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

Category: Veterans Issues

  • More Info From that VA OIG Report on the Phoenix VAMC

    Jonn’s written an article already today about the VA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and their report on the Phoenix VAMC released yesterday.  Here’s a few additional details from the VA’s OIG interim report.

    • Average waiting time for first appointment, as reported by the VA Hospital in Phoenix:  24 days, based on a “statistical sample of 226 veterans”, with 43% waiting longer than 14 days
    • Average waiting time for first appointment, actual:  115 days (same sample of 226 veterans), with approx 84% waiting longer than 14 days
    • Number of vets on the Phoenix VAMC “official” electronic waiting list:  1,400
    • Number of vets found to have been waiting for care but not on any  official electronic waiting list – e.g., that “secret waiting list” that Jonn mentioned in his article: 1,700

    In case you were wondering:  the “secret list” was over 20% larger than the official electronic waiting list.  Pretty neat, eh?

    Also:  it seems like “waiting time” reported to DC only started when someone went on the “official” electronic waiting list.  So, yeah – I think there just might have been something shady going on.

    If you’re interested, here is interim VA OIG report.  Only about 30 pages total, so if you want to look it over it shouldn’t take that long.

  • Missed opportunities

    I’ve known veterans all my life, you know because there was still a draft going on and nearly everyone had served during my youth. But there are some who I wished that I had asked more questions of when I had the opportunity.

    In the neighborhood where I grew up, there was a fellow who seemed old to me (he was probably 65 or so) who would take us boys in his garage and show us his uniform from World War I, his helmet, his gas mask, his bayonet. He’d tell us stories about “going over the top” of trenches to charge into a terrifying wall of machinegun fire simply because someone blew a bugle. Today, there are so many questions I’d ask him, but he’s long gone.

    My Uncle Barney who had married my grandfather’s sister fought across the Pacific with the Marines in World War II. He showed me his only war trophy – a Japanese helmet with a single bullet hole in it. You can probably guess the story he told me about it. But it was the only time we ever talked about his experiences. His wife, my Great-Aunt Edith, was a repository of the story about the “war at home”. She had piles of memorabilia related to the war years, posters and newspaper clippings. I remember a huge jar of steel pennies that she had saved when copper was more useful in war machine production. But, now that I know what to ask them, Uncle Barney and Aunt Edith along with their souvenirs are gone.

    Across the street from my boyhood home, my best friend’s father had been a Marine in the Korean War and had survived the retreat from Chosin. He never talked about his experiences, like most heroes we’ve known over the years. He was proud of being a Marine, but that’s where his stories ended. He left us a few years ago from cancer, long after I had moved away and lost contact with them.

    Not all of my missed opportunity were related to the military and war. My grandfather once hinted that my grandmother was a flapper (which explains my fascination with F Scott Fitzgerald novels) and that he had built Model Ts in Detroit after the war (he turned 18 just a few weeks before the war ended). My father tells me that my grandfather sold bootleg bathtub gin out of his small store to the local constabulary during Prohibition.

    Their stories were the story of America. I feel as if I cheated myself out of a great education because I didn’t bother to dig into their memories while they were still here. I spent most of my adult years reading reams of books and primary sources about those years, it was probably a reason that one of my majors in college was history, but I still can’t beat this feeling that I missed something by not asking questions.

    I guess my point is that history lives all around us and the fact that we don’t make the effort to force that history out of the real heroes, we’ll live to regret that, because the real heroes of the American Story won’t just tell us.

    By the way, I’ve taken every opportunity to drag the stories out of my Vietnam veteran uncle. I learned my lesson.

  • We’d Court-Martial the Lot of Them, Stand Some against the Wall

    You want to shake up an entrenched bureaucracy in the Veterans Administration, folks? Start sending your congressional representatives and senators letters, and tell them to demand the right leader from the Obama administration to investigate this corrupt agency. Not a liberal sock puppet like Eric Shinseki, but a genuine, hard-nosed, ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners general like the retired four-star Marine, James “Mad Dog” Mattis.

