Rep. Kyrsten Sinema ‘shocked’ to learn over 300,000 veterans died awaiting care
Sep 3, 2015, 8:29 PM
A glaring report issued Wednesday by the Veterans Health Administration revealed that approximately 307,000 veterans had died over a period of several years while awaiting approval of applications that would have otherwise provided them with care. The VA’s inspector general also stated that VA staffers mistakenly marked applications as unprocessed and estimated that 10,000 or more records were deleted in the past five years.
U.S. Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema joined Mac & Gaydos on KTAR News 92.3 Friday to discuss the troubling report which Sinema says she was “shocked” to read.
“I’ve got to tell you guys, I was absolutely shocked when I read the news this morning,” Sinema said. “First, CNN published a story saying as many as 37,000 had died and I was so shocked when I saw that. Imagine my surprise when just a few minutes later, CNN updated their story to say, ‘No, we meant 307,000 veterans.’ That is a number that is hard for your head to even understand.
“Of over 800,000 records in the VA’s system, over 307,000 of those records — which is nearly half — belonged to veterans who had died either months or years preceding this report. I’m almost speechless.”
According to the report, many of the applications in question were either out and out neglected or put in “pending status,” never to be processed.
“I read that one veteran who applied for care in 1998 was ‘pending’ for 14 years,” Sinema said. “Another veteran’s case that was ‘pending’ in 2014, died in 1988. And there’s evidence that the VA staffers may have inadvertently, or through incompetence or other reasons, deleted 10,000 files over the last five years. That means 10,000 veterans who submitted applications, and are still probably waiting, have had their files deleted, which means they have no chance of ever getting the call that they’re going to get service.”
In response to the discovery, Sinema says that family and loved ones affected by the issue should explore their legal rights, while it’s incumbent on leaders like Sinema to figured how many veterans have been affected locally here in Phoenix.
“There’s three things that need to be done here, guys,” Sinema said. “One, survivors and family members have got to figure out what [options] they have for a system that has not just failed them now, but has been apparently failing them for decades. As we see, this problem goes back years and years in the past. Number two, we’ve got to find out about the veterans in the Phoenix area to get them enrolled and in the care that they need immediately.
“We’ve requested specific information from the VA about who are the veterans in the Phoenix area whose cases are still pending and who are still alive and are still waiting for care. How can we help those veterans immediately get the access to the care that they need? And the third thing that has to happen, is that a bill that I introduced with Congressman Dan Benishek and that we passed out of the House at the end of July has still got to get through to Senate and signed by the President. It’s a bill that says that not only does the VA have to address problems when the inspector general identifies the problem as in this report, but the VA secretary has to name a specific manager responsible and hold them accountable to actually make the change.”