Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki Resigns Amid Major Scandal
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned from his position following major scandals connected to the health care system for veterans. President Barack Obama, who just last week commissioned an investigation of the system, accepted his resignation on Friday and said that there is no time for "distractions."
"With regret, I accepted," Obama said about Shinseki's resignation, The New York Times reported.
"He has worked hard to investigate and identify the problem," the president added, noting that Shinseki admitted that "the V.A. needs new leadership to address it. He does not want to be a distraction."
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Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson will take temporary charge of the department, USA Today reported. A new permanent secretary is expected to be nominated soon.
Last week, Obama announced that there will be an investigation into allegations that veterans across the country have been receiving inadequate medical care. The decades-long problem has made headlines the past couple of months, with news breaking in April that at least 40 U.S. veterans died after they were allegedly stuck for months on a secret waiting list to see doctors in the Phoenix V.A. Healthcare system.
"I want to know what's working, I want to know what's not working, and I want specific recommendations," Obama said at the news conference last week.
"Folks who have been fighting on the battlefield should not have to fight a bureaucracy at home to get the care that they have earned."
A medical doctor working at Phoenix V.A.'s post-deployment clinic further revealed last week that even seriously injured Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are being forced to wait for months to receive the care that they need.
"People that are 100 percent service-connected that are polytrauma were waiting anywhere from six to 10 months to get into a new appointment when I found out about 'em," Dr. Katherine Mitchell told CNN's "AC 360°."
"We're talking about people that were injured by being blown up by IEDs. We're talking about people who had a mental breakdown and have severe PTSD and ... are having trouble functioning."
According to The Associated Press, the V.A. has a goal of trying to provide patients with an appointment within 14 days of when they first seek care. However, treatment delays and irregularities in recording patient waiting times have been reported in numerous instances by the government and outside organizations.
An inspector general's report estimated that currently about 1,700 veterans waiting for care are "at risk of being lost or forgotten" after being kept off an official waiting list.
Shinseki had faced calls for his resignation in light of the scandal, though Obama said that he would wait for the results of the investigation before deciding on who to hold accountable.
"After seeing the report released today, I believe Secretary Shinseki should step down," Representative Carol Shea-Porter, a Democrat from New Hampshire, said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to the preliminary report by the department's inspector general. "We need new management at the V.A. to lean hard on wrongdoers and clean house wherever necessary."
Obama held a "serious conversation" with Shinseki on Friday, after the latter apologized to all veterans and the nation for the systemic delays in the V.A. system.
"We now know that V.A. has a systemic, totally unacceptable lack of integrity within some of our veteran health facilities," Shinseki said, taking responsibly for the scandal. "The breach of trust involved the tracking of patient wait times for appointments."
Obama reflected on Shinseki's resignation by saying that he is a "very good man."
"He's been an outstanding soldier. He's a good person who's done exemplary work," the president commented.
