VA Scandal

I can't begin to tell you how furious I've been about the VA mess for at least the past decade.

I'm convinced they hope people die before they can get the help they need.

actually now that I think about it, my awareness of the problem goes back a lot further - to about 1979, when I spent quite a bit of time with a former helicopter pilot who occasionally stayed at a house I lived in. He was so messed up, knew he needed help, and just couldn't get the help from the VA so came up to Canada to get treatment here. He was still fighting the VA for funding when I last heard about him in the late 1980's.

I was treated for cancer at the VA Hospital in East Orange. I had excellent medical care...and thought the treatment and service were on a par with the treatment and service I have received in non-VA hospitals.

I think it's really curious that there is no interest in the VA scandal on the board. A great many political issues and government failings have been hotly debated through thousands of posts on A2K over the years, yet fake records covering bad, bad treatment for vets resulting in preventable deaths is a total snooze. Interesting.

Besides that I think, new threads started on a weekend never get much attraction, I was quite curious about this.
I already wondered why there are special hospitals for veterans and read a bit about it.
(This is just a bookmark)

Neither Obama nor congress gave a **** that the VA does shoddy work. Neither mostly do the American people. This speaks too

1) washington does not work

2) we have mostly very inferior people running government

3) anyone who thinks we should expand the power of government when it does such a poor job with the power it already has is insane

4) the American people are idiots

5) journalism is nearly dead

6) america is a very immoral place, as seen from many angles, one of which is that we will ask people to give their life for the nation and then we will abandon them.

I am very pissed off, and the thing that pisses me off most is that my fellow citizens are not more pissed off about this, and about assorted other immoral acts and failures of competence.

I think the VA problem is more widespread than many realize and I also think it began many years ago. I first became aware of callousness at the Houston VA, when a man I knew, a former part of Merril's Marauders, told how, when he was in the VA hospital, after surgery, the attendant grabbed him on the side and flipped him over, like a sack of potatoes, when he needed to be turned.
Next, when my father in law had collapsed lungs, the VA docs gave him a quick examination, wheeled him into the hallway, and told his wife to take him home and make him comfortable. One of the sons in law, who was a police detective, witnessed it and he told them, "Y'll better get him in there and take care of him." So, they took him in and he survived another four or five years. The VA was, in my estimation, responsible for his final end, because they had given him oxygen, on a regular basis. Despite the fact that both lungs had collapsed more than once, they put him on a treadmill and then told him, "Do you know how much that oxygen costs? We have to take it away." We rallied around him and got him oxygen on our own, but that abuse was the final blow, I believe. He began to have bloody urine and came down with pneumonia and died.
When I was self employed, I signed up at the VA. A few weeks after, I began to bleed in the esophagus, and I told the physician at VA. He wrote down that I had a sore throat and set me an appointment for at least a week away.
These three events are separated by years, in each case. Meaning, it must be standard policy.

The people found to be committing these offenses now should be prosecuted like any other criminals.

I've been checking the thread but I have known a lot of workers (nurses, doctors, and I worked for three weeks in a lab outbuilding before my first lab; the UCLA new building was just finishing its construction.). Most of the people I've known from there were at least good, and a few excellent...

except - I put my father's fast decline on v.a. decisions, which broke my heart at the time, heartless decisions.
And a personal observation of the callousness of a doctor who was an associate of a doctor I dated (good one) joking about gomers in the cemetery.
The cemetery my father is buried in. The doctor didn't know that, and when I spoke up, there was dead silence in the car for several minutes.

This was in the mid sixties, very early seventies.

I don't know anything about recent failures and need to read up, but given the inadequacies of care for returning vets that I have read about before, I don't think I'll be surprised.

My guess is that a lot of this comes down to money. Money goes to many places for our wars, but there seems to be tremendous scrimping on care for the soldiers.

But beyond that, lying, falsification of records, and criminal offenses are involved. Apparently, some of the VA hospital officials are falsifying records to augment their careers by appearing to be succeeding.

There was a senate bill to give more for veterans care, last week, that was filibustered dead by Republicans.

Yes. What I witnessed was perhaps the tip of an iceberg.

If it is true that the guy in charge was cooking the books, then an investigation needs to done and actions taken accordingly. On VA care in general, I do not know personally too much about it. My older and brother sister were both born in an Army hospital, I remember my mom talking about horror stories, but I don't remember any details.

I meant to say I'd been checking the thread but wasn't ready to write about it yet.

Va saved my life.

When I got discharged in '73 I went to work for VA in Ohio. My first day, I asked my wife to not let me die in a VA hospital. VA was known as a place to go if there was absolutely nowhere else to go. Four years ago I got on the VA for my health care. What a change. They found a bladder cancer and I am more than happy with the quality and timeliness of all my treatment by VA.

If Congress and the Presidents, ALL Presidents from Reagan on (except Obama) had stopped cutting services and budgets while promoting more wars everything would be a lot better.

Don't blame Obama (and I am a Republican) blame your Congressman and the last five Presidents.

I'm glad that happened.


Of course not. Obama isn't responsible for any of the myriad problems occurring on his watch, even the things that occurred on his watch or got much worse on his watch. Somehow, this must be George Bush's fault. Yes.

It saved mine also, Bobsal.

And I have had medical attention at the VA...and at for profit hospitals in my area...and I don't see an appreciable difference between the two.

Right now, I use non-VA doctors and facilities...but that has more to do with the distance of the hospital from where I live. I would have no problem getting my regular treatment from the VA.

I suspect many of the people moaning and groaning about the VA...have never had medical service provided.

And many of the others...have had uncomfortable experiences with the VA.

But it would be a very, very luck person indeed who never had some uncomfortable experiences with regular non-VA medical facilities.

So, we can ignore the scandal as a tempest in a teapot and it will go away.

that is certainly the plan. Secret lists and lying in performance reports should be a big thing. VA administration officials knowing about the scam for years and letting it continue should be a big thing. COngress and Obama either not knowing or knowing and also not ending the scam should be a big thing.

I want to see Obama on the stage almost in tears, saying " never again", and I want to see hundreds of people fired.