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

Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

  • VA is slow paying work/study students

    Chief Tango sends us a link to the NBC News article that reports that Department of Veterans’ Affairs not only can’t pay benefits to veteran/students in college, they can’t pay their work/study help in a timely manner;

    Ashley Metcalf, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan — and the student veteran who organized the survey of other VA “work-study” employees at 18 campuses — said he’s been living on credit cards since June and was forced to obtain an emergency loan because the VA has failed to compensate him for about 100 hours he’s logged in the VA program.

    “How can this happen? If I was working for McDonald’s and they said they’re not going to pay me for 10 weeks, I’d have a lawsuit,” said Metcalf, an Air Force veteran now enrolled at t

    I worked in the campus VA office at Oswego while I was in college and the work we did there was absolutely essential to the operations there. It wasn’t a Jobs Corps program where we showed up for a few minutes each day and sat around drinking coffee. We did the drudgery of the volumes of paperwork and recordkeeping for veterans enrolled in the school. And we got paid minimum wage.

    The program was a great help to veterans who were at the school, but jeebus, they need to be paid for their work, Eric. I’ll bet when they need money for another training conference, they’ll find it in a timely manner. They should be paying their part time employees in the same manner.

  • Heroes’ PII released by contractor on internet

    Someone who was interviewing Sal Giunta this afternoon called and told me about this thing in the Army Times today about the personally identifiable information (PII) for our highest decorated veterans was temporarily posted on the internet by a contractor;

    The exposed database contains 31 Social Security numbers for six MoH recipients — including former Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta and Sgt. First Class Leroy Petry and four posthumous recipients — and 25 Distinguished Service Cross recipients since Sept. 11, 2011.

    Erik Muendel, chief executive officer of Brightline, told Army Times he was unaware of the breach and did not know how the file wound up online, but he was investigating what was posted and how it got there.

    He said Brightline makes use of such data as part of a contract with the Army Chief of Public Affairs office to build a “Gallery of Heroes” exhibit at the Association of the United States Army conventions.

    He said his firm is meant to receive only unclassified information, and he was surprised the firm was provided with sensitive information.

    “I’m assuming that that file was a derivative of information that was provided to us, but I do not know,” Muendel said.

    Yeah, it wasn’t Brightline’s fault that they were careless with information. I’ll tell you guys like I passed on to Sal, get Lifelock. It costs $100/year, but it’s like life insurance – you don’t need it until it’s too late. The Deparment of Veterans’ Affairs and the Defense Department toss around your PII like so much confetti.

    My wife went to buy a car and put me down as the co-signer and Lifelock called me while she was still at the dealer so I know it works.

    Usually, the DVA and DoD don’t even tell you about these breaches of your PII until months after it happens, so be prepared beforehand. These guys are just lucky that it was Doug Sterner who discovered the breach this time.

  • Smoke and Mirrors at Veterans’ Affairs

    So we’ve heard from our friends at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs about the great work they’re doing over there, about how this is the best administration in history on veterans’ healthcare. Well, let’s take a closer look at the numbers, shall we?

    During the years 2008-2012, the VA hired THREE TIMES more administrative staff than medical doctors. This news won’t be a surprise to any veteran who has been told to wait for an appointment.

    The VA added 3,100 medical doctors since 2008, and to “manage” their work, the VA added more than 9,000 new administration employees.

    Barack Obama is more interested in hiring paper-pushers than doctors. But paperwork doesn’t treat patients. Maybe that’s why the VA Inspector General told Congress the VA was gaming the numbers so it looks like 94% of veterans can be seen within 14 days.

    The actual number, according to the VA Inspector General, is less than 50%. How many veteran suicides occurred during the delays in reaching care? Those new administrator positions must have been mighty valuable. Barack Obama knows the VA is not getting the job done. But he doesn’t care. Maybe that’s why the VA’s so-called Performance and Accountability Report claimed 95% of veterans who asked for a mental health evaluation were seen within 14 days. The VA Inspector General called FOUL on that report and gave the real figure: 64%.

    In the Obama administration, the VA’s proverbial suicide hotline is putting veterans on hold.

    Delays in mental health care were so bad that in July 2011, Democratic Senator Patty Murray told the VA about complaints from her constituents. She asked the VA to interview their own employees about delays in receiving care. The interviews showed more than 70% of respondents said their hospital or clinic lacked sufficient mental health staff. In an April 2012 hearing, Senator Murray said the VA’s own investigation showed clinicians were “delaying follow up for months, not because of the veterans’ needs but because their schedules were too full. VA is failing to meet its own mandates for timeliness and instead is finding ways to make the data look like they are complying.”

