One of the more intriguing aspects of the VA health care scandal is the way the paperwork was creatively done to make it appear that the system was operating as it was meant to. This took serious, sustained effort, as the AP reports:
But weren’t the people doing this worried that their deceptions and subterfuge might be discovered? Evidently not. At the conclusion (more than two years ago) of an internal investigation (seem to be a lot of those going on these days) a:
And concluded on this note:
Or as Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., put it … “As soon as new directives are put out, they’re torn apart to find out how to get around the requirements.”
So, if they were caught cooking the books, the public servants at the VA were neither shamed not frightened. Merely inconvenienced. And they soldiered on.
What to do, then, after all those investigations are done? We hear talk, now, of “punishment.” And perhaps one or two people will be fired. Maybe fined. Possibly even jailed. But not enough of them to shake up the system.
Government employees will continue to do as they have always done, secure behind the walls of a civil service system, which Washington is disinclined to take on even when it recognizes the problem.
As the Washington Post, in one of those editorials to nowhere puts it:
Some of the resistance to change is political: Democrats rely on government unions that are suspicious of merit-based policies, and Republicans are suspicious of government altogether.
It isn’t exactly clear how being “suspicious of government altogether” is such a bad thing, given the evidence of the VA’s phony bookkeeping. But it doesn’t really matter because the Post, like the rest of Washington, doesn’t really expect anything to change. This, too, shall pass.
And, anyway, even though parts of the government may be broken, the Department of Pointless Investigations is doing excellent work and it is all over the VA case.
