There was a point in a veterans life when the only worry that he/she had was a bullet, bomb or which college to spend the GI Bill money at. Thanks to the VA, today's Vets have a bit more to guard against.

Not only are the Vets of today at risk of contracting AIDS through improperly sterilized equipment, as was the case in a recent case at a Florida VA hospital which may have infected 3,650 people, but it now turns out that those same Vets may have a bit less funding to care for such a disease, or any other ailment or injury for which the various VA hospitals and institutions were once relied upon.

According to a press release from the Department of Justice, the Associate Director of the VA Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy in Hines, Ill., William J. Brandt, who had been with the facility from 1996 to 2007, agreed to plead guilty to being part of a conspiracy to defraud the VA and the Small Business Administration (SBA), as did his wife, Esperanza A. Brandt, and the temporary staffing company she founded, Pronto Staffing, Inc.

According to the press release, the Brandts and Pronto admitted to conspiring with others to commit wire fraud in a scheme to fraudulently allow Pronto to provide temporary pharmacists to the Outpatient Pharmacy where William Brandt worked supervising pharmacists.

Pronto was created by the Brandts in 2000 to provide pharmacists to the Hines Outpatient Pharmacy. The company later sought SBA certification as a woman-owned, minority-owned small disadvantaged business and 8(a) program participant. As part of the conspiracy, the Brandts agreed to allow another company to fraudulently masquerade as Pronto and qualify for contracts set aside for SBA and 8(a) participants. 

William Brandt also agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud for making materially false misrepresentations to the VA and other government officials to hide his involvement with Pronto. Brandt claimed that Pronto was solely managed by his wife in order to avoid conflict of interest laws governing federal employees. During the course of the scheme, William Brandt, working with others, secretly agreed that the billing rates charged to the VA for certain pharmacists provided by Pronto should be increased. Between 2000 and 2007, the Brandts and other unindicted co-conspirators used Pronto to bill the VA for more than $8 million in services to the Hines, Ill., Outpatient Pharmacy facility.

For an organization that has taken so many hits lately, to not only receive another blow, but to have that blow cost $8 million and a further chunk of the public trust may just be the tipping point to denigrate the VA reputation for the Obama administration. Many veterans who rely upon the VA for their healthcare needs are fed up with the often lackluster and impersonal service of the VA.

"I've already served in Vietnam and have had to fight over my benefits," said David Williams, 64, a possible victim of the now erupting AIDS scandal in Florida, "and now, here comes this mess on top of that. Boy, oh, boy, what's going to happen next before someone realizes that they have made more mistakes?"

The Brandts are yet another example of the greed issues so prominently on display in the business world today. Thanks to people like them at work inside of our care systems, our Vets are guaranteed to go from dodging bullets to dodging needles.