Dear Conservative,

What is wrong with this country? We will give free health care to every illegal alien who walks across our border but when it comes to helping our veterans – our nation’s heroes – the Federal government repeatedly fails them…

It is no secret that the military has seen its paychecks and benefits cut by this administration over the past few years. Rather than reforming the bloated domestic programs that continue to pile on a hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit every year, the Obama administration has attempted to balance the budget on the backs of our veterans and servicemen and women!

At the top of the list of atrocities is the fact that we have thousands of military veterans who are literally dying while waiting for medical treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). I am not talking about people passing away in waiting rooms… I am referring to the fact that people are dying after waiting for years to be seen by a doctor!

Tell Congress that it MUST stop the VA from ignoring our veterans and leaving them to die!

We made a simple promise to our veterans: if they served their country in the Armed Forces, we would take care of them if they were ever wounded. It’s not hard to understand and it should serve as the backbone of our commitment to our servicemen and women both past and present.

Over the past year, we have hammered Congress to force the VA to work through its backlog of hundreds of thousands of unprocessed and long overdue veteran medical claims. You might remember that since then, the Obama administration has come out and announced that the VA has made significant strides in reducing the backlog. We were told that the problems of the backlog were behind us and that if it wasn’t for the VA’s mismanagement under the Bush administration, we never would have gotten into this mess. All the progress and advancement celebrated by the Obama administration turned out to be a big fat lie!

It turns out that Veterans’ Affairs hospitals have been cooking their books to hide just how negligent they have been, putting brave veterans’ lives in the balance. In Phoenix, for example, more than 40 veterans have died while just waiting to see a doctor for the first time. Rather than report this backlog to higher-ups, employees transferred veterans’ medical records over to a non-electronic, secret waiting list instead. That way, the hospital would appear to be working on the backlog, even though in reality the situation hadn’t improved.

Now pay attention, because this is a little complicated but absolutely important to understand. The Department of Veterans Affairs requires its hospitals to provide care to veterans in a timely manner, which is typically within 14-30 days. If a veteran shows up to a hospital and asks for an appointment with a doctor or specialist, he is supposed to seen within a month. The VA then uses the official electronic patient database to monitor progress and address backlogs wherever they appear. By looking at the records and comparing appointment dates with when they were scheduled, monitors can get a good feel for how efficiently a hospital processes claims. Well just this week, Dr. Sam Foote, a retired VA hospital physician, revealed that this entire system is a sham!

While nurses would appear to be inputting new patient data into the computer system, this was never the case. A veteran coming in for an appointment would have his information stored on a “secret list” that government monitors didn’t have access to. This means that there was never an official record of veterans showing up for treatment at all. Corrupt hospital staff would keep these veterans on the secret list until they had an appointment date that was less than 14 days away, at which time they were officially added to the electronic, main database. That way, the hospitals would appear to have below average wait times and employees wouldn’t get punished for the backlog.

That’s right: rather than actually working to make sure that our brave veterans were receiving treatment, VA hospitals deliberately falsified records to create the illusion of efficiency. And we are not just talking about some technical violation, either. In one Phoenix hospital alone, at least 40 veterans passed away as a result of this scheme!

The amount of corruption within the VA has reached truly deadly proportions. We have federal employees who would rather protect themselves than make sure that our veterans receive the care they need and deserve!

Patient records were repeatedly falsified and hidden just to protect the careers of VA employees. All the while, veterans with life threatening medical conditions were left to die on this secret list while waiting months and even years to see a physician!

We are talking about veterans who died from cancer because by the time they were able to be seen, the tumors had metastasized and were inoperable! We are talking about veterans who desperately needed to speak to a therapist, but ended up committing suicide because they were forced to wait months just to get an appointment!

There is absolutely no place for this type of corruption and negligence within our country! No veteran should have to endure this and it is unacceptable that we have veterans who are literally dying waiting for treatment all because selfish employees want to protect their jobs!

If you care about our veterans and want to make sure that they receive the care they deserve, I implore you to tell Congress that this is complegely unacceptable!

These brave men and women answered the call to protect us, now it is time for us to answer the call to defend them!

Also, please forward this email to your friends and family. The only way that we can put an end to this death and suffering is by spreading the word and continuing to pressure our elected officials!

There’s no reason it has to be this way. The only reason this will continue is if we allow it to continue.

I, for one, will not allow our veterans and national heroes to be treated like this and I urge you to hammer Congress until they listen and stop these atrocities! How dare they turn their backs on our brave veterans?!

Tell Congress it must stop VA corruption from literally killing our veterans!

Sincerely,

Joe Otto

Conservative Daily