Trump's nominee for VA secretary...
Is a joke....
I worked for the VA healthcare system for 5 years. I know the corruption that exists. It doesn't surprise me he ended up nominating someone from within. No way was the system cronies gonna allow anyone from outside their system be brought in. The system as a whole is set up to reward the bad apples and cover their asses. I saw so many of those bad apples get promoted, given awards/recognitions while the good apples get shit on and made to feel like THEY are the problems.
Yet I have seen little media coverage of the guy's nomination.
One incident was the FBI raiding our human resource dept and arresting 6 HR workers for taking bribes to give out jobs. For $300 an applicant would be the one to be picked/hired. No one would really say how long the scam was going on or what job positions were "awarded" for $300. At least one hospital administrator was found to be part of the process. I'm assuming the non paying applicants had their paperwork shredded while the paying applicants were presented as the ones who HR recommended for hire. $300 may not seem like a lot but who knows how long it was going on and how many jobs were given out. And, as usual with the VA, no local or national coverage...it was all swept quietly under the rug.
A unit clerk supervisor had an affair with one of his workers...she got pregnant, he was allowed to "retire".
A nursing assistant scared a patient so badly that the patient reported feeling that he was about to be physically abused if he didn't cooperate with the assistant. The worker was not fired or suspended, instead she was temporarily reassigned to sterile processing dept for 2 weeks til things calmed down and then she was brought back to the floor to provide patient care.
We had workers show up an hour or 2 late for work, still get paid because their fellow bad apples covered for them and even if management knew they never addressed it. These same people usually rode the clock at the end of their shift and claimed "overtime". So not only did they get paid for not being there, they then claimed OT even though it wasn't really OT since they got to work late. And heaven help the people who were waiting on their relief who showed up late, they were ignored and seen as complainers. There are NO time clocks in the VA system. It goes by the honor system.
Workers would sign up for an extra work day, get OT pay, and then call in sick on their scheduled day..and still get OT pay for that "extra day" even though it was not an "extra day" since they called in sick for their regular day. Again, management turned a blind eye.
Patients were kept for weeks after their initial acute health problem was solved...it was turning into a nursing home unit even though we were an acute problem unit. It wasn't until someone higher up in the VA system made note that our hospital had the lowest discharge rate in the COUNTRY...only then did the hospital start to discharge patients who had had their acute problem fixed. Why did they keep the patients?? Because the VA system was paying for their stay. No insurance company or Medicare to say "hey...the problem is fixed, they need to GO". Nope...just drain the VA tax coffers. You see...the VA system gets their funding a year ahead of time in BULK. If they have any money "left over" their following year funding is lowered. So they spend, spend, spend and NO ONE questions it. Doesn't matter that the money didn't need to be spent or that it was spent inappropriately...
We had 2 vets kill themselve on campus. Neither made the local or national news. One used a gun in a lobby bathroom on the weekend (when the lobby/public areas are deserted as opposed to weekday when they were packed and running like a small city.) The other was a former employee who sliced his wrists and laid down in a bathtub full of hot water. No one knew what happened til the water started to flood the bathroom and leaked to the floor below. He had been hospitalized on the psych unit at one point prior to his suicide.
The system will remain corrupt, nothing will change, and even if Trump were not crazy and actually wanted to make real changes to the VA system, as long as an insider has been nominated and given the job, NOTHING will change. Ever. And Trump knows what he has done and that he "lost out" to the VA system, that is why his public announcement was so brief and made during his so called press conference. He is hoping that the media doesn't bring up the VA nomination and that nothing will change.
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