Incidentcase24

Doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Tomah, Wis., hand out so many narcotic painkillers that some veterans have taken to calling the place “Candy Land.” They call the hospital’s chief of staff, psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan, “the Candy Man.” Jason Simcakoski, who died in August of an overdose in the Tomah VA psychiatric ward, had checked himself into the hospital, citing an addiction to painkillers and severe anxiety that was destroying his relationship with his wife and 11-year-old daughter. An autopsy report prepared by the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics declared the cause of death to be “mixed drug toxicity.” Ryan Honl, a Gulf War veteran and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who in October 2017 resigned from his position as a secretary in the hospital’s mental health clinic after two months, filing a federal whistleblower complaint on his way out.