    Senator Murray, remember, is a Democrat.

    Even more damning is the IG’s statement that the VA’s performance measure for measuring access to mental health care is utterly useless because it “measured how long it took to conduct the mental health evaluation, not how long the patient waited to receive that evaluation.”

    Senator Bernie Sanders, another Senator far friendlier to Democrats than Republicans, asked if VA administrators could explain why the VA can’t follow its own rules for scheduling appointments. The IG replied that at two different VA facilities, the clinic staff were told by supervisors to first check for an available appointment date, back out of the computerized scheduling system, then re-enter the system and indicate that the first available date was the date when the veteran wanted to return. This method makes the VA appear to have all the appointment times it needs.

    Senior VA administrators receive bonuses when veteran appointments are scheduled within the VA-mandated time frames. These instructions to the scheduling staff look like senior VA executives were gaming the system for executive bonuses.

    Every month, 950 veterans treated by VA attempt suicide. 18 veterans die every day by suicide, and about 12 of those 18 are not receiving VA care. That’s about 30 suicide attempts per day, every day, every month, and 12 deaths of veterans who are not seen at a VA. But Barack Obama doesn’t want to spend money on hiring mental health care employees, so what’s a delay of a few weeks until the next appointment. Veterans and military usually vote Republican. Maybe the White House told the VA to put a busy signal on veteran attempts to get help. We’ve all heard elected leaders complain about the Wall Street douchebags and their corporate bonuses. Wall Street’s negligence didn’t contribute to daily suicide. The same can’t be said for Obama’s VA. It’s Obama’s budget that claimed to have all the VA funding it needed.

    Under the Obama administration, the VA also fattened up their Washington headquarters, adding 885 new bureaucrats at a cost of $91 million dollars. What do these new Washington bureaucrats do for veterans? They spend taxpayer dollars on bonuses for a select few VA employees. The VA Inspector General investigated these bonuses paid to a few selected bureaucrats at VA headquarters and found 79% of the bonuses could not be justified.

    Barack Obama’s hand-picked VA Secretary defended these bonuses. A VA fact sheet explained how Obama’s chosen VA leader started a “corporate approach to executive management,” including a new human resources office exclusively for top VA executives. The VA sure got what it was looking for: special treatment for only the top VA executives, nice financial bonuses for those who are more special than VA employees whose pay has been frozen for two years, and more administrator jobs.

    Perhaps one of the new 356 employees in human resources at VA headquarters will fix this issue. Do the math: for every 10 new medical doctors hired by VA, the headquarters staff fattened by another HR employee. The VA hospitals have their own HR people; they’re included above in the 9,000 new administrative employees.

    Secretary Shinseki sure does need HR help if he added 356 new human resources employees for only 529 other new headquarters jobs. What could 356 new HR employees do all day? Evaluate each other on how well they completed yet another required training course? How many more psychologists and social workers could have been hired with that money?

    Let’s ask some of the 30 veterans who attempt suicide each day.

    Who’s losing? The veterans waiting in line at their local VA.

    Who already lost? The surviving family members of the veterans who died by suicide.

    Sources:
    (more…)

  • VA screws Battle of the Bulge vet out of basic needs

    Adirondack Patriot sends us links to the story in the Albany Times Union of 93-years-old Vahan Zarifian, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge who is disabled. He moved from New Jersey where the VA provided him with visits from a nurse three times a week to help him take care of basic needs like bathing and a shave. But when he moved to Albany, the VA cut those visits to two and Mr. Zarifian had to beg and plead to get those.

    So, since no one should have to live on two baths a week, he finagled a third from Catholic Charities. When the VA found out, they cut their own visits to one every week.

    “It’s not a punishment at all,” insisted Stratton [Veterans’ Administration Health Center] spokesman Peter Potter, who added that Zarifian’s home visits might have been reduced regardless of the external help.

    Potter also stressed Stratton has offered Zarifian two weekly visits to the hospital’s Holland Avenue campus, which is four miles from the Menands home he shares with his granddaughter. Transportation is free, Potter said, and services available at the hospital are superior to what’s offered during a home visit.

    “He’s being provided access to a very high level of care,” Potter said. “Any statement saying he’s getting less care (than in New Jersey) is not an accurate statement.”

    So, if Mr. Zarifian wants to travel four miles to get his bath and shave, he can. but would you want to wait for the VA’s free transportation just so you can scrape the previous day off with a bunch of other guys who need baths?

