In the midst of defending itself over its budget shortfall, the agency also had to mount a damage control effort this week over its pending-care list problems, which came to light thanks to Davis' leak of the VA Health Eligibility Center and the VA Office of Analytics report.

The report highlights the ongoing management problems at the troubled agency. The VA pushed back against the latest revelations, however, claiming the numbers may not tell the whole story. The agency has no way to purge those who have died from its backlog list, according to VA spokesperson Walinda West. Some may not have finished filling out the form, or used other insurance, or the health record system dates from 1985, she claimed, and the data itself may be decades old.


West stated that roughly 81 percent of vets coming to the agency "have either Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare or some other private insurance. This means," she went on, that "some in pending status may have decided to use other options instead of completing their eligibility application."

But whistleblower Davis took issue, based on his deep knowledge of the system. Unfinished applications would never wind up on the pending list and the old data system West referred to was a general health record system and had nothing to do with pending applications for enrollment in health care, he stressed, telling the Huffington Post that the formal application process only began in 1998.

Davis went on to add that at the very least, the number of dead on the pending list shows a terrible bookkeeping effort by the agency. He also told the news site that the number of living vet applications should be closer to 610,000.

Moreover, Davis explained, there is a way for the White House to immediately end the pending application logjam – just instruct the VA to let veterans upload their military record, a form known as a DD-214, when they apply for care. That would let the VA assign staff to review all of those in the logjam and clear it. Davis told the news site, "that would get rid of the pending eligibility issue."

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