The problem with the VA

[HereSince1628]

12. Or, perhaps the problem was that bonuses motivated misbehavior

The correlation between the desire for cash rewards and motivation for bad/criminal behavior is fairly broad. Consequently, wherever there is use of monetary or other valued bonuses as incentives there must always be monitoring for cheating.

I am rather open to the notion that cheating is a common feature of human nature. It's no great leap to suspect this particular behavior at these VA facilities is biased by both the nature of personalities and access & opportunity for misadventure as much as it is by 'red state culture'.

The good news is that the opportunity for this particular scam is exposed and someone will be assigned to attend to it. Of course, that internal policing of the VA scheduling system also requires diversion of re$ource$ from veterans' healthcare per se.

The sad reality of human behavior is that whatever effort is made to monitor this and other known weaknesses, the clever cheaters will be rooting out miss-gotten gains in other places.