Whistleblower says the VA is about to throw out more than 500,000 health care applications

A whistleblower at the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a dire warning to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying the VA is gearing up to toss more than 500,000 health care applications over mistakes the VA made, the Washington Examiner reported.

"I am sending this whistleblower disclosure to your office due to the urgent need for executive intervention," Scott Davis, an employee at the VA's Atlanta office, wrote in a letter, according to the Examiner. "VA is planning on declaring over 500,000 veteran applications for VA health care as incomplete and abandoned at the end of March 2017."

Trump campaigned on a promise to fix the VA and provide better care to the country's veterans — a promise on which he as already faltered. 

One of Trump's first moves was to issue a hiring ban on federal employees. The freeze negatively impacts veterans, who get preferential treatment in the federal hiring process. It also prevents the VA from hiring more health care providers for veterans, who are suffering from a backlog in care.

Davis said the VA said the health care applications had errors made by the applicants, and therefore will be thrown out. But Davis added that the VA prompted the applicants for the wrong information, and therefore the applicants shouldn't be punished by having their health care requests tossed.

The "VA is planning to go ahead with this illegal action of purging these records without providing veterans notification or disclosing that these veterans are entitled to Equitable Relief for health care cost they incurred due to administrative errors by the VA," Davis wrote in his letter, according to the Examiner.

This is not the first time Davis has blown the whistle about possible incorrect purging of health care records at the VA. He testified before Congress as a VA whistleblower in 2014, saying he was retaliated against for shining light on the VA's health care application errors.