Veterans Health Records Falsification Is Illegal
One VA manager has found out the hard way that fraudulently deleting a veteran’s medical file is actually highly illegal. Think other VA employees will get the message?
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RELATED: VA Health Care Wait Up 50%
Yesterday, Washington Post reported the story of a VA manager, Cathedral Henderson, indicted on 50 counts of falsifying records of veterans waiting to receive medical care. Henderson was caught falsifying records of veterans waiting for health care appointments. Allegations show Henderson deleted records of veterans waiting for imaging studies and neurology appointments.
Henderson was in charge of revenue and billing. He was also the chief of purchased care. He was responsible for 2,700 veterans getting access to outside care. According to the Post:
But under pressure from VA headquarters in 2014 to close out all requests for outside care, Cathedral simply ordered his staff to falsify the waiting patients’ medical records to show that the veterans had either completed or refused services, prosecutors allege.
Each of the charges against Henderson refers to a veteran with a pending need for medical care: Two patients were waiting for imaging, one for an ultrasound, one for neurology, another for surgery and 45 more for mammograms, according to prosecutors.
Maximum sentencing for charged for the 50 counts is a minimum of 5 years in prison and a $250,000. Time XXX-thousand, how many VA employees will be seeing the backside of iron bars moving forward?
Why is it taking so long for VA to hold such unlawful behavior is not dealt more quickly?
Open letter to Ben Krause… Ben, you end your article by asking why is it taking so long to [get arrests and jail time for these criminal fuck up predators]. The answer is, we are for the most part a bunch of pussy whipped whiners afraid of our own shadow. But, if you are afraid to arrest these fuckers yourself, the next time the VA even looks at your wrong, which is a form of assault, know this… The powers of citizen arrest are a lot stonger than you think they are.
For example, a few months ago two people did a home invasion attack on my home against me, my wife, my under age son, and a visiting neighbor who was there at the house with me. Between me and my self-provided service dog I was able to detain and arrest one of them.
We called 911, police showed up in 5 minutes in strong force, three cruisers, and took the invader away to jail. The police by law, and in fact do, no matter who it is you have done a citizens arrest, re-arrest the perp and haul them away. Ben, you are close to backing me on this plan against the VA so they will stop their flagrant abuse and injurious assault against all of us vets.
Ben, please do some networking with other attorneys and lets all start looking around for some cops who will back us against these mother fucker criminal clowns at the VA. The next vet they kill off could easily be you if you dont speak up now. We all have the power of arrest, so lets use that power in mass on these worthless thieving shits who are laughing to our faces while enriching themselves off the huge sacrifices we all made. P.S. Obviously, it is far past time for McD and his executives to go, every single worthless one of them.
Amen. I am fighting the va in Sioux Falls SD for falsifying my medical file. This also includes some civilian doctors who are in on it as well. I have to fight this myself because I can not find an attorney who will help me in the area as they are all in cahoots with each other. I will prevail and get my dignity back.
I can not find an attorney who will help me in the area as they are all in cahoots with each other. —> Sounds Familiar
I have my court date tomorrow at the federal court bldg, in Gainesville, Florida,, The Prosecuter has used EXTORTION and said if I did not plead to a second degree misdemeanor. He will recharge me with second degree felony, make me pay for my defense,again EXTORTION he said I was wasting tax payer money?lol. If we as veterans do not support each other they will keep on picking us off one by one. We should be out in the streets. any way if I go to jail for trying to git mental health treatment, I will not eat or take any of there medications. I’am alone Pray for all of us.
VA ONE BIG BIG BIG FEDERAL RICO CRIME R4ACKET FROM HELL THE AFGE UNION THUG RATS RUN VA RICO RACKETS
From;
Government Executive
by, Kelly Lunney
“Lawmakers: Congress Will Not Let VA Furlough Employees Or Close Hospitals”
“VA Secretary Bob McDonald will testify on Wednesday morning before Miller’s committee on the departments fiscal emergency.”
This is breaking news Ben.
It was on the internet this afternoon. Hope you can use it.
I wait with baited breath for McD´´s version of playing the prancing pony in the never ending VA dog and FUCKING pony show. Fittingly, he is pure horse shit.
