Does the Shinseki resignation solve the problems of the Veterans Administration? No, but it looks as though it will create double trouble for the VA unless Republicans deliberately shove the VA mess to the back burner.
Thing is, the mess belongs to Congress and to Republicans in this Congress more notably. Congress has been, over the years, where the VA problems originate.
In any publicly financed medical system, funding is a chronic problem, and so is internal organization. (If you want another example of this, look at the history of the British National Health Service.) One possible solution would be to link the V.A.’s budget to the number of veterans and patients, effectively turning treatment into an entitlement program, but this hasn’t been done. Instead, Congress appropriates money for the agency in every budget cycle, and, in recent years, it has often come up short.
The Republicans in Congress are largely responsible for this. As recently as February, more than forty G.O.P. senators voted against a bill that would have expanded funding for the V.A. Some of the Obama Administration’s well-intentioned policies have also contributed to the squeeze on resources. By making it easier for veterans of all ages to get treatment for ailments that aren’t necessarily conflict-related, the Administration increased the demand for medical services. However, the V.A. system still has the same number of hospitals and staff—indeed, as the Times reported on Friday, the agency has a big shortage of doctors.
That wasn’t Shinseki’s doing. He’d been quietly lobbying for more funding and more investment, which hasn’t been forthcoming. But now he is the fall guy. That is, unless President Obama stands up and tells people what the real problem is. ...JohnCassidy,NewYorker
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to love war. Even admitting we have a huge population of vets from our shameless wars of choice -- the Vietnam War and every war since -- is admitting the heavy cost of their political choices.
Bureaucratic blindness and corruption within the VA take a toll, too, but they're nothing compared to the enormities of choosing war for political reasons and then avoiding spending on the wounded.
At the very least, we can count on the outcome Paul Waldman predicts:
...The reality is that as long as Shinseki was in office, Republicans would have a target at whom to shake their fists, and a way to keep the political story in the news. They benefited greatly from being able to call angrily for his resignation, an almost content-free bit of political theater that any candidate or member of Congress can participate in. But once he resigns, the focus has to turn to actually addressing the department’s problems, and that’s something that every candidate and almost all members of Congress will be completely uninterested in.
The more important problem is the very complicated practical question of how to fix what’s wrong at the V.A. Some parts of it, like making it harder for managers to game the system to make it seem like delays in getting appointments are shorter than they are, may be easy to solve. Others, like actually getting all those vets in quickly given the limited manpower of V.A. health facilities, are going to be a lot harder to solve.
After a couple of days the V.A. story will probably move from the front page to the inside pages. But those of us in the media should keep paying attention to how the project to fix the department goes, even if politicians stop talking about it. That’s what really matters. ...Waldman,WaPo
We allow Congress to walk away from guilt and embarrassment. Already we're a bunch of shootings on down the road and in the "oh yeah, when was that Sandy Hook thing?" stage of gun control. As for the vets issue... Heck, now we're on the other side of Memorial Day, so we'll just surge forward to flag pin-'n'-picnic day in July having done our bit for vets in ... Was it May? What was the name of that guy who got fired resigned?
