Did the Veterans Administration cover up the potential exposure of more than 1800 veterans to HIV at a St. Louis VA dental center?  Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), chair of the House Veteran Affairs Committee, believes they did exactly that — and waited more than three months to warn those potentially infected.  Worse, the head of the VA apparently knew nothing of the event — and Filner blasted the Obama administration’s handling of the scandal (via Instapundit):

The Democratic chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee lambasted the Obama administration over its handling of an incident at a St. Louis VA center in which more than 1,800 veterans were told they may have been exposed to HIV. …

The Department of Veterans Affairs last month sent a letter to 1,812 patients informing them that could have been exposed to HIV and other deadly viruses because of dental equipment that was insufficiently sterilized over a period of 13 months. The agency said the risk of infection was “extremely low” but it urged patients to return for blood tests.

Filner criticized the administration for taking more than three months to send out the letters after it discovered the faulty safety precautions in March. “We should be much more caring not only about the procedures but the way we deal with them after they’re known,” the congressman said. He said it was “disgraceful” that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki did not know about the lapse until last week.

Disgraceful hardly begins to cover it.  First, how did the VA allow improper sterilization of equipment to continue for 13 months?  No one bothered to check to see whether the instruments were properly prepared?  That seems like a fairly basic function, especially since the advent of HIV, but arguably since the time of Lister.

Next, it should have been clear after the discovery of the improper practice that anyone treated in the facility could have been exposed to any number of viral or bacterial infections — and that they could be passing those infections to family members and friends every day they failed to address the possibility.  Instead of acting with alacrity to contain the potential for exposure, the VA waited three months to send out the first notice that these veterans could be ill and infectious.  That’s not just a disservice to the veterans, it’s an assault on their families.

Why didn’t Shinseki know about this until months after its occurrence?  The former general was chosen for his leadership abilities.  Granted, the VA is a large bureaucracy, but so is the military.  The failure to properly sterilize equipment and the cover-up took place on his watch.  Heads need to roll, and perhaps Shinseki’s should be among them if the VA is this dysfunctional more than a year into his tenure.  This shows that the VA has trouble delivering even basic care and acting within a basic ethical framework.  Everyone involved should be submitting resignations.

And let’s not forget that the VA is one of the several single-payer systems run by the government, and in this case an unchallenged area of jurisdiction: veterans’ health.  Putting the government in charge of health care is no panacea.  In fact, this makes it look more like a disease than anything government control is supposed to cure.