Secretary Shinseki MUST GO!!!!

[politicat]

51. I respectfully disagree, but I understand your frustration.

I'm the granddaughter of a WWII vet, the daughter of a Vietnam vet, married to a Gulf War vet, sibling to two Iraq/Afghanistan vets and served my own time as an intern at VA Phoenix. I live and breathe PTSD -- father and grandfather were untreated, spouse and siblings are getting functional treatment, and the focus of my research is improving the treatments. I've also been the health care advocate for several of those family members in the VA system under multiple administrations.

At this point, the VA runs so much better than it did 20 years ago that I could almost weep. I remember quite clearly when the VA didn't even bother to treat PTSD and denied that there were any physiological or psychological symptoms related to either Agent Orange or Gulf War service. Compared to the civilian system, it does better at treating mental injury (many civilians with mental injuries from crime or abuse have very limited access to the care they need, except for a temporary hold after the ER or maybe drugs), and significantly better than it did in the past. Especially under Shinseki, I've seen drastic improvement. Yes, some systems still need work -- but this mess wasn't born yesterday, and the fact that it was (re)discovered and is being handled is itself a drastic improvement. I do want to see the regional administrators testifying, and I really want to see the training procedures that made this wide-spread taken apart, and I want whatever failed incentives program that encouraged this to be entirely revamped, but those are process failures, not leadership failures.

I agree that VA needs a better emergency intake system, but it has needed that for 35 years. OTOH, the entire medical system needs a better emergency intake system, especially for mental health. I'm not going to blame the head of the administration for a generalized, society-wide system failure.

I am truly sorry for your loss, and I wish I had a better answer for how to fix it. I just don't think removing one head from the hydra is going to fix it, and now is the worst time for that, anyway. The fix will require continuity of leadership until it's resolved. A shakeup will just make it harder to fix and more likely to be ignored once attention moves on.