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Ellison's Must Read of the Day

Ellison must read
September 18, 2014

My must read of the day "Phoenix Wait-Lists ‘Contributed’ to VA Deaths," in ABC News:

Delays caused by secret waiting lists "contributed" to deaths at the Phoenix VA earlier this year, an assistant inspector general who helped draft a controversial Inspector General report admitted today under intense questioning by the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

The assertion by Dr. John Daigh comes less than a month after the Office of the Inspector General proclaimed in its official report that it is "unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely care caused the deaths of these veterans."

Rep. David Jolly (R., Fla.) asked Daigh whether he could "conclusively assert that wait-lists did not contribute to the deaths of veterans?"

"No," Daigh replied.

When asked whether he’d be "willing to say wait-lists contributed to the deaths," Daigh responded,  "Yes."

Last month, I reported on this report, namely the discrepancies of the media’s coverage of it, and a whistleblower’s claim that the report was intentionally confusing. Apparently, he was right and inspectors are getting around to admitting it—or at least one is.

When this IG report came out, Sen. Bernie Sanders released a statement saying, in part, "I was relieved … the IG was ‘unable to conclusively assert’ that patients died because of long waiting lines as news media reports had widely speculated." There was nothing in that report to actually be "relieved" about, but Sanders was not the only one who took away that type of conclusion—the media did too.

Countless news outlets printed headlines contending that the inspector general determined the forty veterans who reportedly died on a secret waiting list at the Phoenix VA were not due to wait times.

The report never really said that. It said they could not "conclusively" determine that the wait times led to the deaths, but the report still said "we were able to identify 40 patients who died while on the EWL during the period April 2013 through April 2014."

Let’s stop there.

Imagine for a second that an elderly man is walking to his car when would be carjackers approach his car and proceeded to steal it. The owner sees this, and runs to try and stop the thieves. In the process, the man collapses and dies from a heart attack.

You don’t actually have to imagine it because that case is going on in Florida right now, and it’s not the first case like it. The question is: are the carjackers responsible, in some fashion, for the elderly’s man death? Prosecutors say that they are.

People are often charged with crimes, though not always convicted, when their actions result in the death of another person through something like a heart attack, and the charges make sense. The actions of the thieves are very clearly an inextricable part of the sequence of events that led to the heart attacks and deaths.

It’s the same scenario with the deaths of veterans at the Phoenix VA. The final thing that killed these veterans might not have been waiting, but one of the things on the path to that horrible end-result was the delayed wait time.

Linked is not the same as cause—that's obvious, and cause is often difficult to prove, but a link is still incredibly significant, particularly in the case of the VA. The wait times may not have caused the deaths, I’ll give the VA that, but the deaths are clearly linked to it. That matters greatly for the purposes of this congressional investigation and dealing with the systemic problems within the system.

In their report, the IG used semantics to confuse the public, media, and lawmakers—that is inexcusable.

Published under: Veterans Affairs