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Guarantee veterans the best quality health care that we can provide. >> yes, i agree with you on point, and there is also something special about the v.a. which is that we have made an explicit commitment. the united states government is the provider of record to those people, so we are both writing the check and expected to cash it. and if the problem here is not just the same sort of medical errors and the same sort of problems that happen in other health care, but a systemic effort to cover up bad care that is being delivered, a systemic effort to lie about the way that veterans are being t...

Triaged for care. his words are doing nothing for some in congress increasingly calling for his ouster. an official saying shinseki is, quote, on thin ice. i'll bring in white house correspondent michelle kosinski. lawmakers from both parties roughed up va officials at a hearing on capitol hill last night, didn't they? >> reporter: absolutely. wow. this lasted four hours. these congressmen absolutely tearing into va representatives. they were asking these good solid questions that for some reason the va either could not or would not answer. some of it was concerning this new official report ab...

Initiate right now. >> that was the president speaking a week ago today. and when he said that, that sounded like something that really wasn't about waiting. something that they were going to get right on. but no further details were released about that immediately. and we called and called, both the white house and the v.a. to get an answer about what the president might have meant when he made these comments, reaching out to veterans who are currently waiting for appointments to make sure they're getting better service. we couldn't get anyone to explain to us what the president meant at the ...

Congress. democrats, republicans. this is what senator john mccain, combat veteran, told wolf blitzer. >> phoenix v.a. is not an island. it's not immune to other influences -- every other v. ranchv.a. is probably going to have these same influences on them because they were trying to comply with guidelines that were laid down from the headquarters of the v.a. which they couldn't meet. that's what this whole phantom waiting list and stuff is all about. i haven't said this before, but i think it's time for general shinseki to move on. >> all right. let's bring in our political panel. political c...

Turn around a baseball team that is not winning, you change the coach. and i think that is where a lot of these politicians on capitol hill are looking. there needs to be a change on leadership and strong leadership that can be brought in. that can fight what appears to me and to all the sources i have talked to is this entrenched bureaucracy that has just turned this v.a. into something other than what it should be which is a highly efficient health delivery system for the men and women of this country who deserve it. >> it's also a centralized bureaucracy. and maybe that's part of the issue ...