This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veteran Health Care

  • Phony soldiers begging in NYC?

    Now, I don’t have any real proof that this guy is a phony soldier, but his story is a bit unbelievable.

    The first thing I noticed was his teeth – those teeth took years to get in that kind of shape and they would make him non-deployable. He claims he returned from Iraq last year after a nineteen month tour. You guys would probably know better than me whether any units did nineteen months in Iraq from 2006 to 2008, but that seems like an awful long tour. I’ve heard of fifteen month deployments, but none that were 19 months.

    He also claims he’d been wounded and underwent “lung surgery” which makes him unemployable. If he was wounded that severely, he would have been medically retired, not put out on the streets.

    Yeah, he hung an honorable discharge certificate around his neck – it costs $29.95 at this online retailer. I went through the entire ordering process, and at no point was I asked for proof of my service – needless to say, I bought a discharge certificate that now makes me eligible to join IVAW.
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  • The PTSD foregone conclusion

    One of our readers, Jerry, sends along a link to an ABC article about Post Tramatic Stress Disorder;

    abc-ptsd

    Now, I’m all in favor of anything that puts “the spotlight” on PTSD in our military community, but there’s absolutely no evidence that the Fort Hood incident had anything to do with PTSD, but ABC is bound and determine to make it a foregone conclusion in the discussion;

    In the wake of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, Nov. 5, that left 13 people dead, allegedly at the hands of a fellow soldier, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, soldiers who struggle with stress like Swain, have come back into the spotlight.

    I cannot understand why it’s so hard to say the words that Hasan is another jihadist, or that Hasan is another disgruntled employee, or that Hasan wasn’t wired correctly. There is mounting evidence that he was influenced in this endeavor by his culture and there is absolutely no evidence he suffered from PTSD.

    My guess is that the media has decided that Hasan suffered from PTSD because they still blame it on Bush, and it avoids the glaring fact that all of this crap about our fear of racial profiling is absolutely wrong-headed.

  • Shinseki still incompetent

    The Stars and Stripes reports this morning that weeks after the Department of Veterans Affairs authorized “emergency payments” for their education benefits, more than 30,000 of the 82,000 veterans who’ve applied are still without checks (that’s about 36% of applicants), some probably won’t get their checks until 2010. So much for “emergency” payments.

    But fear not – DVA’s boss says it’s “unacceptable” Whew! Don’t you feel better? I know that veterans and their families will be able to live on that “unacceptable”. It puts food on the table, it makes it easier to study, it even makes rent payments. What we need here is for Brandon Friedman to have another conference call so he can get dicksmith’s opinion and then leap into action like last time.

    “[VA Secretary Eric Shinseki] has made it clear to everyone that any delay in payments is unacceptable,” [Keith Wilson, director of the VA’s education services] said. “I know what it’s like to stand in line for food stamps after defending this country. I take this very personally, and we’re going to fix it.”

    Yeah, drag out your own victim card to deflect criticism. The fact remains that this bill passed 12 months before the first check was to be cut – DVA had time to fix this. It’s not like a hurricane struck or anything.

    Worse? DVA’s computer system for this process won’t be running for more than a year;

    A new automated computer system is expected to simplify that process, but the system won’t be fully operational until December 2010, Wilson said. That drew criticism from lawmakers, who worry that students enrolling in classes next spring and fall could face similar delays.

    But don’t worry, I’m sure these problems won’t surface when the government takes over all of our health care.

  • Beret saleman Shinseki in over his head

    It’s a good thing Eric Shinseki isn’t working for a Republican administration or he’d be tarred and feathered and tethered to a railroad tie in front of his Vermont Avenue office at this writing. Lucky for him, Congress and the media carry water for Democrats;

    “A plan was written, very quickly put together, uh, very short timelines,” declared VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to the US House Veterans Affairs Committee yesterday as to why the VA had screwed up the payments for veterans attempting to pursue higher education. “I’m looking at the certificates of eligibility uh being processed on 1 May and enrollments 6 July, checks having to flow through August. A very compressed time frame. And in order to do that, we essentially began as I arrived in January, uh, putting together the plan — reviewing the plan that was there and trying to validate it. I’ll be frank, when I arrived, uh, there were a number of people telling me this was simply not executable.”

