here they are. government didn t keep its promises to its veterans. we need to fire some of these v.a. bureaucrats. somebody should go to jail over these scandals. it has not happened. what would happen if the congress and the president had to get their health care from the v.a.? restore respect to our vet advance by revamping and fixing a broken vet advance administration. secretary mcdonald, the frustration is felt across the nation. do you believe that the v.a. is broken? well, i think we re making progress, elisabeth. we have more progress to make. since the crisis in the last year we ve had 7 million more completed health care appointments than previously. 4.5 million of those have been in the communities, 2.5 million have been within the v.a. our average wait times are down to five days for specialty care, four days for primary care, three days for mental health care. but we still have opportunities. we still have a growing waitlist
reporter: they sure do. just last week, mcdonald was called out for talking about disciplinary actions not being taken against employees who manipulated data. and last week they declared some veterans dead and cut off their benefits. mcdonald offered this defense: it takes time to create a system that is not operating properly and time to fix it. we have a great team in place and applying the best principles of the private sector. reporter: he cited the progress saying the va had had seven million more health care appointments than prev and providing faster wait fair. five days for specialty care, four days for primary care and three days for mental health care. reporter: he said the application of private sector
they say they re on pace to eliminate the claims backlog by next year, which was the v.a. s goal about that backlog, but, you know what, there are fears and there is some evidence that the reduction in the backlog is only a paper result. that they figured out a way to make the statistics look better, even while veterans are still waiting too long to hear about their claims. and it is the same thing for the wait times that veterans expect when they re trying to get v.a. health care appointments. veterans have been waiting too long. forever, they have been waiting too long. but in the extra-overwhelmed v.a. health system of today, the wait times became so politically unacceptable, that v.a. decided to crack down on it. they set a systemwide goal that no veteran would wait more than 14 days to get an appointment. and they had the same problem of meeting those goals or steaming fast towards those goals on paper, but it turns out they were only paper results. they weren t making real progre
only a paper result. that they figured out a way to make the statistics look better, even while veterans are still waiting too long to hear about their claims. and it is the same thing for the wait times that veterans expect when they re trying to get v.a. health care appointments. veterans have been waiting too long. forever, they have been waiting too long. but in the extra-overwhelmed v.a. health system of today, the wait times became so politically unacceptable, that v.a. decided to crack down on it. they set a systemwide goal that no veteran would wait more than 14 days to get an appointment. and they had the same problem of meeting those goals or steaming fast towards those goals on paper, but it turns out they were only paper results. they weren t making real progress, they just made it look like they were making progress. this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. in 2012, the inspector general claim kd bullpucky on the claim that 95% of patients were getting m
even while veterans are still waiting too long to hear about their claims. and it is the same thing for the wait times that veterans expect when they re trying to get v.a. health care appointments. veterans have been waiting too long. forever, they have been waiting too long. but in the extra-overwhelmed v.a. health system of today, the wait times became so politically unacceptable, that v.a. decided to crack down on it. they set a systemwide goal that no veteran would wait more than 14 days to get an appointment. and they had the same problem of meeting those goals or steaming fast towards those goals on paper, but it turns out they were only paper results. they weren t making real progress, they just made it look like they were making progress. this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. in 2012, the inspector general claim kd bullpucky on the claim that 95% of patients were getting mental health treatment within 14 day ds. that looks great, 95%. but the inspector gen