Thus, restricting access to medical records should be the same disciplinary measures! LET’S CLEAR THE HOUSE!
bear with me Ben and veterans, a long post, but relevant to the VA practice of falsifying/destroying records many of us have been burned by…and zero VA accountability
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first:: Whether John McCain is a hero or not, I honestly don’t know. The word hero gets used so much it’s almost a watered down version of years since past these days. Those of us not former POW’s cannot imagine the horrors Mr McCain and his buddies went through as POW’s. Only he and others in that type situation know about such things. Many others in that situation didn’t make it home. I give him a salute and respect for his service and what he endured, as a POW.
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With that out of the way, here’s a few thoughts on the Trump/McCain statements…
Most news outlets are missing the point regarding Donald Trumps’ statements regarding John McCain. I believe Donald Trump is correct when he is referencing John McCain and his failures to veterans and illegal immigration policies.
What we veterans have heard from the professional politicians over the years is something like this, “they appropriated certain amounts of money, they built this hospital or that hospital, they did this or that and so on and so forth…”. The money is good, no question and I’m sure most veterans who use the VA system appreciate the money allotted to VA. But what about the decades of scandals and mismanagement, of veterans unnecessarily dying at VA hands, and veterans waiting years for benefits claims to be processed correctly, VA not adhering to federal Title 38 regulations, the manipulation of medical evidence, the tons of paperwork & records lost & shredded, on and on and on.
We aren’t speaking of hearsay, there are investigative journalists reports, legal representation evidence, whistle-blowers with evidence, the VA’s own internal investigations, etc! Where is the accountability?
Ask any of the professional politicians running for president, the ones that are giving Mr Trump a hard time regarding his statements on Congress’s failure to fix the numerous VA problems and the illegal immigration issues, and ask them what they have done, concretely done, to ensure accountability at VA and borders?
How many VA employees have been fired and/or held accountable? Everyone knows that much of the design of these VA scandals come from the top managements at VA and the VA Central Office. Yet we see VA hanging out one or two low lying fruits to pick for the public PR and then its back to corrupt business as usual.
So media outlets, we veterans challenge you, why are you not asking these professional politicians these questions? Many have taken Mr Trump’s conversation way out of context. Don’t forget McCain started it with his wisecrack about “crazies”. Let the American citizen get this straight. Those that believe and know the American border situation is a disgrace regarding sovereignty and “illegal” immigration and here we have a US Senator name calling these rightfully concerned American citizens are “crazies”.
If anyone is looney its McCain. At least since he has been a career politician, generally speaking.
Lets put this in another context since we’re speaking about John McCain. Something he and any veteran will understand or any other politician that has served should understand. If the carrier air wing maintenance/quality control/air wing captains personnel that oversaw McCain’s aircraft’s that he flew while in service, and time after time there were mechanical failures even to the point of ditching the aircraft & killing his radar intercept officer, crashing on the flight deck of a carrier and killing and injuring personnel, etc., would Mr McCain complain and that somebody’s butt is on the line? Not pilot error but crew errors. And in this hypothetical scenario, the Navy investigations show and prove continuing negligence from a few crew members would he then simply ask the Navy, “we just need more money, no worries about accountability, we’ll even increase the air wing crew’s mil-pay and give them all a vacation”. Especially the ones who caused the aircraft malfunctions on purpose or through negligence. That will surely fix the problem McCain says to the Navy brass. Oh, and BTW, just send a standard “we’re sorry letter from the Navy”, to the sailors’ families that were killed and injured with McCain’s’ aircraft. Well, you know Americans as McCain tells the Navy brass, they’re just “crazies” and they’ll get over it.
Can’t you just see John McCain doing that when he was on active duty!? That’s right he would not have done it that way. Somebody would have been held accountable and the problems fixed. So why as a US Senator he doesn’t do that?
As I wrote, that is a hypothetical situation to illustrate the hypocritical nature of these professional politicians in that if its their side of the street that is getting neglected or dirty they’ll get it fixed in a hurry but for the rest us, we get lip service. And Mr Trump called them out on it and it sure looks like they can’t face it.
