mare reen died last summer while being treated at the va s medical center for anxiety and addiction to pain medication. his cause of death, mixed drug toxicity according to a county medical examiner. the va prescribed 14 drugs including painkillers. . it said 14. we didn t know that. it was in the autopsy report. the doctor in charge the prescription policies was dr. david houlihan. some patients and staff called him the candy man. and the hospital canned yea land. according to va documents obtained by the center for investigative reporting, prescriptions for four common opiates quadrupled. they come out worse than when they went in. they get all drugged up. jason wasn t the only patient to die under dr. houlihan s care. carrie spent years piecing together befdz what happened to
happen? what i think is that some of our usual investigative tools are much weaker than we thought. that s one thing we re learning from the investigations. dr. clancy later told us that even one death that could have been avoided is too much. something needs to be done to send a strong message this shouldn t happen again to the veterans out there. this past week the family was in washington. as wisconsin s two senators co-sponsored a bill that aims to prevent overprescription at hospitals. there s also an investigation about potential retaliation against whistle blowers at that hospital. that s one pattern we ve seen in so many of the investigations that there seems to be a culture of maybe covering things up within the va. a lot they have to answer for. nice work. thank you very much. and the doctor is still being paid? still being paid. still on leave with pay. you know i unfortunately had experienced in my life that have known people and gone to the type of doctor
roberts, whatever you want to you know whatever waunt to call them. they just write prescriptions. mike 14 medications for this young man who died of an overdose. is dr. houlihan s did he write each of the 14 prescriptions? not all of them much he was the supervising doctor and the chief of staff in charge of prescription policies and his name was specifically on several of them. so it s a pattern at that hospital. and when we aired this on nightly last night, in a different form we just got a slew of responses saying this is something we re seeing in other parts of the country, too. this is a real problem. no doubt. thank you very much. come back soon. still ahead, there is a new member of the morning joe family and he s perfect. we ll introduce you next. (singing) you wouldn t haul a load without checking your clearance. so why would you invest without checking brokercheck?