NOTE: “Answers” emails have ended for the school year and will resume September 2nd.
Daily posting will end for the summer on June 13th and will resume August 25th.

1. a) What is the VA?
b) What is the role of the VA Inspector General (IG)?

2. What is significant about the report released Wednesday by the Office of the Inspector General?

3. Describe the findings/conclusions made in the IG’s interim report released Wednesday. (see para. 2-4, 6)

4. What recommendations has the IG’s report made?

5. What has VA Secretary Eric Shinseki vowed to do? What action has he already taken?

6. Many are calling on President Obama to fire Secretary Shinseki. An excerpt from an op-ed posted under “Background” below makes the following points:

• But Congress has known since the 1990s about vets at many VA facilities waiting hundreds of days for care and sometimes dying in line.
• In 1996, Congress passed a law requiring that any vet needing care be seen within 30 days.
• The General Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2000, and again in 2001, that excessive waiting was still a problem.
• In 2007, and again in 2012, the VA’s own inspector general reported that VA schedulers routinely cheated to hide long waits.
• The abuse was vividly documented in a March 2013 hearing of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, more than a year before the Phoenix scandal broke. Debra Draper, the GAO’s director of health care, told Congress that the GAO visited four VA medical sites and found that more than half the schedulers were manipulating the system to conceal how long vets wait to see a doctor. Roscoe Butler, an American Legion investigator, described seeing similar tricks. Asked if the VA could correct the problem, Draper was skeptical.

Considering the points above, we also know the following:

• President Obama has been in office for 6 years. An aide said that he is "madder than hell" about possible deadly healthcare delays at the Department of Veterans Affairs and is determined to investigate and fix any flaws in the system.
• Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been in office for over 25 years. He has called for the Department of Justice to launch an investigation and for Shinseki to step down. He said, "If Secretary Shinseki does not step down voluntarily, then I call on the president of the United States to relieve him of his duties -- to fire him."
• Many other Senators and Congressmen are equally outraged.

If the above assertions made by Betsy McCaughey in her op-ed are true, President Obama, the entire Congress and Secretary Shinseki knew about the horrible situation in VA hospitals.
Explain your answers for the following:
a) What responsibility did the Secretary of Veterans Affairs have to reform the system and ensure our veterans were getting the care they deserved?
b) What responsibility did President Obama have to ensure that his appointee was getting the job done and our veterans were getting the care they deserved?
c) What responsibility did Congress have to ensure the system would be fixed and our veterans were getting the care they deserved?
d) Watch the news video under “Resources.” Dr. Foote, who went public with the allegations against the Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital says those in charge should be prosecuted. What do you think?
e)  Discuss your answers to question #6 with a parent.  How do your answers compare?