We’ll then, why no accountability at the VA or on the border issue from McCain or any of the professional politicians? At the least Mr Trump is putting the questions that are on many American citizens minds to the public and the candidates. American citizens are sick of being lied to. These professional politicians can rag on Mr Trump all they want but all they are really doing is avoiding the real answers and real discussions Americans deserve. The American citizens that disagree with McCain’s lackluster efforts to help veterans with the VA fiasco’s (going on for DECADES) and the American border security fiasco, and we see him turn around and call them “crazies”. Not very becoming of a former Navy Officer hero.
Main stream media, do ask any professional politician or any of the 2016 presidential candidates if they use the VA and/or the VA benefits system. Why not? According to them veterans are hero’s and deserve great medical care and benefits. What’s that you say, its not good enough for any of them though, right? Sure looks that way.
We hear the politicians come out now and call veterans hero, and that John McCain is a hero, and such, well, were they thinking that when millions of veterans have written Congress over the past decades of their dilemmas with the VA and actually went in to fix the VA? Not just tossing money to VA to be mismanaged but audited them and held someone accountable? These current politicians wouldn’t even be thinking of the VA if the CNN investigative journalists (Drew Griffin, et al.) hadn’t written the stories of the Phoenix VA wait list scandals. That scandal is but one among many in the national VA systems, not just isolated to the Phoenix VA as all of America now knows.
I hope by Mr Trump calling out the professional politicians on the VA scandal(S) and illegal immigration problem(S), that those issues become a big political discussion for 2016. The career politicians avoid them and pay American citizens lip service. American citizens are way smarter and wiser than these politicians give them credit for.
A(FREAKING)MEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Crazyelf….would you please email me the contact information to news media….I misplaced what I had…so we could contact them about stories on here and complain etc….thanks….email is … [email protected]
mccain chose to be a pow. If it was my choice I would have taken a bullet instead. We were taught in the Marines that you don’t get taken pow. Save last bullet for yourself and dont be ashamed by being subjected to torture and pain.
Quote; “I AM NOT SATISFIED. BOB IS NOT SATISFIED. WE ARE MAKING THIS OUR HIGHEST PRIORITY!” These words of encouragement were by President Barack Obama, today while he was speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention.
I heard this on the radio about 10 minutes ago. FM1, 96.5 here in Central Florida…
Well, I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Ben, heads up. Washington Examiner article, VA whistleblower says 34000 combat vets still waiting for benefits from VA.
VHA records! First they sent us 7 other Vets’ HIPAA medical files, now they won’t send us my husband’s files- ergo, two Privacy Act HIDCE suits against Honolulu RO at the same time (one for wrongful disclosure and one for denial of access). Sorry to be captious, but they can’t seem to get anything RIGHT.
Director Wayne L. Pfeffer (formerly of Louisville, Kentucky) has a HISTORY of Civil Rights suits from Kentucky to Hawaii.
And Ol Bob Mac just went there. Question, is BOB still there?
Kind of off topic, but for mariekeating who posted here asking for help.
One way to help yourself is to click the link on this article to the Washington Post article. The reporter who wrote this and other articles on the VA has her email address and Twitter name at the bottom of the article. Contact reporters when they write about veterans. Perhaps they will write an article about what you and your husband went through, and perhaps the article will get someones attention.
The AMA is just as corrupt. Altering of medical records is business as usual in the private medical community. False data of mold not causing illness was put into the CA worker comp 6th edition guidelines in 2005 , approved by none other than the AMA and the ACOEM, industrial college, which is a non profit for the insurance industry and sanctioned by CA UC Board of Regents. Of course this is a lie about mold not causing illness and ACOEM has since removed that letter but the state of CA has not, so many workers are and have been exposed to mold for many decades and are not and will not get the care they need. and that goes for the military housing at Beale & Travis AFBases has or had mold but no family has been told what they’ve been exposed to,including my children or grandchildren where their hose was invested with mold(the walls fell down during the exit leave and these houses are owned by the military BUT nothing about what they were exposed to, nothing..