    So, instead of warning people, or negotiating temporary agreements with schools, or…well, anything, Shinseki let the dates chug up on him and then pass. Shinseki made empty promises to veterans that he had no intention to keep. From Stars and Stripes;

    A number of “complications” caused the payment delays, Shinseki explained. One factor was VA officials underestimated the number of claim processors they needed by the Aug. 3 start date. Early estimates were based on processing time under the Montgomery GI Bill program, he said.

    But processing Mongomery GI Bill payments involves two to three steps and takes an average of 15 minutes versus nine steps and more than an hour to process a Post-9/11 GI Bill application, Shinseki explained. Unlike Montgomery GI Bill benefits, Post-9/11 payments vary by school location and other unique factors.

    Yeah, unique factors like having a blivet head for a DVA Secretary. The Congress members really wore his ass out for being an incompetent boob;

    Both Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., committee chairman, and [Steve Buyer, R-Ind.] praised Shinseki for integrity and candor in promptly revealing and addressing problems that have surfaced at VA since he took charge last February.

    “We think you’re doing a great job,” said Filner. “I know you were called a soldier’s soldier when you were in the Army. And now I’m calling you a veteran’s veteran.”

    CNN blames veterans for applying for the benefits they earned;

    The department became a victim of the success of its new education program for veterans who have served since September 2001. The claims became so backlogged that the VA was forced to issue more than $70 million in emergency funds to veterans who were still waiting for money for supplies and living needs, weeks into the school year.

    The truth is; Shinseki and his staff could have done almost anything to curtail these problems, but instead they just smiled and waved at TV cameras until veterans got fed up with the pleasantries and broken promises.

    The good news is that Congress finalized a bill to provide the DVA with funding for medical programs a year in advance. I’m betting that Shinseki will screw that up, too.

  • This governing stuff is hard

    Last week, I wrote that the Obama Administration had decided to hike the inpatient fee for TRICARE recipients who were working age and using civilian hospitals. Of course we heard that the Administration was dumbstruck by the Defense Department’s announcement and we heard promises that the Administration would not let it fly.

    We waited. We waited. No news of the reversal – the Defense Department is an agency of the Executive Branch, so all it would take is the President telling them “no”, right? Still nothing.

    Today, the House-Senate conference for the 2010 Defense Appropriation Bill took action since the White House didn’t seem too eager to do the right thing according to the Stars and Stripes;

    The last decision made by House-Senate conferees negotiating final details on a fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill Tuesday was to insert language that will roll back an announced Oct. 1 increase in fees charged to TRICARE Standard beneficiaries for stays in civilian hospitals.

    The surprise fee increases, which were reported here last week, gave lawmakers a chance to ride to the rescue and, in effect, put a cherry atop the $680.2 billion defense policy bill, at least for working-age military retirees and their families who would have seen a $110-a-day bump in hospital bills.

    That was a fortuitous opportunity for the armed services committees because other pay and benefit initiatives in the bill are relatively modest compared to past years.

    Fortuitous? Screwing around with peoples’ health and welfare is fortuitous? No, actually, it looks like they were screwing around on purpose so they could seem to be doing something for military retirees. It seems it’s difficult to keep Obama’s campaign promises;

    Obama promised in his presidential campaign to extend concurrent receipt to all disabled military retirees. But White House budget officials were stunned to learn the cost — $45 billion over 10 years — and so lowered their first-term target to all Chapter 61 retirees, clearly an unpopular compromise.

    House-Senate Conferees also rejected two familiar Senate-passed initiatives as unfunded. One would have ended a reduction in Survivor Benefit Plan payments to 54,000 widows who also draw Dependency and Indemnity Compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    The other provision tossed would have made 140,000 more reservists mobilized since Sept. 11, 2001, eligible for earlier reserve retirement. In 2007, Congress had lowered the age 60 start of reserve retired pay by three months for every 90 consecutive days that a Reserve or Guard members is called up for war or national emergency if they otherwise qualify for retirement. For lack of funds, Congress made the change applicable only for deployment time after Jan. 28, 2008. That restriction will remain.

