VA chief raises estimate of waiting veterans
WASHINGTON – About 10 percent of veterans seeking medical care at VA hospitals and clinics have to wait at least 30 days for an appointment more than twice the percentage of veterans the government said last week were forced to endure long waits, the acting Veterans Affairs secretary said Wednesday.
Sloan Gibson said the higher number of veterans waiting 30 days or more is revealed in a report due out today. He called the increase unfortunate, but said it was probably an indication that more reliable data was being reported by VA schedulers, rather than an actual increase in veteran wait times.
“I don’t like that we’ve got more veterans waiting, but at least we’re getting better data,” Gibson said.
A report issued June 9 said about 4 percent of 6 million appointments scheduled at VA facilities nationwide showed wait times longer than 30 days. That total has jumped to about 10 percent in the new report, Gibson said.
Iraqi leader reaches out to rival political groups
BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Shiite prime minister extended overtures Wednesday to his Sunni and Kurdish political rivals as his forces battled Sunni militants over control of the nation’s largest oil refinery and a strategic city near the Syrian border.
The U.S. has been pressing Nouri al-Maliki to adopt political inclusion and undermine the insurgency by making overtures to Iraq’s once-dominant Sunni minority, which has long complained of discrimination by his government and abuses by his Shiite-led security forces.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, has rejected charges of bias against the Sunnis or the Kurds and has in recent days been stressing that the threat posed by the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant will affect all Iraqis regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations. He also rejects any suggestion that the Islamic State enjoy support by disaffected Sunnis.
Associated Press
