In a federal courtroom in Madison, Wisconsin, last week, a guess accepted i of the largest Department of Veterans Diplomacy' malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit settlements—totaling $2.3 meg—with the family of Jason Simcakoski, the Marine Corps veteran who died from a barrage of 16 different opiates and other risky sedating drugs in August 2014 prescribed for him at the Tomah, Wisconsin, VA hospital. Newsweek recounted the tragedy in its recent cover story on how the VA fueled the nation's opioid epidemic and killed thousands of veterans. Yet despite officials at various times albeit to the many failures at Tomah, the VA denies that its deadly overdrugging of Simcakoski and the staff delays in trying to resuscitate him—information technology took them ten minutes to beginning CPR and nearly a half-hour to notice a defibrillator in the hospital, according to a VA investigation—were in whatever way negligent. And though Simcakoski'due south expiry was perhaps the all-time-known fatality linked to the VA's contempo wait-time and overmedication scandals, the VA delayed for about a year offering any meaningful response to the family'south complaint filed with the department, an authoritative response that meant they had to go outside the VA to the federal courts last year to win a settlement.

Critics of the VA say all this fits a broader pattern of it using every legal weapon at its command to protect an institutional culture of delay, cover-ups and obfuscation, all worsened by a mutual practice of shielding dangerous clinicians (as exposed past USA Today in mid-Oct, which prompted the VA to promise reforms).

"Honestly, this wasn't about the money," says Simcakoski'south widow Heather, who now has to raise her fifteen-twelvemonth-old girl by herself. "We don't need it. What happened was wrong and it'due south about property the VA answerable."

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David Shulkin, the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Diplomacy, speaks at a New Bailiwick of jersey press briefing on August 16. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

VA Secretarial assistant Dr. David Shulkin and his press squad declined to answer Newsweek's questions near the settlement, but a spokesperson did provide a brief statement: "Resolution of this case will hopefully provide some closure and security for Mr. Simcakoski's widow, minor kid, and parents, simply VA as well recognizes that there is nix that can supervene upon this family's loss of a father, married man, and son."

The VA and its doctors face up little in the way of potent deterrents or stiff penalties for malpractice: Its clinicians aren't personally liable for medical errors, and the federal government doesn't pay punitive damages on claims against it. But it does pay out a lot for the VA'south mistakes—$200 million in wrongful death cases for less than 1,000 cases from 2002 to 2012, the Center for Investigative Reporting establish in 2014. Payments—and actionable deadly mistakes—have increased since then. The VA's legal settlements more tripled between 2011 and 2015 to $338 million, by and large for malpractice lawsuits, the New York Daily News reported last yr. The VA spent $848 million in payouts, largely for medical mistakes, through that aforementioned 5-year period. That included a settlement for the family of a depressed Gulf War veteran, Brian Campeau, who suffocated to expiry after an electroshock therapy; he then struggled to breathe for 16 hours while clinicians struggled to effigy out how to insert a breathing tube.

At least Campeau'south family got paid for their tragic loss, even if the VA didn't admit wrongdoing and the staffers who failed him were never disciplined. Tracy Eiswert doesn't even have that satisfaction equally she's fought to have her malpractice lawsuit heard since her husband, Scott, shot himself to death in 2008 after being denied benefits, a PTSD diagnosis and competent care past the VA. His benefits, now worth $1,500 a month—and a belated diagnosis of PTSD—were eventually awarded to his family unit, forth with an apology from VA officials, while she however hasn't gotten any settlement.

After the first claim Eiswert filed in 2010 was denied past the VA, she turned to federal courtroom in 2011 with a new federal lawsuit, merely the impoverished widow has endured years of legal objections based on arcane Tennessee statutes designed to limit malpractice lawsuits—all amounting to what her attorney, Cristobal Bonifaz, has described as "unbelievable malfeasance" by the VA. (She tin simply beget to pursue the example considering he'due south soldiered on against the agency through a contingency arrangement with his customer.) "Information technology has been 8 years of torture for Tracy and her family without the VA ever denying liability."

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Sirius XM hosts a Veterans Day special, including a console virtually coping with PTSD equally a veteran. Photo by Larry French/Getty Images for SiriusXM

Recalling the way her husband went into a tailspin of depression as he filed appeals over and over again that didn't run across obscure VA paperwork objections, she declares, "They're doing to me the same things they did to Scott when he was alive."

At one point, she says, the VA granted her an extension to file an entreatment of the VA's deprival of her claim in federal court, then claimed that the aforementioned entreatment should be dismissed because it violated Tennessee's statute of limitations for malpractice claims. The VA's lawyers afterwards said the lawsuit should be dismissed because the local attorneys didn't file a 1-page zipper declaring that they themselves hadn't been sued for malpractice, a requirement later struck downwards by a court in another case.

That has been followed past most five years of costly battles in state and federal entreatment courts over a technical issue so arcane and absurd it surely must be a satiric fabrication. "All I'm request is for a take a chance to fence my case on its merits, non on technicalities," Eiswert pleaded later on well-nigh a decade of waiting for justice from the VA for her husband's suicide. That tragedy, her fragile emotional state and her economic desperation have all wreaked havoc on her unabridged family.

These days, she'due south using almost of the greenbacks from Scott's life insurance policy to help pay for expensive psychiatric hospitalizations and other unsuccessful mental health care for her youngest teenage girl, who is suffering from PTSD, deep low and multiple suicide attempts after her begetter'south expiry. The girl has also been re-traumatized past some other family suicides, including by Tracy'south one-half-brother. "Just two weeks ago, she tried to kill herself," she reports. "I feel similar I'm all by myself trying to save my daughter'due south life.

All the while, she says: "The VA has really dragged this out. They keep twisting the pocketknife."