Category Archives: Veterans Affairs

The Veterans Administration Fails Again

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A 22-year USAF veteran has nightmares, the attitude, withdrawal as a result of his experiences while deployed to a plethora of foreign locales. [Emphasis added.]

[H]is wife begged him to get help from the local Veterans Affairs medical facility in West Palm Beach, Florida. [The veteran] said he tried, but after many years and multiple VA therapists who could not see him on a regular basis, he decided to pay out-of-pocket for private care. He would like the VA to pay for his therapy through community care—a program designed for eligible veterans to receive care from a community provider when the VA cannot provide the care needed.

Nor is he alone in this strait. It’s getting worse, too. Now,

the West Palm Beach VA Healthcare System is no longer approving their requests for community care, cutting them off from their longtime mental health providers, with potentially devastating results.

And

Congressman Brian Mast (R, FL), a former Army bomb technician who lost both his legs and a finger in Afghanistan, represents the Palm Beach area in Florida’s 21st Congressional District. He said his office has been contacted by over 70 veterans, relatives, and mental health providers who have complained that the VA will no longer refer patients to community care.

OF course, the VA denies that, claiming to have hired many more doctors and expanded facilities. Never mind the facts provided by our veterans in that district, who know empirically otherwise.

The veterans who spoke to Fox News Digital dispute the VA’s view of its quality of care. [The veteran cited at the top of this post] described how his previous attempts to see a VA psychiatrist were “counterproductive” and “ridiculous.” In a “typical interaction,” the VA would tell him, “we’re going to have somebody call you. This is the date and time,” he said. “Nobody calls.”
When he went back to schedule another appointment, the same thing would happen.
“You’re telling me I missed the appointment, I said. But nobody called me. I have no number to call. This was the norm. It was always a lot of deflection to where I just say, this is beyond ridiculous,” he said.

Even Mast has been denied effective care by the VA at least once.

Mast related that he had to see his primary care doctor, a physical therapist, and a lab technician before VA approved him to receive a new cane—with two-week intervals between each appointment.
“That was the bureaucratic process for getting a guy with no legs a cane,” he said.

Just one more reason why

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Long Past its Use-By Date

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The Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General Office has found problems in the VA’s process for vetting the contractors it hires. The IG’s audit findings include these (not an exhaustive list by me):

  • 47 of 50 contract files (94 percent) did not include position designation records that established the position investigative requirements for the contract
  • 34 of 50 contracts (68 percent) did not include contract language to communicate contractor vetting requirements to the contractor
  • 215 of the 286 contractor employees reviewed (about 75 percent) did not have evidence of completed fingerprint checks
  • 225 of the 286 contractor employees (about 79 percent) did not have evidence that a background investigation was completed by an investigative service provider

And this kicker [emphasis added]:

[T]he team’s review of a contract for unarmed security guards at the St. Cloud VA Medical Center in Minnesota determined that officials did not vet any of the 73 contractor employees, 38 of whom (about 52 percent) had criminal records. The criminal records included arrests and convictions ranging from petty misdemeanors to felonies such as disorderly conduct, domestic abuse, physical and sexual assault, financial card fraud, and terroristic threats. During the performance of the contract, VA police, St. Cloud officials, and the VA OIG were notified about improper behavior by the unvetted contractor employees, including stalking female VA and contractor employees, sexually harassing and assaulting other employees, getting into altercations at the medical center that required police intervention, and bragging to coworkers about being a gang member.

With that failure rate, does the VA actually have a vetting process, or is it just a few sheets of paper the department heads use for…decoration?

Further according to the IG’s audit, VA officials did not comply with executive orders, federal regulations, or VA’s policies for vetting contractor employees. Apparently, it’s not only that last regarding vetting, but VA officials are insubordinate and routinely ignore existing law and the orders of their boss, the President. Given these persons’ routine disregard of the other items, it’s not clear to me that the VA has any policies with which to not comply.

In any event, it’s long past time.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The full IG report can be read here.

A Department of Veterans Affairs Fail

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Yet another in an appallingly long list of Veterans Affairs fails.

This time it’s the VA’s conscious decision to deprecate, if not outright ignore, our nation’s veterans and to give priority access to limited resources to illegal aliens instead. Yes, yes, they signed a contract with ICE to do this, but they were not forced to do so. Here’s Senator Marsha Blackburn (R, TN):

We checked this week; it is up to one million claims for healthcare and benefits. As we were doing some oversight work of the VA, we realized that what they were doing was using some of their resources and their money to allow veterans—to approve veterans for community care—and to process claims, or to approve community care, for illegal immigrants, not for veterans, and then also to process claims for illegal immigrants.

And

When you’ve got a backlog of a million veterans that are waiting to get healthcare, and are waiting to get benefit answers, and you find out that money that should be being used to solve their situations is being used for illegal immigrants…it is absolutely maddening[.]

Indeed.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Accused Means Guilty?

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has failed again. Kenneth Harrelson, a US Army veteran, medically retired after a bit under five years in, and his family are getting their VA benefits cut off because they’ve been accused of a crime. Conviction be damned; the VA don’t need no stinkin’ conviction.

The federal government plans to suspends or terminate benefits to a military veteran and his family as a result of him being charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot.
The Department of Veterans Affairs informed the veteran, Kenneth Harrelson, and his wife in a June 13 correspondence that such actions are the result of the Justice Department telling the agency that Harrelson has been charged with “indicted and charged with Seditious Conspiracy….”

What he loses as a result of the VA’s action—which comes at the request of the Biden/Garland DoJ, to which the VA has no obligation to submit—even though the man is innocent, since no trial has been held and so no conviction is possible:

  • suspend payment of “gratuitous benefits” pending disposition of the criminal proceedings

Even though the VA knows he’s innocent [emphasis added]: If convicted, gratuitous benefits are forfeited…. Gratuitous benefits are things like burial in a national cemetery.

  • suspend “compensation benefit payments” starting Sept. 1, which is the first day of the month following a 60-day due process period

Regardless of whether that due process period includes even the start of his trial, much less its completion and conviction.

Guilty by accusation—off with his benefits. Congressman Louis Gohmert (R, TX) has the right of it on this:

This is what you have when vindictive leftists get in charge of major parts of the government[.]

Happy belated–suspended–Independence Day, guys.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Another VA Failure

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…in image form:

Each bureaucrat with some form of a medical certificate more interested in her checklist than in the patient in front of her.

This is yet another reason to disband the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA, and return all personnel to the private sector (not reassign them elsewhere in government). Instead, use the current and putative future VA budgets to provide vouchers for our veterans so they can seek their own care with the hospitals, clinics, and doctors of their choice and with far more responsive attention in a far more timely manner.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.