Category Archives: Veterans Affairs

“Systemic” Failures at VA Watchdog

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That’s the heart the title of USA Today‘s piece earlier this week on the Veterans Administration’s continued failure to perform.  This smacks of active coverup by the top levels of the VA.

A Senate investigation of poor health care at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tomah, WI, found systemic failures in a VA inspector general’s review of the facility….

And

The probe by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found the inspector general’s office…discounted key evidence and witness testimony, needlessly narrowed its inquiry, and has no standard for determining wrongdoing.

And [emphasis added]

This is a preview of “Systemic” Failures at VA Watchdog. Read the full post (219 words, estimated 53 secs reading time)

The VA Strikes Again, Again

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has mistakenly declared [more than 4,000] veterans to be deceased and canceled their benefits over the past five years, a new snafu to emerge at the embattled department.

Of course, one thing that’s carefully elided is the “evidence” the VA uses to tell a veteran he’s dead.

The department doesn’t keep records of the causes behind such errors.

Can’t have things like this be known to be commonplace:

A clerical error led to the first instance of [Navy veteran Michael] Rieker’s canceled benefits after a VA employee identified him as Michael G. Rieker—though his middle initial is “C”—and declared him dead in the system, according to a department letter sent in December.

This is a preview of The VA Strikes Again, Again. Read the full post (291 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

Wait Times, Schmait Times

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A disabled veteran needing to see a VA doctor—or a non-disabled vet who’s “merely” sick, come to that—should blow off his wait times—too often weeks or months—just as he does his half-hour or hour wait times at Disney parks.  That is, if the disabled vet can partake of a Disney park at all.  Or so said Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald:

When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line?  Or what’s important?  What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience?  And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure.

This is a preview of Wait Times, Schmait Times. Read the full post (274 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

More Veterans Administration…Misbehavior

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Department of Veterans Affairs investigators conducted spot checks at 10 veterans benefits offices around the country and came to a disturbing conclusion: the VA has been systemically shredding documents related to veterans’ claims—some potentially affecting their benefits.

The VA Office of Inspector General conducted the surprise audit at 10 regional offices on July 20, 2015, after an investigation into inappropriate shredding in Los Angeles found that staff there was destroying veterans’ mail related to claims….

And

Of 155 claims-related documents [in the to-be-shredded bins], 69 were found to have been incorrectly placed in shred bins at six of the regional offices: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Reno[.]

This is a preview of More Veterans Administration…Misbehavior. Read the full post (284 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

Continuing Veterans Administration Failure

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Kyndra Rotunda, ex-Army JAG and currently Professor of Military & International Law and Executive Director of the Military and Veterans Law Institute at Chapman University, had some comments in her Wall Street Journal op-ed [emphasis in original].

When Congress enacted the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 in the wake of revelations about bureaucratic dysfunction at the Veterans Affairs Department, the plan was to reduce wait times at VA hospitals, give veterans access to outside health care and allow the VA to quickly terminate problem employees.

How is the VA doing? For starters, government statistics show that hospital wait times are 50% longer than two years ago.

This is a preview of Continuing Veterans Administration Failure. Read the full post (345 words, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

The Veterans Administration Suspends

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But it chooses, again, not to fire a failed executive.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is suspending the head of the Veterans Benefits Administration for allowing two lower-ranking officials to manipulate the agency’s hiring system for their own gain.

Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson says acting VBA chief Danny Pummill will be suspended without pay for 15 days for his role in a relocation scam that has roiled the agency for months.

Pummill failed to exercise proper oversight as Kimberly Graves and Diana Rubens forced lower-ranking managers to accept job transfers and then stepped into the vacant positions themselves, keeping their senior-level pay while reducing their responsibilities, Gibson said Tuesday.

This is a preview of The Veterans Administration Suspends. Read the full post (210 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)

The VA and the IG

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I’ve disparaged Inspectors General as not being truly independent—they work directly for the boss of the organization they’re presumably inspecting and on which they’re engaging in oversight. I’ve also said that the Secretary of the Veterans Administration should be terminated for cause. Here’s an example of the particularly incestuous relationship between Veterans Administration MFWICs and their IGs and the damage that relationship can do.

A top government watchdog on Thursday accused the central agency tasked with holding Veterans Affairs accountable of dropping the ball—by failing to properly investigate whistleblower claims of secret wait lists at Shreveport, LA, and Chicago hospitals where thousands of veterans languished up to 15 months without care.

This is a preview of The VA and the IG. Read the full post (276 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

A Problem with Veterans Administration Management

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Leo Shane described one aspect of this in his piece in the Military Times. Shane centered his article on Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) role in making it nearly impossible to fire non-performing Veterans Administration executives.

Sanders—the independent Vermont senator who at the time was chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee—insisted on preserving the protection board’s appeals role, and held up reform legislation in his chamber until it was included.

This is a preview of A Problem with Veterans Administration Management. Read the full post (419 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Veterans Administration Strikes Again

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Now we have a decorated WWII veteran, a Purple Heart winner from injuries he suffered while in a Philippines foxhole, the attack on which killed two of his fellow soldiers and wounded a third badly enough to require a leg to be amputated. He was patched up and returned to duty; over the course of his tour, he earned two Bronze Stars.

This man has never asked for any help from the Veterans Administration until now: he and his wife are in their 90s, they’re living in an assisted living facility, they’ve sold most of their possessions to pay for the facility, and they need his VA benefits.

This is a preview of Veterans Administration Strikes Again. Read the full post (307 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

Veterans Affairs, Yet Again

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Screen shots from a leak inside VA show Secretary Bob McDonald is diverting emails from whistleblowers into a special account within VA Central Office. The lists of names on the screen shot are titled “Sec Divert Internal.” The IT worker turned whistleblower told Washington Examiner that he/she believes the emails from those workers are being sent right to DC.

After Congress initiated the probe, VA admitted it was monitoring some emails that were flagged and diverted to DC.

Of course, the VA is saying the diversions are entirely innocuous.

Here’s the perspective of one of those whistleblowers, Scott Davis:

This is a preview of Veterans Affairs, Yet Again. Read the full post (350 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)