New VA Secretary needs to find missing drugs

There has been enough troubling news coming out of the VA system. Nationally, we learned of the long wait times for veterans seeking medical care. Then things blew up at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Tomah, where doctors were handing out powerful drugs like candy, and where some veterans died from overdoses. The top doctor at the Tomah VA eventually resigned, and had his license taken away. That led to federal legislative action designed to reduce the reliance on powerful painkillers. Now there is more trouble in our VA system. VA hospitals across the country are seeing an increase in opiod theft. The feds are investigating, but it appears the medicine intended to treat our military veterans is being stolen by VA employees, either for their own use, or to sell on the black market. Compounding the problem is that a number of VA hospitals have been lax in tracking their drug supplies. Perhaps the problem of missing medicine is no worse at the VA than in private facilities, but that shouldn’t matter. These are people who are charged with caring for the nation’s wounded or ill veterans, and should be held to a higher standard. Our nation’s new VA secretary should make fixing this problem a priority, and ensuring that the drugs designed to treat our military veterans end up in the hands for which they are intended.