THREE MARTINI LUNCH: MAY 29, 2014

Guest host Brett Winterble and NRO's Jim Geraghty discuss Eric Shinseki's fate, $3 million in prizes awarded by the V.A. for a 2013 contest to develop an appointment scheduling app, and men who drink human breast milk as a nutritional supplement.



Emails Track How V.A. Officials Conspired to Manipulate Wait Times

Despite years of repeated complaints and evidence showing patient wait-time fraud at the Central Texas VA, the inspector general never held anyone accountable and even bestowed the Robert W. Carey Performance Excellence Award on the facility, The Daily Beast reports.

A Texas whistleblower provided the publication with emails and internal memos detailing "how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system" by doing things like entering the next available appointment date instead of a patient's desired appointment date into the computer system, according to The Daily Beast, which was often a difference of weeks and months.

Fifty percent of VA executives' "field bonus" pay hinged on wait times, according to the whistleblower.

This "low-risk, high-reward form of cheating" was pervasive throughout the VA, the whistleblower said, yet the outcome of a 2011 inspector general investigation that found "significant delays" and "widespread manipulation" of appointments didn't result in disciplinary action against any VA officials.

"Every doctor, nurse, and clerk in the hospital knows it's true, but the VA's investigative team wasn't able to find any evidence," the whistleblower said. "They didn't interview any of us or really try to find out what was going on. This was reported in 2011 and it's still not fixed today."

Also read:

V.A. Investigation Confirms Phoenix Abuses, Whistleblower Describes 'Crime Syndicate' Attitude

Say, where's Hillary on the V.A. scandal?