    General Mattis has in the past demonstrated his confidence in his abilities to accomplish the mission most notably with this quote:

    I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.

    Here’s another quote. The general was referencing Islamic terrorists, but his words could be just as well applied to the bureaucrats in the Veterans Administration:

    The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some a******s in the world that just need to be shot.

    When you consider that secret VA waiting lists resulted in the possibly preventable if treated deaths of American veterans, just so VA higher-ups could collect quota bonuses, you just may agree with the general that there are some such people in the world who just need to be shot.

    But the Mattis quote that I believe would warm the hearts of neglected veterans and their families is this:

    Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U.S. Marine.

    And folks, if that Marine needs to be kicking ass of the enemy of our veterans – a sorry bureaucracy that has been allowed to become the antithesis of its original mission of caring for America’s veterans – then so be it.

    When it comes to clearing out the treacherous self-serving bureaucrat rats who have exploited their offices to deny our veterans their entitled services while enriching themselves, we need a “Mad Dog” who will go into that system and clean it out from top to bottom, ruthlessly and with no remorse.

    I’m an old combat infantryman from the Vietnam War whose ears have been ringing since 1966, when I was exposed to all kinds of explosions going off around my ears. When I sought help at the VA facility in San Antonio twenty-some years ago, I was summarily dismissed by a rather hostile minority female VA employee, who made it quite clear that I was not welcome there regardless of my actual ground combat service. I’ve never been back.

    I told my wife that this should be the epitaph carved into my headstone at the national cemetery for veterans: “Well his ears finally quit ringing.”

    Shame, shame, shame, on a totally corrupt Veterans Administration that callously left this old veteran, and who knows how many others, to suffer the consequences of their combat experiences.

    General Mattis, your old soldiers and Marines need you to get back in the trenches and really kick some bureaucratic ass in this agency that has failed its mission. We veterans know that if these bureaucrats were uniformed, we’d court-martial the lot of them and stand the worst of them against the wall.

  • So Much For “We Didn’t Know”

    The more that comes to light, the more it’s apparent that senior officials in the VA years ago knew damn well that games were being played with patient scheduling.

    Why?  Because as this Army Times article states, in April 2010, the VA’s Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management, William Schoenhard, wrote a memo to regional directors “calling for ‘immediate action’ to review scheduling practices to eliminate “inappropriate” strategies.”  He wouldn’t have done that had senior VA leadership been clueless regarding the problem.

    This means that senior VA leadership knew about the problem at least 4 years ago.  Dunno about you, but 4 years seems like long enough to get that one problem fixed.

    Shinseki claims he “had not seen” the memo in question.  While that may be technically true, I bluntly do not believe he was ignorant of the problem.

    Robert Petzel, the VA’s designated scapegoat in the matter, has indicated he was aware of the memo.  Maybe that’s why he ended up being the designated scapegoat – lack of “plausible deniability”.

    Time to uphold the bushido code of your ancestors, Shinseki.  As well as to display the honorable conducted expected from a former US military officer.

    It’s time for you to resign. Now.

    Oh, and to anyone who may have falsely told investigators they were unaware of the problem, I have some free advice.  You really might want to “lawyer up”.

    Because as I’ve said before:  it wasn’t the break-in that ended up putting many of those involved in Watergate in jail. It was their participation in the cover-up.

  • What Goes Around, Comes Around

    National Review Online has a short, but good, article detailing how the POTUS has played politics with VA medical care over the years – and how his administration would “fix things”.  IMO, It’s worth a look.

    Petard, own, hoist.  That kind of thing.

     

    Update:  Well, so much for the “we didn’t know that this might be an issue” argument.  Apparently the current Administration’s transition team was briefed that this could be an issue 5 1/2 years ago – in late 2008.  So if they haven’t been monitoring it, I’d certainly like to know why the hell not.

