Obama accepts veterans affairs chief resignation with ‘regret’

By David Lawder and Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned on Friday after a political firestorm over widespread delays in veterans' medical care, leaving President Barack Obama with a freer hand to address systemic problems bedeviling the agency. Obama announced that he accepted Shinseki's resignation "with considerable regret," after the two met on Friday to review initial findings of an internal audit of scheduling abuses at VA facilities across the country. The audit found that patient appointment wait times had been misrepresented at least once at over 60 percent of the 216 VA sites surveyed. It also said, with growing demand for services, a 14-day goal for medical appointments instituted under Shinseki was "simply not attainable" for the VA and should be scrapped.