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

Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

  • Hagel promises solution in 30 days

    We’ve all been a victim of the VA’s inability to share records with the Department of Defense what with them sending paper back and forth, records getting lost, having to submit copies of our records repeatedly, having blood tests and examinations again and again. Chuck Hagel the new Secretary of Defense promised members of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs that he would have a solution for them in 30 days and have it operational by the end of the year, says the Stars & Stripes;

    Hagel said he couldn’t defend DOD’s past performance on records sharing. In recent days, he said, he has stopped further spending on the process and has restructured program oversight. A plan would be forthcoming soon, he said.

    “I want it to work, and until I get my arms around this, I’m not going to spend any more money on this,” Hagel said. “We will have it shortly. Can I tell you in a week or two? We will have something decided within 30 days, I’ll tell you that. I can’t defend it.”

    Of course, if it does happen within the time limits that Hagel has promised, there’s still a leadership problem in the Veterans’ Affairs Department that must be dealt with sooner rather than later, because transmitting files is only a small portion of the problems that cause veterans to wait years, sometimes, for the treatment that they need and earned. You can bet that if there were delays like this for Medicare recipients, something would have been done sooner.

  • The VA discussion in the Washington Post

    Today, our buddy, Pete Hegseth, chief executive of Concerned Veterans for America, teams up with California Congressman Duncan Hunter in the opinion pages of the Washington Post to call attention to the problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs;

    The VA also refuses to admit the severity of its problems. It claims that the average time for processing benefits applications is 273 days, more than nine months. But a recent report from the Center for Investigative Reporting, drawing on internal VA documents, found that this severely understates reality. The center found that the VA’s ability to provide service to veterans has “virtually collapsed” since 2009 and that wait times are, on average, closer to a year. In New York, Los Angeles and other metro areas, veterans typically wait more than 600 days for their claims to be processed. And in too many cases, veterans are dying before their claims are adjudicated — 53 each day on average.

    We recognize that replacing a Cabinet secretary is a dramatic step. But few things are more important than honoring the commitments our nation has made to its veterans. The president and VA officials have said all the right things, but they have not delivered. Good intentions and rhetoric are not enough; results are what matter.

    Since the problems at the VA did not arise overnight, merely replacing the secretary would not fix the underlying issues. The department needs a dynamic and uncompromising leader who will make bold reforms to a bloated and calcified bureaucracy and rethink the way we interact with and serve veterans of all generations. We need to learn from the private sector about customer service and efficiency and hold VA officials accountable to deliver on their mission.

    Yeah, I think I speak for most of you when I say that the VA needs a serious housecleaning. Top down, and it’s Spring, so it’s time. Actually, a partially trained ape could do a better job that Shinseki has done. Any one can sit in front of cameras and mouth the same words over and over about how it’s his fault the system is failing veterans, and how it’s all going to get better if only we’ll be patient. There are people who comment on this blog who have been waiting more than three years – patient enough for you, Ric?

    Shinseki was a Charlie Foxtrot as a general, so I don’t what led most of the veteran community to think that he wouldn’t be a cluster as a Secretary of Veterans Affairs. But he was chosen by the same guy who thought Joe Bite Me would make a good VeePee.

  • VA claims computers taken offline

    According to the Stars & Stripes, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs had to stop using their Veterans Benefits Management System which is supposed to be the panacea for the department’s claims backlog problem yesterday. Of course, the VA was optimistic that the system would be back up this evening, but it’s the 13th time it’s been taken down in the last six months.

    Last week, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said officials are still in a “work out” period for the VBMS rollout, but he is confident the system and backlog plan are both on track.

    “We continue to give capability with each update,” he said. “We’re doing it incrementally, being patient … get it stable.”

    But Shinseki also said he expects the backlog to worsen before it improves, and would not give any time line for when veterans might see the numbers begin to decrease.

    On Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner sent his second letter this year to the VA demanding “a coherent plan, with benchmarks, deadlines, and specific measurements of progress, to address the backlog of veterans’ compensation claims.”

    In it, he wrote the VA has not produced any evidence that the new VA systems will eliminate the backlog or improve claims processing.

    I’ve watched the government buy document management systems before – it’s not a pretty sight. It usually takes someone who knows what they’re doing, but those folks never seem to be the ones assigned to the task.

  • “Baffled” Obama supporters in the veteran community

    Chief Tango sends us a link to the Daily Beast in which folks who backed the two elections of Obama in the veteran community are “baffled why the Department of Veterans’ Affairs isn’t doing more for veterans;

    “I supported President Obama in both elections, but what is happening right now at VA is inexcusable,” says Thomas Bandzul, a well-known advocate for veterans who is legislative counsel for Veterans and Military Families for Progress and past associate counsel for Veterans for Common Sense.

    Bandzul, who in 2007 worked closely with then-Senator Obama on the Lane Evans Veterans Health and Benefits Improvement Act, said he is “baffled” by why the problems at the agency just keep getting worse and why Obama isn’t doing more to fix it.

    “I know Shinseki on a personal level,” he says. “I know Allison Hickey on a personal level. They’re two of the greatest people in the world. But it’s time the president takes full responsibility for this failure, and takes action. This is happening on his watch.”

    Yeah, we warned readers about Veteran and Military Families for Progress, and Veterans for Common Sense back in 2008 when we first noticed that they popped their grimy little heads up. All they cared about was getting veterans and the troops to vote for their candidate with total disregard of what would happen.

