Category Archives: Veterans Affairs

The VA Fails Again

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Now we learn that the Veterans Administration owes our disabled veterans a ton of money for something other than their health: some 53,000 of them have been charged home loan fees that they didn’t have to pay, to the tune of $189 million in aggregate. Those 53,000 are over half of our veterans who were allowed the fee waiver.  VA auditors have discovered that, for 2012 through 2017

[V]eterans were charged the fees under the VA’s Home Loan Guaranty Program and now may be entitled to refunds ranging from $5,000 to $20,000….

That’s bad enough, but mistakes—even egregious ones like this—happen.  What makes this mistake unacceptable is this [emphasis added]:

The watchdog report also said the Veterans Benefits Administration knew since 2014 that tens of thousands of veterans may have been wrongfully charged the funding fee.
“OIG finds it troubling that senior (Veterans Benefits Administration) management was aware that thousands of veterans were potentially owed more than $150 million yet did not take adequate actions to ensure refunds were issued,” the IG report says.

Troubling.  NSS.

And this:

The VBA [Veterans Benefit Administration] noted that the financial impact to the veterans was minimal over the life of the loan, the inspector general report says.

Oh, well, that makes it all right.

No, it doesn’t.  The only thing that makes it all right is the disbandment of the VA altogether and use its budget and putative future budgets as vouchers our veterans

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Veterans Administration Fails Again

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Recall the VA’s failure regarding paying our veterans all of the funds they’re due under the GI Bill; those student veterans are being shorted the money they’re owed.  That shortchanging will continue next year due to a “software glitch” that the VA isn’t fixing any time soon.

Now we get the VA’s Undersecretary of Benefits, Paul Lawrence, saying that the agency has no plans to retroactively pay shortchanged GI Bill recipients or to make next year’s VA victims whole.  He didn’t even have the integrity to admit this to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee before which he was testifying—under oath, mind you, as is typical for witnesses before Congressional hearings—until he’d been pressed on the matter by several Congressmen.

After that admission, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said otherwise:

To clear up any confusion, I want to make clear that each and every post-9/11 GI Bill beneficiary will be made 100 percent whole—retroactively if need be—for their housing benefits for this academic year based on Forever GI Bill rates, not on post-9/11 GI Bill rates[.]

Whom to believe?  Based on what evidence?  It’s true enough that of the two, only one was under oath, and it wasn’t Wilkie, but that doesn’t count for much here.

And this: that software glitch is being blamed on an outmoded computer system that hadn’t/couldn’t be upgraded due to lack of funds.  Molly Jenkins, a spokeswoman for that House VA committee had a different view, though:

It’s laughable that VA is blaming Congress for its IT issues, especially given the fact that Congress just passed the largest VA budget in history[.]

She also emphasized that the VA was allotted $30 million to improve its system.

She then pointed out a few other things: one is that the VA’s problems are “inexcusable, decades-long and well-documented.”

And that that the agency already is six months late with a required progress update.

And

[VA] sounded no alarms in their May 2018 report that there would be any delays at all[.]

It’s hard to tell whether VA management is not trying, is breathtakingly incompetent, or is actively defying Congress—and our veterans, whom the VA was created to support.

In any event, the VA needs to be eliminated and its once and future budgets committed to vouchers for our veterans.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Once Again

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And still: the Veterans Administration is not up to the task.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans face yearslong delays in their appeals of disability rulings because of a backlog of cases choking the Department of Veterans Affairs….

This backlog causes a number of problems…. Rushed rulings on initial claims can be riddled with errors. Veterans who appeal their cases typically wait between three and seven years for resolutions to their appeals, according to the Government Accountability Office. An inspector general report also found that one in 14 veterans dies while awaiting a decision on their disability claim appeal.

Against this backdrop, “VA officials say they have worked hard to process disability claims—and appeals to those claims—faster.”  Stipulate that.  The VA still is failing, no matter the amount of hard work.

The VA must be disbanded and its once and future budgets converted to vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need from the doctors they choose at the facilities they choose.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Musical Desks

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The Acting Director of the Veterans Administration is replacing his acting head of Veterans Health Administration with another acting head.  The current acting head needs replacement, not through any malfeasance, but because the incumbent acting head is moving to take another position within the VA.

Bad as the VA is, it isn’t helped by this instability in its management team.  Not a bit.

This continues to illustrate the waste of resources that is the VA.  Get rid of it, and use its current and future budgets for vouchers for our veterans.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The Veterans Administration

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…won’t clean up after itself.  In this instance, literally.  This is the VA “hospital” room a veteran was placed in when he went to that…facility…for treatment that involved 18 injections.  Injections to be done in a room as filthy as this.

Dr Karen Gribbin, the chief of staff at the George E Wahlen Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center, on Saturday reportedly said that Wilson should not have been in the room. She said the rooms should be cleaned prior to each patient and called on an investigation.

Wahlen is the imitation hospital at which this failure occurred.  The vetaran’s father, who posted the tweet, also tweeted

The condition of the room was the way it was when he went in, no other room was offered and no attempt to clean it up was made for the duration of his appointment[.]

Gibben also admitted that the veteran got his injections in that dirty room, but she claimed that the injection equipment—the needles, for instance—

would have been used just on him.

While that is, in fact, highly likely, how can we be sure, given the condition of the room and the level of professionalism and of integrity demonstrated by going ahead with the patient’s treatment there?

And this:

Gribbin was asked what the typical procedure was for when to clean patient rooms in order to ensure they are clean for each visit.

“We are investigating that. To be quite honest I do not work in that clinic area and I am not sure…exactly what that process is. We will be absolutely clarifying that, making sure our policies and procedures are well thought out and well communicated to staff[.]

She’s the Chief of Staff.  How is it possible that she does not know her own procedures or protocols?

Again, I say: disband the VA altogether and use its budget and nominal future budgets for vouchers for our veterans to see the doctors, clinics, and hospitals they choose, when they choose, and for the care they choose.  Enough of the VA’s trash.  Literally.

The original tweet, posted by the veteran’s father, can be seen here.  Poke through the reply thread, too.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.