    If it’s so easy for Mr. Zarifian to travel four miles, it would be just as easy, if not easier, to send a nurse four miles to give a veteran a measure of dignity.

    I can’t figure out why the VA jerked one visit out from under him just because he found a charity to give the one they wouldn’t. That has bureaucratic revenge written all over it.

  • Charles Chester Kaczmarczyk pleads guilty

    Just A Grunt sends us a link to the final chapter on Charles Chester Kaczmarczyk, the guy we discussed back in July who had defrauded the government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in veterans’ benefits;

    Kaczmarczyk, who claims to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, wove tales of his exploits in the Vietnam War, of helping to evacuate the U.S. embassy during the fall of Saigon, of rescuing merchant ships from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and of watching the secret mission to rescue victims of the Iran hostage crisis fall apart in 1980. He told his stories to anyone who would listen, including an audience of University of Tennessee students in 2008.

    The DOJ writes (.pdf) that him and his wife had been doing this for more than five years and that his tales included Special Operations in Vietnam, the Iran hostage rescue attempt and the rescue of the Mayaguez crew. I guess he couldn’t get PTSD from being a run-of-the-mill grunt or a clerk. Chuck and his wife manufactured a DD214 and awarded himself two Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars, ya know, because how else could he catch the PTSD without phony medals to prove it.

    It was so lucrative and easy to get benefits from the VA, unlike the process for deserving veterans, they filed a claim for his wife, but that, apparently, was their undoing.

    Sentencing for the duo will be December 12. It won’t be enough.

  • DVA under the gun for $5m conferences

    I’m sure that those of you who have been waiting for your claims at the Veterans’ Affairs Department will be happy to know that it’s been disclosed that the Department is now stammering to oversight committees about the 5 million smackers they spent on conferences in Orlando according to Fox News;

    Issa questioned why the VA hired an outside group to make the video when the department “has videographers and editors on staff.”

    Issa also wrote that another $84,000 was spent on “promotional items such as branded pens, highlighters, hand sanitizers and USB drives.”

    The weeklong conferences were hosted by the Office of Human Resources. As with the GSA scandal, Issa said “waste also occurred in the pre-conference planning phase.” Issa wrote that the IG found at least seven workers at VA headquarters traveled to Nashville, Dallas and Orlando before the conference to scout locations — using taxpayer money, even though the department already had employees in each of those cities.

    Yeah, why put local assets to work when you can pay more for someone else to do it. Besides we know all of those DVA employees are all busy processing those veteran disability claims which are piling up.

    But don’t worry, the guy who bought his first load of black berets from China while they were holding an aircraft crew hostage, says that he’s sorry he got caught misusing taxpayer funds;

    “Allegations of misconduct received by the VA Office of Inspector General regarding two training conferences in 2011 are unacceptable,” the department said in a written statement, adding that it is cooperating with the investigation. It said Shinseki plans to “hold accountable” anyone who “misused taxpayer dollars or violated our standards of conduct.”

    So, I’m sure there will be a timely resolution and heads will roll, but not Shinseki’s head. I’m taking bets on that.

  • “Good Stewardship of Public Funds”

    Remember the recent brouhaha about the recent GSA conference in Las Vegas that cost Uncle Sam $823+k?   Well, that looks to have been chump change.  Another agency has easily topped that.

    Apparently the VA also likes to hold conferences.  As in holding two rather large conferences during the past year, at a total cost of at least $5M.

    Large conferences have a purpose, I guess.  And organizations do derive some benefits from periodic face-to-face meetings.

    But I have a rather hard time understanding how an organization with a backlog of literally over a half-million claims pending action can think that spending $5M annually on conferences is  good stewardship of public funds.  For that same $5M, the VA could have hired 100 additional employees at the GS11 or 12 grade level (including the normal +33% of salary for employer taxes/benefits/retirement) provided they hired locally and didn’t have to pay PCS expenses.

    Priorities here just don’t seem exactly as they should be.

  • Can you find your VA claim in this picture?

    Odds are that neither can the VA clerks charged with maintaining your records at Winston-Salem, NC. That picture appears in Time Magazine’s Battleland and it was taken during an audit by the VA’s Office of the Inspector General.

    The IG alerted VA headquarters to the problem, which has led to the relocation of much of the paperwork, and plans for better and safer long-term storage.

    What? They needed to be told that it wasn’t a good idea to keep paper files (probably the only copies of paper files) stored like that? Seriously? An untrained ape could have told them that it was less than ideal.