Barack Obama demonstrated last week that, in his view, the horror stories of military veteran abuse amount to just another “phony scandal.” He was in Phoenix to promote his agenda for his last two years in office. While there, the Hill noted, “his motorcade passed by — but did not stop at — the Veterans Affairs hospital at the center of the scandal over mismanaged care at the agency, despite calls for him to visit the facility during his Phoenix trip.”
Two days later, another veteran was dead waiting for treatment that never came. The latest casualtiy is a Vietnam veteran who waited a year for a cancer screening at a Veterans Affairs hospital. He died Saturday, just five months after doctors diagnosed him as terminal.
“He fought cancer as hard as any battle he ever fought,” the deceased vet’s wife, Gayla Spivey, told Georgia outlet WMAZ. ”He was the strongest, most courageous man I’ve ever known.”
But he died five months after he was diagnosed, and his wife thinks an earlier checkup could have made a difference.
“I have no way of knowing that if he had had a colonoscopy a year ago, that the outcome would be any different,” Gayla told WMAZ in July. “But there’s always that possibility. A year? A year to work with it. You know? I mean, it may not have spread to the liver. It may not have spread to the lymph nodes.”
This report, by Rachel Stoltzfoos, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