  • Oh Boy

    The VA treatment scandal keeps spreading. Now, a former psychiatrist at the Huntington VA Medical Center, Charleston, WV  VA – Dr. Margaret Moxness – has come forward with some pretty damning accusations.

    Specifically, Dr. Moxness claims she was told to delay treatment for patients needing it.  She further claims that her complaints about those delays were ignored by her superiors.  And she also claims  that at least two individuals committed suicide while awaiting treatment.

    This is not exactly a new case, either. The individual reportedly worked for the VA at Huntington VAMC from 2008 to 2010.

    Details are here, courtesy of Fox News.  IMO, it’s worth a read.

    The VA has not yet commented on the matter.

  • “Slow-Rolling” Appointments: Not Just at Larger VA Medical Centers Anymore

    It seems as if the VA appointment “record-keeping issue” is indeed widespread, and possible systemic.  The Army Times is reporting that VA investigators are now looking at the Cheyenne, WY, VA Medical Center (VAMC).

    A nurse – who’s now been suspended from duty – at the Cheyenne VAMC allegedly told employees there to falsify appointment records.  According to Wyoming’s congressional delegation, “the department only took action against the nurse after an email about ‘gaming the system’ surfaced in media reports.”

    Additionally, two employees at the Durham, NC, VAMC were placed on leave last week for “inappropriate scheduling practices”.  Investigations have also been started at VA hospitals in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado.

    Oh, and the problem apparently has been under investigation for a while, too.  The VA OIG apparently began investigating similar complaints of “hidden” wait times at the Albequerque VAMC months before the scandal broke in Phoenix.

    If the problem is this widespread – and has been under investigation for months – that tells me senior VA leadership indeed needs to go.  IMO, that means either they were complicit in the practice or were completely out of touch with reality.  In either case they’ve proven they’re simply not able to do their job.

     

  • How to Fix the Problem of Stolen Valor at VSOs

    This article is a bit long. And it’s probably going to p!ss off a few folks.

    However, I don’t much care if it does. I’m fed up with a particular problem, and I’m going to vent.

    And I’m also going to identify a way to fix the problem.

    Introduction: Stolen Valor (and More) at VSOs

    I don’t think that anyone would dispute the fact that there is a serious problem in Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs). If anyone doubts this I invite them to take a look at this short list of “stellar individuals” – which only scratches the surface of this type of sh!tbaggery:

    All were frauds in one respect or another. Many claimed honors they simply didn’t rate or experience/service they simply didn’t have. Some didn’t qualify for VSO membership at all. At least two of them turned out to be thieves of more than valor – one stole from fellow vets, while the other apparently stole from his own family.

    (Note: I’m not singling out VFW or the American Legion here. I’m certain there are sh!tbags in other VSOs who are just as fraudulent as the above Nasty Nine. But as far as I can tell, we haven’t busted any of those here at TAH.)

    As I said:  this list only scratches the surface. And don’t even get me started about the fakes we’ve seen in Motorcycle Clubs or other organizations.

    The common factor for all of these walking anal orifices? Besides the fact that they’re all sh!tbags of the first order, they managed to join their VSO and/or make their claims because either (1) they were never asked to provide proof, or (2) they provided fake docs. Except in the case of Boyer, I rather doubt their local post/chapter members knew they were “rockin’ the lie” and gave them a pass. And as longtime TAH readers know, Boyer’s case is somewhat different from most. (smile)

    In short, the situation is SNAFU – but not FUBAR.  What I’m going to do is tell our VSOs (and any other organization that needs to verify military service) how they can un-f**k the current situation and fix the problem. The solution is simple, affordable, and is implementable within two to three years.

    It can happen. But it won’t happen unless the VSO membership at large demands it.

    The Source of the Problem

    The source of the problem, IMO, is simple: the VSOs trust applicants. They accept documentation provided by applicants as Gospel truth, without any form of independent verification.

