UPDATE: From the politician's website:
Demagoguery? Well, whether or not you'd apply that D-word, the bottom's kind of dropped out of the bluster; here. From that item:
The interim investigative report released Wednesday found at least 1,700 veterans waiting for health care at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs medical facility were not included on the facility’s wait list, and patients there waited an average of 115 days for their first appointments.
The report also documents schemes used at VA facilities intended to conceal wait times and concluded that the problems are national in scope.
Less than a week ago, Walz said he would reserve judgment until the report was complete and that Shinseki, the longest-serving VA secretary in history, deserved the “benefit of the doubt.”
The troubling findings apparently removed all doubt.
Let's see, "released Wednesday" means yesterday, May 28, so the politician's website sputtering is all about not waiting to see the evidence presented via an inspector general's report? Isn't it best to wait until all of the reliable evidence has been analyzed and presented, rather than jumping to attack-mode conclusions, aka, being premature? It seems that Franken holding office was sagacious in holding judgment, which probably is why he should remain in office; sagaciousness; whereas others are getting fireworks permits.
___________UPDATE____________
It may be a universal problem with all healthcare cost. Too many chiefs and not enough indians.
NYT, here.
Hey, isn't that the military's problem too? And the service academies keep churning out graduates; no curtailment there despite an obvious brass-heavy status quo. In healthcare, specialization paying better and bottlenecking the med school doors makes primary care backlogs what they are. GOP tightness with the budget has meant the VA has been short changed and the chiefs in VA units appear to have been telling the indians to cook the books.
Shinseki is to fall on his sword, but the NYT item talks of 20-years of same old, same old. Veterans deserve better, and indeed, once Medicare for all becomes the norm, as it must over time, we all will deserve better.
Spending on oil wars should never be promoted over spending on citizen well-being, yet that is exactly what the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration and the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned of has done to us.
Progressive answers, not Tea Party keening, are needed to dig out of the hole by ramping out rather than digging deeper. And clearly, unfunded federal mandates is what digging the many holes deeper is all about. And which politicians are the ones mainly digging deeper? Answer that in November at the polls.
Fund it and it will work. Money spent of facilities, that does create short-term construction jobs, but medical care is dispensed by medical practitioners, not construction workers, not administrators [aka "bean counters"].
Do it. But do it right. And DO NOT politicize it. Fix it WITHOUT finger pointing. Remember, 20 years. That spans the Bush tax cuts, after all, so why is that side doing ANY finger pointing. They are the smoke and mirrors crowd.