The VA scandal has been in the news for a few weeks, and you would think that the discussion about it would surface some meaningful solutions. So far there has been some political posturing and some calls for some in the Veteran’s Administration to resign. But the main problem in the VA isn’t the leadership; it’s the system. I know very good people who work at the VA. But when you put good people in a bad system, the system wins.

Here a few facts that should be considered in this scandal. The Veteran’s Administration is a very large bureaucracy. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich puts this in context. The VA workforce is larger than the Marine Corps. And I might add, the VA is a lot less disciplined than the marines.

The VA treats some six million veterans a year at more than 1400 different sites including hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes. It also helps train 90,000 health professionals every year in its medical centers. More than half of all American physicians have had some training in the VA system.

Unfortunately, this government system is tangled in bureaucracy and inefficiency. Michael Tanner (Cato Institute) discovered that more 344,000 claims for veteran’s care are backed up and waiting to be processed. It takes an average of 160 days for a veteran to be approved for health benefits. And when someone enters a VA facility, that veteran must wait twice as long as the national average waiting time in an emergency room. In some facilities, their wait is 12 times longer than the national average waiting time.

So far, all attempts to integrate Department of Defense and VA medical record systems have failed. That is one reason why it takes so long to transition active duty health services to VA health services.

Of course these issues aren’t even at the heart of the scandal. Dozens of veterans died while waiting months for vital treatment, and VA bureaucrats covered up these unacceptable wait times. As I hope you can see, the scandal is only part of a larger problem at the Veteran’s Administration.