Veterans Affairs Audit Prompts Secretary’s Resignation

A Veterans Affairs audit cites a failure of VA leadership for widespread problems with the health care system for veterans and the apparent cover-up of scheduling delays.

The audit concludes that VA schedulers were pressured to use bad practices to make waiting times for medical appointments look more favorable. The audit says the decision to set a maximum 14-day wait time for appointments without providing necessary resources amounted to an organizational leadership failure.

The audit found that in some instances schedulers were instructed to enter different desired dates than the one requested by the veteran, thus masking waiting times.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki presented those findings to President Barack Obama today along with his resignation.

Obama says he accepted the resignation with ``considerable regret,'' but added there's no time for distractions and the full focus needs to be on fixing the problems.

A separate inspector general's report this week found deep-seated problems in the veterans' sprawling health care system, which provides medical care to about 6.5 million veterans annually.