Rep. Beto O'Rourke says the VA cannot be trusted to report on how it's doing. VA scandal spreads to West Texas

The scandal that has engulfed veteran’s health care has spread to West Texas, with a new report documenting wait times of as long as 71 days for some vets in El Paso that are “significantly different” from official statistics.

The report, commissioned by Rep. Beto O’Rourke and released Wednesday, took an independent look at a hospital where the quality of care is evidently good, but access to it is not.


The Department of Veterans Affairs reported that 85 percent to 100 percent of vets were getting in for mental health appointments in El Paso within 14 days. But the Democratic congressman found that, on average, it took 71 days to see a mental health care provider and more than 36 percent of the veterans in the study saw no care giver at all. The results have prompted him to call for a similar independent survey of VA patients nationwide.

“What everyone learned in Phoenix, and from [VA’s] report last Wednesday, is that you cannot trust the VA to tell us how the VA is doing,” O’Rouke told POLITICO.

There are many ideas for how Congress might reform the agency, he said, “but right now we can’t because we’re working with fake numbers from the VA.”

The findings add new color and detail to what former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki acknowledged were “systemic problems” with the agency, which prompted him to resign on Friday. Much of the attention in the scandal has so far focused on the Phoenix VA center, but investigators have said all along that VA’s problems weren’t just confined there.

Meanwhile, Shinseki’s acting replacement, Sloan Gibson, met for the first time with a group of veterans’ service organizations Wednesday morning. He told them VA has reached out to nearly all of the 1,700 vets in the Phoenix area who hadn’t made it into the local scheduling system, and that he would fly out there personally on Thursday.

It didn’t take long for Gibson’s first kerfuffle as the new director of the VA to occur. The vets’ groups he met with included the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, AMVETS, the Paralyzed Veterans of America and other groups — but not two that have tangled with the agency, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America or Concerned Veterans of America.

Shortly after reporters pointed out on Twitter that those groups hadn’t been in the meeting, IAVA CEO Paul Rieckhoff posted his own update. “Maybe @DeptVetAffairs follows you on Twitter,” he wrote. “@IAVA & I JUST got an email to meet w Acting Sec Sloan Gibson Monday.”

Gibson’s longer-term outlook at VA was not clear. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the White House was considering nominating the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, Delos Cosgrove, to take over the VA. Should that happen, and if the White House and the Senate move quickly on confirmation, Gibson could once again become the department’s deputy secretary.

White House officials have given no comment about Cosgrove, an Air Force Vietnam veteran who’d come into the agency with a health care management perspective, as opposed to the retired general perspective of Shinseki.

Whatever the Senate does about a potential nominee, advocates want it to move quickly to pass a bill that would give VA more authority to fire under-performing workers. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was set to meet with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, to try to hammer out a deal on how to proceed with reform legislation.

In the House, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other top GOP leaders sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Wednesday, urging him to publicly ask the Senate to pass the bill, quoting Obama’s own comments about VA back to him.

“‘Our first job,’ you said last week, is let’s take care of some basic management issues. We agree,” they wrote. Boehner and his colleagues urged Obama to push Senate Democrats, “direct the VA to cooperate with both the House and Senate as both chambers conduct the necessary oversight,” and get in touch with vets waiting for care throughout the U.S., not just in Phoenix.

“While all of these are strong first steps, none are a substitute for long-term solutions,” the Republican House leaders wrote. “It is imperative that you lay out for the American people your vision for reforming what is clearly a broken system.”