Veterans groups – be careful what you wish for

The story about the secret patient waiting list at the Phoenix Veterans’ hospitals includes what seems to me is a pretty important detail: the motivation behind the secret list.

Dr. Samuel Foote, the retired VA employee who brought the original allegations said the supervisors would put names on the secret lists not because they were just callous people, but because by keeping the official waiting list as short as possible, they would be eligible for performance bonuses.

That’s the other scandal: that a bonus system intended to reduce waiting times may have actually made them worse.

It motivated people not to fix the problem but to hide the problem.

In 1978, when President Carter started the federal bonus system, the idea was to make government more like private business, which uses bonuses for everything.

The trouble is, bonuses just don’t work in government the way they do in business. Although you could argue they don’t work that well in business either, Wall Street being exhibit A.

President Reagan tried to reform the bonuses, but the idea of rewarding managers for efficiency looks so good on paper, that it has remained.

In any case, veterans groups are understandably outraged, and some of them want heads to roll now.

“Paul Rieckhoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says he’s disappointed in what he called a ‘weak response’ from the president,” reports CBS’ Pam Coulter.

“We expected to hear action. We expected to hear a plan. And we saw neither,” said Reickhoff.

But with elections coming, there are a lot of political agendas just beneath the surface. Veterans groups should understand that one of them is to privatize Veterans hospitals, or, provide veterans with vouchers for private care.

I don’t know if it would be better or worse, but it would certainly bring the country closer together because then we’d all be on the same waiting list!