Posted by Tina
I’ve waited to comment on the current VA Hospital scandal hoping more specifics would come out. I’m tired of waiting after doing some reading today.
I have a feeling that forty deaths is only the tip of a large and growing iceberg. The latest reports of widespread deaths due to incompetence and neglect are very disturbing but very little will happen to fix this without nation-wide outrage by our citizens. I direct your attention to individual complaints and and revelations about bad treatment at our VA Hospitals. Oh, and there’s also the suicides! how many of these might have been prevented with better care?
We hear that three administrators in Phoenix have been placed on leave. Big whoop. Phoenix definitely needs a full investigation but I would bet the entire system needs a complete and thorough work-up. It’s quite possible that administrators have been destroying evidence in Phoenix. Across the country many others haven probably never felt the need or impulse only because nobody bothered to complain loud or long enough.
As a citizen I’m no different and it shames me. Although I’m certain that many high qualified and professional doctors and nurses serve our veterans daily I’m just as certain that the management and administrative end has been failing our vets miserably for decades. Our service people deserve better than this.
Congress GETS much better than this!
Their yearly budgets waste billions of taxpayer dollars…surely the budgets can be better structured and managed to fund upgrades to our VA hospitals and to see to it that incompetency of management ends. wouldn’t the broken window theory about crime translate well to these hospitals?
No more excuses!
While we personally manage our anger and disgust over this problem we might give some thought to the dreadful waste associated with Obamacare and the green energy investments debacles of the past five years. This is what happens with central planning generally…low quality care and big F-ups.
<b>Is it time for another march on Washington?</b>
Tina and Jack:
I can personally confirm the waiting list, because I was on it. Maybe I still am, if it has not been purged. While I was on the DMZ in 1969, I was exposed to Agent Orange. We did not know that until many years later. After the Army and VA confirmed that soldiers in my particular area at that particular time had indeed been exposed, some of the people I served with advised me to get tested. They don’t really test for Agent Orange–your deployment records confirm that. They test for the numerous conditions that are associated with Agent Orange, such as various kinds of cancer, heart disease, and many others that can show up much later. For most VA disability claims, you have to show that your particular disability is connected to your service. I have such a service-connected disability for a different disorder. That puts me in Priority 3, along with POW and Purple Heart people, way above the ordinary vet, so I am entitled to rapid response at any the VA hospital. Agent Orange is a special case, where you do not have to prove the connection. If you were exposed and you later have one of the conditions, it is a presumed connection. I went to the Phoenix VA Hospital, that is now being talked about, in 2009 for testing. They did the tests, like blood draws and X-rays, and they put my on the Agent Orange roster. Then I was told to wait for a notice of an appointment with the doctor for evaluation. I waited two months and then called the Agent Orange coordinator. He told me to keep waiting because my appointment was coming up soon. I am still waiting.
Soaps, very sorry to hear that, you deserve far better! When you have a potentially life threatening medical situation it obviously deserves priority treatment! If they (VA) can’t deliver, then some hospital administrators need to be fired.
The perfect cap to this story Soaps. I am thoroughly disgusted.
Another reason why we need to flip the Senate this November.
With Congress in charge of the “purse-strings” a bill need to pass stopping ALL bonus pay to every federal agency. That money alone could be directed to the VA to provide the doctors, staff and facility upgrades to care for our veterans. And if it’s not enough they can cut their own congressional salaries to align with military pay.
Well, I am still above ground and breathing after 5 years of waiting, so I can assume I don’t have any of those horrible Agent Orange conditions –Yet. I will be out your way next month, and I will be seeing Jack, so he can see what condition my condition is in. What bothers me is the priority issue. I was already a disabled veteran with a service-connected disability before I went in about the Agent Orange stuff. I receive a very small monthly check and a colorful VA card that says “service connected.” I use that at Home Depot for a 10% discount. But it is also supposed to guarantee priority appointments and treatment at any VA clinic. The only two classes above the service-connected disability vet priority level are Medal of Honor winners and people who have lost a limb in hostile fire action. There are about 10 levels below me on the priority list. If a former combat veteran with a service connected disability has to wait 5 years, there is not much hope for those lower-level guys. I do think the problem is at the administrative levels. I think at one time most of the people in those positions were actual veterans. Now they are just career federal employees, especially those at the higher appointee levels, either appointed by Obama or hired by even higher level people that he appointed, and they share his philosophy.
If you think this situation is disgustingly bad, wait ’til you see what Obamacare (government run health care) does to the health of the nation at large.
Sad for our vets…the booby prize is that we will all soon be joining them in this dysfunctional plight!
Except for Congress and the President of course.