    Years ago, that worked. First, there really was no choice. Independent verification really wasn’t possible right after World War II or the Korean War. And even during Vietnam, the process wasn’t all that readily available or well-known.

    Moreover, fake documents were easier to spot. Photocopiers were just not that common until after Vietnam, nor were they as good as they are today. Also, the documentation issued as proof of having served in the military (the DD 214) was until fairly recently produced on multipart forms. More people had served, so there were many who knew what “right looked like”.

    The situation today is different. DD 214s are printed on plain paper, on a laser printer. They no longer have physical signatures. And there are reputedly numerous ways to produce or acquire fake documents.

    In short:  accepting documents today directly from an applicant is now a crapshoot. A knowledgeable faker can produce or acquire passable fake docs – legality be damned. And at the same time, because fewer serve today fewer folks are around who know what “right looks like” when it comes to military separation documents.

    A Possible Fix

    The fix is simple. VSOs must quit freaking accepting documentation provided directly by individuals as documentation of eligibility – now. It’s simply too easy for unscrupulous individuals to fabricate or otherwise acquire passable fake documents regarding service, awards, qualifications, and the like.

    This brings up a legitimate question: how in the world will VSOs verify eligibility for membership?

    Fair question. However, there’s a simple way to do that. Require the documents proving eligibility to be sent directly to the VSO post/chapter from official sources. That greatly reduces the opportunity for fraud.

    How to Verify – With Trust

    Here’s the procedure a VSO would need to use to accomplish the above.

    Step 1: at your next National Convention, adopt changes to your constitution requiring the following:

    a. All members must provide proof of eligibility for membership.

    b. Documents verifying membership eligibility will not be accepted directly from individuals. They must be received from official sources.

    c. Membership shall be provisional until such time as documentation is received from official sources verifying the applicant’s eligibility.

    d. Items a-c above apply to current members as well. Current members shall be retained as full members until such time as their proof of eligibility is received from official sources. On receipt, it will be reviewed. If they are found to be ineligible, their membership shall be immediately revoked.

    e. All membership revocations will be immediately reported to the VSOs national headquarters.

    f. Items a-c will be implemented immediately. Items d. and e. shall be completed within two years.

    g. Any posts/chapters not complying with a-f shall have their post/chapter charter revoked.

    Step 2: Implement the following at post/chapter level.

    a. Require all current members to sign a SF180 allowing release of unredacted copies of all their DD 214s and DD 215s (or, for World War II veterans, the equivalent documents) to the VSO post/chapter. (The unredacted documents are required to guard against the possibility of error due to a name collision and for those VSOs requiring service characterized as honorable.)  For those currently still serving, require a memo from their military personnel office verifying eligibility to be sent directly to the VSO.

    b. Require the same of new applicants.

    c. Establish a suspense tracking file for both current members and new applicants.

    d. New applicants applying are provisional members until such time as their proof of eligibility is received from official sources.

    e. Existing members are retained if documentation received shows they are eligible. If it does not, they are dismissed from the organization.

    Appropriate appeals and/or “reclama” processes will also need to be developed, as on rare occasion NPRC “screws the pooch”. But that’s frankly the easy part. Getting the above implemented is the “biggie”.

    Funding Verification

    Funding this initiative would be very simple. A records request – whether a FOIA or a limited authorized release – typically costs the sender less than a dollar. The cost is for a first-class stamp; an envelope; a sheet or two of paper; and the cost of printing that sheet or two of paper.

    There’s really little additional cost. The only ones I can possibly think of is the additional time needed to (1) mail the request, and (2) maintaining the suspense file for members in probationary status while they are awaiting a reply from NPRC.  And most if not all of that is unpaid volunteer time, since I’m relatively certain that most VSO post/chapter officers serve as volunteers.

    There is no additional cost with reviewing the documents received from official sources. The VSO would presumably do that anyway, whether the documents were received from the individual or via mail.