Lies are put into into patients records for one reason only, to not pay out for medical care or compensation benefits. Changing data is also about making the patient with false medical conditions.There is no one to complain to either. By lying about your medical conditions or showing “refusals” is to discredit you, after all, we as patients are always the crazies but never the top administration who lays out the groundwork to deny and cover up with omissions and alterations of your medical documentation. This is just clearly about the insurers not having to pay out ANY benefits. It’s been going on for a very long time since they, the insurers figured out how to discredit to delay and to ultimately deny. AND in our workplace with kaiser ( who also medically treats vets and fed employees and one employee who had medical RECORDS to show his injuries and illnesses SINCE 1987, FOR THE AIR FORCE here in Sacramento, CA., were changed by none other than DR. Skinner WHO then became the chief PIC and KAIser lied for the AIR FORCE),
AND starting in the late 80’s one woman who was a Stockton police officer and surveillance for kaiser(a police officer is not to have more than one job but for kaiser/military/fed government, anything is possible) stated in her depo, she was only doing her job, well, she has two employers telling her what to do, the Stockton police and kaiser, to lie about kaiser’s injured workers and sabotage their comp cases). The familiaritie’s are 100% striking when you have the same type of NAZI type administration, applying falsehoods and empty AND NEGATIVE platitudes in your medical charts and no one will believe the patient.. Reading this today gives me hope that someone is being held accountable but clearly this is just or should be the the TIP OF THE ICEBERG of the investigations. For far too long, we who have been exposed to so many toxins, illnesses, injuries and deaths, ( MANY created caused to obscure the original ones, the ones that will cost money for rating purposes) We who deserve to be treated like human beings not like a scourge (that the employer created) and that the blame and responsibility and accountability lies with and on the TOP of who is ever running your VA/DOD.
Thank you Ben for bringing out this article. Now we have to see how this can be applied for us civilian citizens. The record changing is rampant and many of these doctors who were in the military have created themselves quite the corporate fiefdom here in CA but they deserve to be in jail for all the harm they’ve caused by writing medical reports an insurance company would want so as not to pay out in worker compensation claims. AND injured workers are not only getting little to no care, but what they do get actually harm them even more so and then we’re forced to go to the SSA/Medicare and the employer/insurance company gets off without paying anything for what was done to us and the insurer/employer pays those who continues the medical malpractice. It is like someone is experimenting with us and who did that last, it was the NAZI’s and then they LIED to the world about it.
BTW, THE USC1010 stated no military doctor could examine any civilian unless of a national emergency. I’m here to let you all know, that active military doctors did both on us civilian injured workers and were 100% responsible for determining that we were NOT not sick or injured, so we never got our disability. Now the USC1010 code does not exist anymore, meaning any military doctor can exam and treat us and we cannot know who the doctor was just in case we wanted to sue for malpractice. SO who rigged ANY/ALL of this up? WHO HAS THAT POWER?
As one who has had his records falsified by the VA, and forced them to correct them, I say this practice is rampant throughout the VA and will not stop until a few more are prosecuted.
There are allegation of this same behavior going on in Utah. I am looking to write about it this week.
Can’t VA agents be nailed under 18 USC 1001 about “false statements, concealment, or false documentation”? Aren’t their lies and false statements perjury and obstruction of justice?
I know the ONLY DVA evidence offered in our fed suits is a perjured Declaration (Case 1:14-cv-00547-LEK-BMK Doc 47-2 Filed 04/14/15), falling under 18 USC 1501-17 r/t judicial proceedings, but doesn’t the integrity of the system depend on the participant’s acting honestly in general (18 USC 1001).
I am old and remember the classic use of obstruction of justice statutes to prosecute Nixon for preventing disclosure of damaging information.
DVA holds much “damaging information” – thanks for all your efforts to help disclose it!
I’ve had on 2 different ocassions had my medical records erased from my medical records. Once after I complained to the patient advocate.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a ‘United States Military Medical Corp’ with entities like the US Army, US Air Force, US Marines and the US Navy to fulfill the needs of veterans and with the knowledge to do so. All those from medical cores from each branch of services combined. All their combined knowledge and RESPECT for the military veterans – no bullshit, no lying, no denying, no falsifying, no………………….. JUST PLAIN GOOD HEALTHCARE by the people who know, understand and CARE about veterans of ALL branches. NO outside deniability – no outside employment – no legal issues – no high expensive self centered lawyers who don’t care about anything but money. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!