    Oh, yeah, the article mentions other disillusioned veterans’ groups, but oddly enough, they don’t mention Paul Reickhoff and IAVA who are suddenly very good on the inability of the VA to do their simple job with any measure of success. But, IAVA drove hard for the hoop getting a Democrat Administration in office in 2008 & 2010. I wonder when they’re going to admit that they were wrong. At least VoteVets has been consistently pro-Obama, despite his utter failure on veterans’ issues. And, oh yeah, by the way, most of the writing staff from VoteVets now works at the VA. Well, except for a notable few who have jumped ship now that it’s sinking.

    There was even some disagreement among the writing staff at TAH whether an Obama Administration would screw veterans. And yes, Obama has increased spending on veterans, as the VA folks reminded me incessantly at the Milblog Conference last year, but outcome is more important than intentions. In addition to the troubles at the VA , this month, thousands of veterans are being forcibly removed from the rolls of Tricare Prime for the more user-expensive Tricare Standard, while the surplus we’ve built up in Tricare is further squandered by the Department of Defense.

    But, these veterans’ groups being “baffled” as to how all of this happened were more interested in getting their guy elected than they were in looking ahead at what the inevitable outcome would be. Cry me a fricken river.

  • White House supports Shinseki

    Our buddy Ward Carroll writes at Military.com that the White House expressed their support for Ric Shinseki’s plan to clear the blacklog of claims at the Veterans’ Affairs Department;

    “The president views this as national problem,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said during a roundtable he hosted along with Secretary Shinseki for a number of national media organizations….

    Oh, great. We’re screwed now. The president viewed healthcare, unemployment, and the economy as national problems, too, and it’s only gotten worse since he “focused” on those problems.

    McDonough stated that the president’s support of veterans is primarily manifest in his 2014 budget priorities that were just released, specifically the plus-up of the Veterans Benefits Administration funding to $2.5 billion, an increase of 13.6 percent.

    Yeah, that’ll fix the problem – throw more money at a broken system. They’ve been increasing the funding at the VA for four years and nothing has changed. I appreciate the sentiment, but when the DVA is spending the money on millions-of-dollars conventions and training programs that turn into Roman orgies, maybe more money isn’t the solution anymore. And I think I found the problem;

    “In this job I get to take care of kids I went to war with 40 years ago in a place called Vietnam,” [Shinseki] said. “I get to take care of those kids we deployed when I was service chief. I get to take care of the great giants, those veterans of World War 2 who saved the world and those who saved a country in the ‘50s and who raised me in the profession. For those reasons, when the president offered me the opportunity I took it, and I haven’t really thought much more about it.”

    Maybe Shinseki should think about it occasionally – not just when someone is holding his feet to the fire. Shinseki is good at taking blame, but that isn’t turning into results. He makes pretty speeches and touches on all the key subjects when he talks to the public, but he’s just an incompetent boob with no leadership skills. No one on his staff knows how to manage their assets properly and lead their subordinates. The VA needs a housecleaning, personnel-wise, and Shinseki doesn’t have the cojones to do that. So the house-cleaning needs to begin at the very top.

  • The Daily Show; The Red Tape File

    Stingerwooten, who tells us that today is the two year anniversary of his wait for his claim at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, sends us the latest episode of the Daily Show’s Red Tape Files in regards to the backed up claims situation at the VA;

    Judging by the discussion my VA friends are having on Facebook about this particular episode, they’re not amused, so, I figured you might be.

  • Daily Show on the VA’s incompetence

    Paul sends us a link to the Daily Show a couple of days ago in which Jon Stewart explains the VA’s problems to the low information viewers.

    I’m not a fan of the Daily Show – which is why someone has to send me the link – but Stewart, in spite of all of his other faults is good on veterans issues and since there are people out there who consider the Daily Show on Comedy Central their primary source of news, I guess we can’t have a better spokesman for the low information voters. Not that any of them are going to punish the Democrats for this single issue, but at least it will help them understand where we’re coming from.

  • Shinseki on CNN

    So Ric showed up on CNN today. CNN made a big deal that this is the first time Shinseki has sat for an interview in four years and here he is. You really don’t have to watch, because it’s the same old bullshit about how he doesn’t think veterans should have to wait hundreds of days for their claims to get approved, that the backlog will magically disappear in 2015, that the president has increased his funding by 40% and there’s no excuse for his people to be incompetent boobs who can’t get through the backlog.

    Candy Crowley asks Shinseki what the President can do to help Shinseki reduce the backlog of claims and Shinseki says that there’s nothing he can do – so obviously, the VA is so broken there’s nothing anyone can do. Shinseki doesn’t even seem embarrassed that the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs can’t even transfer digital files between the agencies, despite the fact that the two agencies have tossed millions of dollars down a black hole trying to solve it.

    In other words, no one at the VA is interested in solving any of their problems – but they’re willing to talk about what a big problem it is. It’s no wonder that Ric hasn’t been on any of the news shows – he has nothing new to say.

    Oh, and he tells us that the problem is Bush’s fault because it’s a decades-old problem, and if we hadn’t been fighting those damned Bush wars, he wouldn’t be saddled with the growing number of veterans. Any half-way competent manager could solve the problem at the VA in less than two years. But Eric Shinseki isn’t half-way competent.