>>VA funding has more than kept up with medical inflation and increased patient loads.
>>http://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/VA-Funding-Growth-Outstripped-Patient-Growth.png

Actually some experts insist that by far the biggest healthcare costs are for the chronically unwell in their last few months of life. I don't see that in the figures you quote, and the 173% isn't such a big increase compared to other healthcare funding models over a 12-year period. Consider that healthcare spending in the US is expected to almost double again in the next 5 years to more than 20% of GDP.

The real story I see is faking of the rationing mechanism. Healthcare always has a rationing mechanism and Kissick refers to the "iron triangle of medicine" in which access, quality and cost are constantly competing. The lesson is that you may be able to drive improvement in one or even two of the angles, but only at the expense of the third. In the US, it's usually cost that takes the hit, giving you the highest costs by far in any first world health system. In this case cost was capped and access and quality were mandated. So managers pretended the triangle was actually an easily deformed rhombus and everybody was satisfied. Until people began dying and the nature of a triangle was re-discovered.

And so to Obama. I'm sorry that yet again I need to ask how possibly he could have caused this. It seems perfectly clear that fake reports were passed up the chain and were believed long before they reached Obama, if they ever did. His direct reports probably even took credit for the success. I guess it's true that "the buck stops here" when you're top dog, but that's a principle not a reason to pin everything on him.