Can’t even think how much money that would save. The benefits would be endless. All for the common good of every veteran from every branch of service. Imagine the knowledge and understanding if we took care of our own.
I was in an Army Reserve hospital unit in the mid to late 80s. Lots of doctors and nurses there went to the VA to do their weekend duty. I believe the director of the VA hospital was a Reserve Colonel. Best VA I have ever been to.
VA employees should be commissioned , with the UCMJ in place and regular PFT . It will cut worker comp claims and allow the employees to be deployable to cover areas where active duty members need medical professionals to fill in. When not at war tey could set up mobile hospitals throughout the country and world. Revenue can be collect from other countries who request specialty medicine.
It appears to me that he is being prosecuted in a timely manner. The crimes were committed last year. I only hope no veteran died or was made worse by his actions.
One question: why didn’t his subordinates report him after the first vet’s file was violated?
They use the word refused, this is done on all veterans. If you get your records, you will find refused in your chart. Example: would you like a flu shot. Answer no thanks i’ve had one. Your records will state Refused. They are using this word, more than you think even if they don’t ask you about something. Don’t believe me get your records.
At my last visit to my PCP, he wrote refused in the spot where it asks if there was a DRE (that’s a digital rectal exam). I don’t want his hand up my butt anyway – but he also said I have no tonsilory enlargement – probably a good thing since they were removed 60 years ago. And, I am supposed to have confidence in this guy? The best part is, he is the head of the Primary Care Dept and his wife is a nurse in one of the two medical centers he has ofiices.
You are absolutely correct. The VA uses pre-programmed responses to make things go faster but leaves all of us with an inaccurate medical history. The same incompetents make it difficult to impossible to bring accuracy to your records.
I noticed this the other day when looking at my records. Not only did she note I refused some pamphlet she was pushing, she noted what I said suggesting I was flippant or indifferent about it.
I get the impression the VA does A LOT of data mining of veterans records to determine what trendy, BS programs they want to push. I don’t give a damn about them, just listen to what my concerns are and act on them.
Tk you for coontinuing to make public what is hidden or turn a blind eye too. Why do the VA want us to die before taking action? Do they think we are just going to fade a way. The truth is coming out that all is not well in Emerald City!!!
BTW Ben, Keep up the good work!!
We know that this has happened to most of us, i.e., appointments cancelled without notice, misrepresentations or outright lies in our medical records, failure to diagnose or treat … and the list goes on. So nice to see that someone is being held criminally responsible. His lawyer says that “he was just following orders from his supervisors,” isn’t that what most of the Nazi’s said during the Nuremburg trials? Hope this is just the beginning. Let’s keep the pressure on these vermin, there must be thousands of them!
“Vermin,” you have a higher opinion of them than most Veterans!
Given the article said he was following orders and his lawyer said it would come out in court, I would be curious to know if he has some policy in writing.
Years ago, while visiting a worker I knew at VA, she showed me a “memo” sent down from VA in Washington DC. It stated; No one (physicians nurses etc) is to put anything in anyone’s file. Which would allow for compensation! I’m paraphrasing of course. But those words are damn close, if not accurately of what I read. About two months later a few of the Veterans Org. “put that memo out” to the public. It caused a big stir at the time. But, as usual, things quiet down and then was forgotten. THIS seems to be the way of America. Say something today, then in ten years it’s forgotten. What a fouled up citizenry do we have.
Not surprised. I kind of disagree about fouled up citizenry though. I believe a majority support veterans, but are easily misled by VA press releases. Back in the 90s, I can’t tell you how many civilians and even other veterans said, “Gulf War Illness? I thought the VA was taking care of you guys?”. This goes to a response I wanted to give to Mariekeating. The best advocate for a veteran is the veteran themselves. It is difficult even for other vets to help a veteran because of how complicated a situation can be, which the VA Iikes very much. Veterans have to help themselves as much as possible, then try help others by saying what worked. The VA and most in Congress don’t give a damn.
