While it could be said that Sibelius did the same, it really wasn’t. Sibelius’ exit was drawn out, and happened once people actually forgot, at least for the most part.
Of course the major problem of the VA is systemic, and was around long before Eric K. Shinseki took office, but he, like all political appointees, needed to fall on the sword of public opinion. However, the need for him to resign was real as well, because he knew about some of the problems, but didn’t fix them, and that is inexcusable.
The most likely justification for not doing enough was that he was methodically going through reports, in order to figure out the issues. While that is well and good, once the problems are found, heads need to roll. And that never happened.
To move forward, all the heads of the hospitals need to be fired, even those that didn’t do anything wrong. This is harsh, but it is needed to start with a clean slate. Next thing is have a moratorium on bonuses throughout the VA. Yes, bonuses are important to motivate, but in the VA they were abused, and were a driving factor in the scandalous behavior.
There is a more nuanced approach to fixing the VA issues, but from my non-expert opinion, this would be the steps to follow in any organization that had such a systemic problem.
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Well, as a side note, as I was writing this, news just came in that Obama announced that Jay Carney is leaving the White House.
I really have no opinion on this one. The press secretary job is always one of transition. The timing is just odd. Might as well use a full news cycle to clean house, I guess.