President Obama’s motorcade drove by a troubled Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital but did not stop during his swing through the city touting the nation’s housing recovery.
The drive-by had reporters traveling with the president wondering whether he might stop by the hospital during his visit to Phoenix, but the motorcade continued straight to the high school where Obama delivered remarks about his latest executive action to cut mortgage insurance costs for borrowers using Federal Housing Administration loans.
It also spurred new criticism from Republicans, who along with vets groups, had called on Obama to visit the hospital located a mile from the school where he spoke.
“It is a testament to this president’s misplaced priorities that he would choose a photo op for his next executive action over visiting the VA hospital where veterans died on secret government waiting lists instead of getting care,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., early this week had urged Obama to make a stop at the VA hospital, and vet groups have been equally vocal in urging the president to visit.
Pete Hegseth, who heads Concerned Veterans of America, one of the nation’s largest veterans advocacy groups, wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic Thursday accusing Obama of “snubbing” the VA by skipping a visit during his trip to Phoenix.
“While he addresses an adoring crowd, five minutes away there are wounded veterans still awaiting timely care, and long-overdue accountability, at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Hospital — the same hospital where, less than one year ago, America learned how grossly mismanaged our VA system had become,” Hegseth wrote.
He also noted that Obama hasn’t visited a single VA hospital since the Arizona Republic first reported in April that the Phoenix VA had kept a secret wait list for critically ill veterans. He called the secret wait list practice “despicable” and noted that it was not limited to just Phoenix but was far more widespread in the VA system.
To be fair, Hegseth said the VA’s problems did not begin under Obama’s watch but did grow “exponentially worse” under his watch.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest earlier this week said Obama has no plans to visit the VA hospital while in Phoenix but insisted that Obama is committed to fixing the agency.
“We made a covenant with our veterans, and this president is determined to make sure we uphold it,” he said.
Hegseth took issue with that statement, arguing that the Obama administration’s actions haven’t backed up “such bold claims.”
“Since the VA scandal first broke, veterans’ VA plight hasn’t improved much,” he said.
He pointing to an article in USA Today that found that massive patient backlogs and wait times remain at VA hospitals and 10 percent of all VA patients – more than 600,000 – wait at least a month for appointments, including some with waits of more than 60 days for primary care.
He also accused Obama of seeming more interested in containing the political fallout than actually fixing the VA.
The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs released emails last fall showing that Rob Nabors, the president’s deputy chief of staff assigned to help clean up the VA, took part in an effort to unduly influence the VA inspector general to change his report on the Phoenix VA hospital to lessen the appearance of the severity of the IG’s findings.
The White House countered that since June more than 300 employees have started worked at the VA facility in Phoenix. Along with new reforms, the added staff have helped produce a 10 percent increase in the number of scheduled and completed appointments in the period between May and October.
“That’s a total of more than 300,000 appointments that have been conducted,” Earnest told reporters traveling with Obama on Air Force One Thursday afternoon. “Wait times at this facility have been reduced by 30 percent over the same period.”
He also noted that the Phoenix VA hospital was the first stop for new VA Secretary Bob McDonald after he was confirmed.
“This is a priority for this administration,” he said. “There’s obviously a lot more to do, and the president is going to continue to make sure that these issues are getting the focus that they need internally, that we can continue making important progress on these reforms.”