I wonder if this extends to placing comments or procedures into health records which were either false, never executed or are purposefully inaccurate? For example, a nurse supposedly “discussed with veteran the MOVE program, veteran refused, gave veteran a broshure on MOVE. (It never happened). A doctor wrote, veteran was waiting a few minutes and decided he could not wait longer. (Veteran waited one hour 15 minutes and left when the doctor said, I will get to him when I can). Or how about consults arranged and cancelled without the veteran being told. Yes, those are just three examples of about 7 in the past year which happened to me.
Maybe, I will bring this article with me the next time I go to the VA and handed it to my care givers. What DO YOU THINK about that idea? Oh, and I do record all my appointments now. I am switching most of my care to private doctors, but i still go to the VA for one specialist and dental (and 1 appointment a year with a PCP so I can get meds prescribed outside the VA).
Recording your appointments? What state do you live in? We here, in Florida, can only record when ALL PARTIES AGREE. I wish we here could do that. Not one employee here would authorize it!!!!
My medical record is permeated with misinformation such as you noted. Showing them the article will not do any good, prosecuting them is one of the only ways to achieve equity. We all have to ask ourselves, how a dysfunctional, dishonest system like this evolved and why nothing is being done to change it.
I actually went back to the original Washington Post article and copied it. I have made a number of copies which I think I will leave in the waiting room the next time I go. Eventually, I figure some of them will read it. I will also copy some of the replies here, such as yours, which support the fact there is much misinformation in our files. It is only a little step, but what the heck, if we can’t beat them – let’s make them aware that we know – and of course it will aggrevate them. It is past the time we aggrevate them for the aggrevation they cause us.
If you want add all the comments. This way more vets will get the Ben’s website. The more people read, and comment, the better.
Give the one about Sloan Gibson’s wanting to shut down vamc’s also. Because
yesterday and three days ago, when I made two appointments. Neither ‘scheduler’ knew anything about what was written by him. As a matter of fact, the scheduler I spoke to yesterday didn’t even know who Sloan Gibson was. Or so he says….
And as far as VA being able to transfer, or receive, any money. It hasn’t been broadcasted, YET. I wonder how that’s going?????
I also wonder how a vet gets a VA employee in trouble without the vet getting into trouble????
The MOVE program is the pamphlet she not only said I refused, which I did, but she also noted her opinion of how I refused it, as if I was flippant.
Those of us on this forum need to put the pressure on the powers that be at the VA and demand Henderson, is not paid another cent of taxpayers money. Demand answers to questions about others doing the same. Demand he gets b no retirement or anything else.
We can discuss these issues with the VA over and over, but we need to take ACTION.
@crazyelf- “[In my opinion, this statement made by Henderson’s attorney is what would be found in any and all cases that would come up WHEN any employee is caught doing anything to a veterans file! “My supervisor(s) showed me how to do it. And then threatened me if I didn’t!]”
You only need to go back to immediately after WW2, in which at the infamous Nuremberg Trials, all the Nazi’s were rank-in-file when they each stated, “WE WERE ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS”….I bring this up because it’s the excuse used by people not wanting to take responsibility for their own throwing-out of ethics and humane treatment of fellow Human Beings.
It’s not even the valid excuse of someone that’s “ignorant” because that word only implies that the person or persons “do not know that their actions are wrong or blatantly illegal or evil”, whereas the word “stupid” is more applicable where I person goes ahead and follows orders while KNOWING DAMN WELL WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS WRONG BUT CONTINUE TO DO SO, KNOWING THEY CAN CLAIM “WE WERE ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS”…PLAUSABLE DENIAL is when someone is purposefully kept out of the loop of knowing what’s right or wrong…kind of a glorified monkey covering his eyes and saying, “SEE NO EVIL”…but knows damn well deep inside that what they are doing to Veterans, Survivors, and Spouses is downright wrong AND illegal.
Anyone want to bet this “Cathedral Henderson” just gets moved to another location to do the same thing again once the VA OIG releases, if anything at all, stating, “No deleting of Veteran Records were found…”???
Call me a skeptic, but we are YET to see anything with real teeth when it comes to disciplinary actions for VA Employees. The VA OIG are the whole team of monkeys doing the whole “See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil…” routine so make me believe that something will really come from Henderson’s atrocious acts to Vets.
namnibor, your comment is exactly what I was trying to say. Even when a person commits egregious acts, at any VA, or any government agency, they will try to lay the blame on someone in higher authority. We know this is the norm today by someone getting caught committing a crime. They, the ones in lower positions will, or should be, also held accountable. The persons in higher authority SHOULD ALSO be held accountable. If they, in fact, gave the order.