    So they didn’t end the reduction from our military retired pay to pay for our own disability, they didn’t end the reduction in widows’ benefits (that their husbands earned for them) and they didn’t fix eligibility for Reserve soldiers who served in the war against terror. But they did fix the thing they inflicted on service members last week. What kind of childish bullshit are they trying to pull on us?

    I guess governing is harder than making campaign promises.

  • …And so it begins

    The Stars and Stripes reports that Tricare has hiked their inpatient fee nearly 21% for retirees under 65 using civilian hospitals;

    TRICARE Standard is the military’s fee-for-service insurance option. The inpatient cost share for retirees under age 65 and their family members was increased to $645 a day from $535. The actual formula for beneficiaries is $645 a day, or 25 percent of total hospital charges, whichever is less.

    Families of active duty members who use Standard for civilian hospital stays will see a more modest increase in their daily charge, from $15.65 a day to $16.30, or $25 per admission, whichever is greater.

    The increase for retirees stunned and angered at least one service association.

    “This shocking announcement is extremely disappointing, given your public assurances earlier this year that the Defense Department would not be proposing any TRICARE fee increases for [fiscal] 2010,” retired Navy Vice Adm. Norbert R. Ryan Jr., president of the Military Officers Association of America told Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Ryan’s protest letter was sent hours after TRICARE officials unveiled their new inpatient fees for Standard.

    That’s how it begins every time. It’s always veteran health care that suffers first. Now where are the trolls that always tell me that I’m just scaring veterans?

  • Soltz shows his ignorance again

    Many of you probably remember the post TSO wrote on Jon Soltz, the irrepressible Executive Director of VoteVets, one of those pretend veteran organizations (the only veterans they help are themselves) a few months ago for Soltz’ inability to distinguish between the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the Department of Defense in regards to their separate medical services.

    Well, Soltz stayed under the radar for awhile after that. He popped up in my lane last week.

    He wrote at VetsVoice about The Erratic Joe Wilson’s Shameful Record on Troops and Veterans Care.
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  • Buyer: Healthcare bill as it is will penalize veterans

    1stCavRVN11B sent us a link the other day to a Townhall.com article by Congressman Stephen Buyer, who is also the ranking member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and a full colonel in the Army Reserves. Buyer claims that, as it stands this minute, the healthcare bill in the House will penalize veterans;

    [T]he House bill as it stands today still would not, repeat, would not exempt veterans who receive VA healthcare from the punitive 2.5 percent tax that the bill would impose for failure to have “acceptable coverage

    The current House bill would also create a disincentive to hiring members of the National Guard and Reserve by levying an eight percent payroll tax penalty against employers that do not provide continuous health coverage to its employees. Continuous coverage for National Guard and Reserve members is not always necessary because they frequently transition to and from active duty where they have access to TRICARE.

    Buyer claims that two of his amendments to fix problems in the bill have been accepted but that he has four other amendments pending. From his website;

    The four amendments Congressman Buyer and Chairman Waxman plan to work to reach an agreement are: 1) prevent veterans from being subjected to a 2.5 percent tax because they may be enrolled in a VA health plan; 2) exempting the Guard and Reserve employers from the eight percent penalty tax; 3) allow VA reimbursements from third party medical insurers; and 4) exempting the Guard and Reserve members from the 2.5 percent penalty tax.

    Yeah, someone keeps coming around to say this is “scare tactics” from Republicans to scare veterans – yet the loopholes exist. The people who call them “scare tactics” weren’t around when a Democrat Congress doubled co-pays for active duty members who used civilian hospitals because they were on recruiter duty or in ROTC instructor groups as well as retirees. They weren’t around when dental and eye coverage for dependents ended. Or when retirees over 65 was moved from Tricare to Medicare.

    Many of the things the politicians want to change get nipped in the bud – but only because we’re vigilant.