cook the books” when scheduling appointments for the veterans who needed medical care, meaning they falsified documents that purposely left out claims of veterans who needed care, and who the VA purposely did not assist. This caused many to have complications in their health that went unnoticed and then ultimately passing away due to their issues. As if that wasn’t enough of a problem, those at the head of the bureaucracy held off on implementing many programs, all while giving themselves very generous raises for terrible work. So, this all begs the question; “Will the VA ever be able to rid itself of corruption?” Those who feel a more government-centric system is the most efficient way to fix the issue of veteran’s health will argue that self-cleansing is the way to go, while those who believe in limited government would want to go along the path of a private care company that assists veterans. I am on the side of the latter, turning the Department of Veterans Affairs from an ineffective bureaucracy into a privatized, efficient organization that will put the needs of veterans who were wounded serving their country over the interests of a couple of bureaucrats. Most veterans are limited to single coverage to the VA, but in a privatized market of veterans choosing the care they want, and need desperately, there can be some government watch to ensure veterans are given what exactly is owed to them, whereas there is none of that when the government itself is running the care of our nation’s veterans.

The issue of veterans’ care is one that has been at the forefront of my family for quite some time. My father served in the United States Marine Corps from 1988-1992 with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS Shreveport and was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait as a part of Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War. My cousin Stephen has served in the United States Army for a decade since he graduated from high school and has served in Iraq and Afghanistan in our most recent conflicts. My uncle’s best friend from his college years at James Madison University, Justin Constantine, was commissioned in the Marine Corps while at law school at Denver University and eventually volunteered to deploy to the Al-Anbar province, where he was shot in the face by a sniper and survived miraculously, and is now sitting on the board of directors for the Wounded Warrior Project. The one thing that all three of these men have in common aside from their military service and duty to their country is that they have seen countless friends and fellow servicemen sustain injuries during their service that have led to their passing back here in the United States, waiting for care from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs that never came. My father had multiple friends and members of his unit pass away in VA hospital beds waiting for care to treat the illness they developed due to depleted uranium being in their system from exploded tank killing shells. My cousin Stephen and Mr. Constantine had friends take their own lives waiting for treatment program for the post-traumatic stress disorder they had developed due to their experiences in combat. According to a book by Casey P. Barton, “an estimated 1.5 million veterans required mental health care, including services for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD),” (Barton 28). Many of them did not receive necessary treatment, and because of all this tragedy that has effected members of my family, I feel it is necessary to inform as many as I can about the issues that face veterans so we can begin to save as many as possible before it is too late.

Before attempting to dive in and fix the issues of the VA, it is important to have a firm understanding of what the flaws of the department are. In early April of 2014, whistleblowers within the Phoenix, Arizona sect of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs exposed the bureaucracy for “cooking the books” on the appointment that veterans attempted to make to receive care, and at some points there was even evidence of deceased veterans somehow canceling their own appointments found in the system. In Pete Hegseth’s article for the National Review, ‘The VA Scandal: Two Years On’, he states that, “Even the reflexively defensive Obama administration confirmed the obvious in a June 2014 report, admitting that “a corrosive [VA] culture has led to personnel problems across the Department that are seriously impacting morale and by extension, the timeliness of health care,” with “problems . . . exacerbated by poor management and communication structures, distrust between some VA employees and management, a history of retaliation toward employees raising issues, and a lack of accountability across all grade levels,” (Hegseth 1). This in fact is true, as it was doctors and other employees of the Phoenix facility that leaked the wrongdoings to the public back in 2014. The issue in this case is that there were higher ups in the management of the offshoot of the larger VA that simply did not care for the wellbeing of their patients, which seems to be an easy fix by firing those people. The problem with that, however, is that in a system of veteran care like the VA, you can cycle different people in and out of those positions with little to no effect on the progression of the department. There is no check on the efficiency of a government run bureaucracy like there is for a privatized company where the government can look into their operations and pick out their wrongdoings. We see this constantly with the government overspending in different programs and areas of supposed “public benefit”. Specifically in the case of the VA scandal, a little over 235 billion dollars was spent trying to root out the corruption found rampant throughout multiple departments of the bureaucracy. None of this is to say all those who are employed by the VA are corrupt and immoral, the director of the VA Health Administration, Eric Shinseki, himself was a wounded veteran during his tour in Vietnam as an artillery forward observer, where he stepped on a landmine and lost part of his foot, before eventually returning to duty after spending nearly a year recuperating in a military care facility. When it came down to it, however, all Shinseki could do was, “’initiate the process for removal’ of the Phoenix hospital’s senior leaders,” (Miller 2). The issue was he never locked closely enough or enquired enough as to what the operations of each facility was, and that is something that cannot happen in independent companies, or else it will fail. The government can afford to make these mistakes because the government can siphon taxpayer money from the public in ridiculous amounts. Therefore, the amicable approach to a cooperation between independent healthcare companies and the government is the best solution to the problem that is faced today. The companies can compete to give the veterans and clients the healthcare they want, and the government can be watching over the interactions and intervene if necessary if it appears there is dishonesty within the business dealings of the companies. When the government is the sole proprietor of veteran healthcare, there can be no over watch to it but the government itself, as it is the highest power in our nation and the only check on the government is itself in different branches, which inevitably leads to inefficiency and rampant corruption. An applicable analogy is if you were to leave a child to watch itself, you would find that is would be more likely to feed itself candy and ice cream and other unhealthy things, and then provide itself the necessary nutrients a child requires. 

