Brickbat: Good Enough for Government Work

Danny Raustadt / Dreamstime

A USA Today invstigation has found the Department of Veterans Affairs has repeatedly hired health care workers who have lost malpractice claims or had disciplinary actions taken against them. The agency has even repeatedly violated a federal law that bars it from hiring physicians whose licenses have been revoked.

Comments

[Rat on a train]

The long waits for care protect patients from the VA.

[Stoic]

Sounds like the VA is stuck with doctor job candidates who can't get insurance reimbursement. Working for them must be even less desireable than dealing with insurance companies.

[Hank Phillips]

Was this the origin of "the Grateful Dead"?

[Conchfritters]

Damn close - the Gratfeful Dead is a folk tale motif of a wanderer who gives his last penny to pay for a corpse's burial, then is magically aided by the spirit of the dead person. Much better than the Warlocks in my opinion.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The VA gave these people a second chance. Shouldn't we pay it forward and give the VA a second chance?

[68W58]

The VA also gave these two administrators a "second chance".

http://www.stripes.com/some-va.....s-1.395527

I mean, all they did was scam the hiring system to get easier jobs at the same high pay ($181K for one and $173K for the other), then claim $400,000 in "moving expenses". But, of course, you can't send them to prison for that, or fire them, or even demote them apparently.

[Hank Phillips]

The Harrison Act allowed physicians to prescribe stupefacients and stimulants "in the course of his professional practice." By defining habits and addictions as non-diseases, evangelical politicians branded pain-treating doctors the criminal avatars of Satan (the way they did abortion providers before the Libertarian Electoral vote of 1972 became Roe v. Wade) Two results: physicians indicted were immediately stripped of licenses and/or lost all clients, and the soldier-wounding Political State became the "narcotic trust." This came home to roost in 1923 when President Harding's buddies were caught profiteering from German heroin and coke (and Harding himself was probably poisoned by his fellow Republican politicians). Look at the legislation being enforced DURING the Crash of 1987 and you will notice that everyone working at the VA was forced to piss into a Dixie cup or be fired. This revived the "nationalizing of people" Germany's National Socialists were so proud of in the 1930s.

[Citizen X - #6]

A USA Today invstigation has found the Department of Veterans Affairs has repeatedly hired health care workers who have lost malpractice claims or had disciplinary actions taken against them.

To be fair, no one else wants to work for the VA.