    On rare occasions, a follow-up request might need to be submitted. That would also be covered by the funding method I describe.

    Bottom line: for most posts, annual monetary costs for verification should be the cost of (1) a roll of stamps, (2) a box of 100 envelopes, (3) a ream of paper, and (4) some printer ink/toner. Let’s say $75 per year to be generous.

    Here’s how to fund the verification. There are two options.

    Option 1: raise the local post portion of the VSO post’s dues by $1 annually.  Put the extra $1 per member into a separate fund earmarked to fund verification activities. Any surplus above $75 at the end of the year would go to the post’s general fund.

    Option 2: create a separate fund for verification activities. Assess each applicant a $1 non-refundable fee to fund those verification activities. Any surplus above $75 at the end of the year would go to the post’s general fund.

    One-time verification of existing members would be funded by a special, one-time verification fee of $1, assessed to each member. The proceeds from this collection would go into the verification fund noted above. (This would IMO probably also give an “early warning” of who might be “dirty”, as I’m relatively certain they’ll be among those complaining loudly and publicly about having to cough up $1 for independent verification of their qualifications.)

    Possible Objections and Their Counters

    Obviously, this isn’t an exhaustive list.  But I think these will be the most common objections.  So I’ve presented them here, along with suggested (and in some cases, somewhat smartassed) answers for each.

    Objection 1: “What, don’t you trust me?”

    Answer (to new applicants): “We don’t know you from Adam (or Eve, depending on the applicant’s gender). Why the hell should we trust you, given the number of fakes out there?”

    Answer (to existing members): “Sadly, we can’t. We’ve found too many fakes, some of whom were in leadership positions and/or who scammed their posts/chapters. Sorry, but we need to do a one-time mass verification to root out fakers.”

    Objection 2: “That violates my privacy! You can’t ask me to do that – it’s against the law!”

    Answer: “Um, no it doesn’t, and it isn’t. Membership in (whatever VSO) is voluntary. The Privacy Act’s restrictions don’t in general apply to private organizations, anyway. Besides, this is no different than applying for a loan. Try doing that without answering their questions and see how far that gets you.”

    Objection 3: “This is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist!” or “This isn’t necessary!”

    Answer: “Nice to meet you, Pollyanna. Now, welcome to the real world. Yeah, the problem exists and this is indeed necessary. See TAH for literally dozens of examples. Now, do you want to be a member or not?”

    Objection 4: “How do I know you’ll keep my info private?”

    Answer: “Well, you were willing to give us a copy of your DD 214 before, which contains the same info. The NPRC already has your info on file. Why are you objecting to asking for the same info from official sources that you were willing to give us yourself a few minutes ago?”

    Objection 5: “This is an outrage!”

    Answer: “So is Stolen Valor. Which you wanna be: part of the solution, or part of the problem?”

    Objection 6: “I’m calling my Congressman!”

    Answer: “Want his address and phone number? I kinda doubt he’s going on the record as favoring helping someone commit Stolen Valor. But maybe I’m wrong. Knock yourself out.”

    Conclusion

    The above isn’t perfect; it will doubtless need a few tweaks.  As I noted above, some kind of appeals process will almost certainly be necessary, if for not other reason than to account for potential government error.  And a second similar piece will be needed for VSOs (like DAV) that require proof of disability – though a simple letter from the individual requesting the standard VA disability letter be mailed directly to the VSO requiring same should be all that’s required in such cases.

    But there’s also no doubt in my mind that this – with possibly a few mods – will work. And while it won’t completely fix the problem, it will reduce it by multiple orders of magnitude.

    But I’m still not holding my breath.

    Why? Because as the old saying goes – “Money talks; BS walks”. And maybe I’m just getting old and cynical, but I doubt any of the VSOs want to chance seeing a big chunk of their membership walk.

    Because if that chunk walks, not only does their BS walk. So does their dues money.

    . . .

    OK, I’m getting down off the soapbox now. Fire away!