According to a study done by Beverley Rosa Williams, PhD, F. Amos Bailey, MD, Patricia S. Goode, MSN, MD, and Kathryn L. Burgio, PhD, “Currently 28,000 Veterans die each year within Veterans Affairs Medical Center,” (Williams, Bailey, Goode, Burgio 12). This is mostly due to the different hospitals around the nation purposefully delaying patientcare and falsifying documents, causing vets to receive care to late, as previously mentioned. This is a travesty to say the least, when you do the math that is nearly 77 veterans per day that die within the incompetent VA facilities all across the country, and when you account for the 22 veterans that take their own lives every day, you are looking at nearly 100 veterans of our great nation’s military dying per day. So what has the Department of Veteran’s Affairs done to fix the problem? According to an article written by Donovan Slack and Bill Theobald, the higher ups within the VA “doled out more than $142 million in bonuses to executives and employees for performance in 2014 even as scandals over veterans' health care and other issues racked the agency,” (Slack, Theobald 1). So while veterans, under the supposed “care” of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, continued to die waiting for treatment due to malpractice and purposeful delaying of medical attention, those in positions of power within the bureaucracy saw it fit to give themselves some pay raises. “Among the recipients were claims processors in a Philadelphia benefits office that investigators dubbed the worst in the country last year. They received $300 to $900 each. Managers in Tomah, Wis., got $1,000 to $4,000, even though they oversaw the over-prescription of opiates to veterans – one of whom died. The VA also rewarded executives who managed construction of a facility in Denver, a disastrous project years overdue and more than $1 billion over budget. They took home $4,000 to $8,000 each. And in St. Cloud, Minn., where an internal investigation report last year outlined mismanagement that led to mass resignations of health care providers, the chief of staff cited by investigators received a performance bonus of almost $4,000,” (Slack, Theobald 1). Misallocated funds are what occurred in this case to say the least. The 1 billion that they went over budget would have never occurred in the private sector, and if it had, it would have proven disastrous for the business and it would have failed, but once again, the government was able to suck money from the taxpayer to fund their ridiculous operation. And if we look at the incompetence that was mentioned out of the Wisconsin branch of the VA, the average 2,500 dollars that they took home a piece, all while over prescribing opiates for veterans, is downright abominable, solely for the fact that prescribing the correct dosages should be the easiest part of their job, and because of their negligence, a veteran that was once in their care passed away. When you look at these numbers and you see all the money that could have been used to better these men and women’s lives that went straight into the pockets of uncaring bureaucrats, one begins to understand why the complete reformation and transition of the Department of Veterans Affairs into a private organization is necessary.

In an investigative report by CBS reporter Wyatt Andrews, he dove into the topic of the mismanagement of the claim system in the VA, specifically looking at the Oakland, California facility. In his report, he spoke to a woman named Dory Stafford, whose now deceased husband, Wayne, had filed an informal claim for VA disability benefits back in 2004, and had received a letter in the mail in 2014 thanking him for his inquiry for the benefits, ten years after he filed the claim and seven years after he had passed away. This, without a doubt, brought great anguish upon Mrs. Stafford, and she is not the only one to encounter this. According to the report, “more than 13,000 informal disability claims were made between 1996 and 2009, but were ignored and put into a filing cabinet until 2012,” (Andrews). These were reportedly not even part of the backlog that the VA was dealing with in the claim aspect, as in those that were put on hold. These were simply claims that the VA never even recognized and straight up ignored and pretended never existed, in the hopes of having a cleaner record.

It turns out, however, that the tides have been turning more towards private veteran healthcare anyway. In an article written by Susan Ferrechio for the Washington Examiner, she wrote, “A day after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told a hometown newspaper he favored the idea of privatizing the VA, Secretary Eric Shinseki announced a plan to help veterans on wait lists obtain care at private facilities. “Each of our facilities is either enhancing their clinic capacity to help Veterans get care sooner, or where we cannot increase capacity, increasing the care we acquire in the community through non-VA care,” Shinseki said in a statement,” (Ferrechio 1). So as the tides begin to shift in favor of the privatized care, all that is left to do is keep pushing and fighting for the government to have as limited of a role as possible in the healthcare of our nation’s veterans. It is the only thing that they ask for and it is rightfully owed to them.

Beginning in 2014, there was a massive whistleblowing effort to show the public the corruption that is intrinsic in the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. All the ensuing horrifying information that came out showed what a powerful bureaucracy is capable of, which is making the employees richer while leaving the patients out to dry and eventually die. In a piece done by Edward Morrissey for The Week, he argues that, “In a multi-payer competitive market, government can act as the regulatory authority that would intercede to ensure proper access and care for America's veterans,” (Morrissey 1). I do not think it could be said any better. It is time we do what is sensible and let the veterans choose what coverage they want.