The only way I see this happening is if the “lower management” is caught, tried and convicted of said crimes. And then “turns on those in higher positions”! This way, ALL INVOLVED ARE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
I don’t care how high a person’s rank is. If they gave the order to falsify documents. Then they should go to jail and become a “Convicted Felon”. Even the ones, who knew what they were doing was wrong, should also be arrested. We know individuals below Henderson was committing these crimes. So why were they not being arrested?
You brought up a great ‘case in point’. Might I also remind you of another. “The Mi Lai(sic) Incident in Vietnam. It took over 20 to 25 years to “Clear Lt. Calley’s name”! That it was, in fact, the one’s in higher authority to issue the “order to drop napalm on that village”! At that point everyone involved got penalized.
Now, that being said, I believe, especially within VA, EVERYONE from bottom to top should be held accountable for these egregious acts against all veterans at every VA facility nationwide…..
I hope I cleared up any misunderstanding between us…..
Well said and on point … That’s why International Criminal Court jurisdiction due to “unwillingness” of federal courts to stop this MURDER Inc is ripe and ready in 2015 predicated on Feres Doctrine “second-rationale” and Nuremberg Code violations such as failure to diagnose, refer, treat let along compensate …
I believe, when Sloan Gibson wrote letters (June 2015) threatening to do a “partial shutdown of VAMC’s”, hiring freezes and layoffs. Or veterans will not have healthcare from August til September 30th. Because of the $3 billion shortfall. He wants to rob peter to pay paul. He, in essence, caused a firestorm. Not only with Congress, but the Veterans community.
I hope he tries to shutdown the VA hospitals and clinics. Can you imagine- millions of Veterans, spouses of Veterans and children of Veterans, standing in front of these facilities? Demanding not only our healthcare. But demanding accountability and transparency within VA. Can you imagine millions of Veterans showing the news media ALL THE SCREWUPS (documents) COMMITTED BY VA EMPLOYEES. That would be a sight to behold!!!
In a way, I hope it does happen!!!!! Talk about the foxes scambling to get out of the henhouse.
The attorney for Henderson said, “That his client, “…was following the directive of his supervisors, and that will come out in court documents.”
I hope he has “written proof “. If he doesn’t, we known how this will turn out- “plausible deniability” by his supervisors.
If he does, will McDonald or Gibson get involved to try and squash it? Will the attorneys for the VA postpone, postpone and again postpone any and all attempts of getting this trial started? And what about Henderson, what’s going to happen to him?
There are many questions. But are there any answers that needs to be addressed, also!
In my opinion, this statement made by Henderson’s attorney is what would be found in any and all cases that would come up WHEN any employee is caught doing anything to a veterans file! “My supervisor(s) showed me how to do it. And then threatened me if I didn’t!”
“I can see the hand writing is on the wall!” I believe this is how it will turn out in any future legal case against any VA employee!!!!
Also, it was said in this article, VA has “terminated more than 1,495 employees”, Dillon said.” Is this another “misspoke” statement by another VA employee? You know, like Ol McDonald did on “Meet the Press” back in January or February this year? Of course if you look at this number, it’s lower than what McDonald said on that news program. Imo, it just another b/s scam. Trying to get the public to think the VA is doing something for the Veterans.
That statement about terminations also listed “probationary employees”, which are those who can be terminated at any time for any reason during their 1 year probationary period. I bet that covers 1492 of the 1495. Those who refused to pitch their ethics or toe the line, or those who couldn’t pass a background check, etc.
07/20/2015
Dear Benjamin Krause,
This is wanton negligence —-did he not commit manslaughter? 50 counts—someone had to die!
Did the AMA revoke his ability to be in Medicine? For Ethical Violations?
Or is this something new for the VA Officials?
Since the VA has been operating without Ethics for decades does the AMA have the obligation to close down the VA Hospitals until the problems have been corrected?
Sincerely,
Don Karg