VA Scandal

That's my point: GOP political footballing of vets is just part of their publicly crowed vow of "making this Presidency fail". We need to keep our eye on the real problem - fixing VA, not fixing blame on a scapegoat.

As a not native speaker, I understood it this way as well

Reread that CI - Edgar was saying that Obama reversed the standard of proof that kept the agent orange afflicted (and others) unable to get care previously, so now there are more vets applying.

edgar and osso, My bad! I misread edgar's post. My apologies.
The impression I've been getting from reading so many articles about our vets returning from the war front committing suicide and going homeless, it angered me the most, because they were not cared for.

The mission of the VA is not to provide general medical care for all veterans. Rather it is to screen and tread them for service=connected disabilities or injuries. In many cases the determination of a service connected disability involves a continuing payment by the government. As you can likely imagine, given the inventiveness of human nature, the screening process involves considerable effort.

I believe there is a mistaken view among many that the VA is funded to provide lifetime medical care for all veterans. That is not true, The fact is that the VA will, to the extent it is able, provide such care to those who need and seek it, but it is not chartered or funded to do so.

I had one experience with the VA getting treatment for an old knee injury sustained in an aircraft ejection, and found the service to be good, if a bit slow and bureaucratic - about what one expects from a government agency.

The current issues appear to involve both extended delays in obtaining screening & treatment for service-related injuries, and delays in providing general medical treatment of other veterans. Interestingly the news media generally fails to make this distinction.

Our President identified problems in VA services in his initial election campaign in 2007 and vowed to promptly correct them. That is simply a relevant fact. He has failed to do so - indeed by all accounts the problems - whatever they may be - have significantly worsened during the past six years.

Some argue the issue is solely lack of funding. However the specific issues that have arisen in the investigation all point to deliberate deceptions and misrepresentations of fact by senior VA managers, seeking to improve their performance measures (scheduling statistics in this case), in order to get better performance evaluations and the cash bonuses Federal employees now get for such "superior" performance. This, of course is corruption of a very serious nature involving serious degradation of the required service provided by the agency and deliberate deception in reporting it by government managers seeking bonuses for their performance. In my experience that is a problem almost always traceable to the top leadership of the organization, and which always requires its replacement for real correction.

It doesn't take much experience in life to see the pervasive presence of such leadership venality in the current political administration. We have seen it in scandals that have arisen in the General Services Administration, The Department of Health and Human Services organization in the debacle attending the rollout of web-based enrollment in health care plans; The State Department's administration of security needs in Embassies & consulates (Benghazi is merely one example). and repeated issues involving the multiple events in the Justice Department.

The common element in all of these events is the lack of accountability for any of the senior management or political appointees involved. Central to all of them is the President's persistent failure to acknowledge failure and accept responsibility himself. That is a leadership failing that quickly seeps down throughout the management and leadership structure undermining the whole organization. In all of the many government failures and scandals we have seen the one common element has been the claim by the responsible department head that he or shed didn't know of or wasn't informed of the problem at hand, and (though they don't specifically say so) is therefore not responsible for the failure.

Anyone who has ever run anything - from a group of a dozen people doing any task to a corporation or a military organization knows that the person in charge must be accountable for everything the organization does. CEOs of failing or merely stumbling corporations are fired by their boards. Captains of Navy ships are quickly replaced after a serious mishap or any event even indirectly traceable to the leadership (or lack of it) provided. Foremen on a construction crew are replaced if someone is injured or a major error occurs. Not knowing about an emerging problem is never an acceptable excuse. All this is basic to organized human activity.

Unfortunately we have an elected government that appears to believe that the supposed virtue in its assumed goals exhonorates them from such accountability; that merely by thinking "good" thoughts and having "good" goals they are immune from such accountability. These, of course, are the rationalizations used by tyrants everywhere, even passive aggressive ones like our current President.

Well said

Would agree that not supplying the right amount of money to the VA is a cut in benefits when congress refuses to give an amount that will enable the VA to supply health care to all the veterans as congress promised.

Did you notice the name David Gergan in his quote? Like I said try to keep up.

Right you are. Unfortunately CI just cant find it in his heart to give Obama any credit for the good things he does. But it is his opinion and he makes more sense than the nuts who dont like Obama because he is black.

Spoken like the true ultraconservative ive got mine screw the rest of you that you are.

Your statement is based on a false proposition. The Congress (and the President for that matter) did not promise all veterans health care for life, only that required for service-connected disabilities.

It's rather hard to blame the framers of laws establishing things like the VA for the failings at hand which are due to to the sustained and deliberate falsification of performance metrics on which management oversight is based done by the responsible officials of the Executive Department of our Government. Indeed providing more funds to such an agency would likely result only in more fraud and waste. The Congress does have an oversight responsibility here, but the Executive Department has stonewalled and hindered its activities in this area at every turn.

Political promises can be interesting things. For example, "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. If you like your present health care plan you can keep it. Period ! "

I don't think our President set a particularly high standard for truth and responsibility in government when he so easily rationalized that often repeated statement. Should we be surprised when other lower level government officials start doing similar things????

And you think David Gergen is an ultra right-winger?

You should try and keep up with what is going on in the world and who these people actually are.

This link provides what benefits are available to veterans.
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/theorderlyroom/l/blvetbenefits.htm

I am not opposed to wait times longer than vets want, in fact it is probably a requirement as there needs to be some mechanism to ration care. The problem is the lying about it. The argument that the wait times are too long so the VA needs to get more money needs to be examined, partly because we dont have unlimited resources (if fact our government spends way more than it has), and because the problem might be how the money is spent.

Those are valid points; government waste is notorious, and that's been ongoing for too long. The problem is how government allocates money for purposes that defeats what it's trying to accomplish. Some real bad ones are farm and oil subsidies, but also the CIA funding of governments like Somalia.

Excuse me sir: I was under the impression that you had decided to never again agree with me.

Show me where I made such a statement.
I don't care who the poster is. When I disagree or agree with their opinion, I state it and the reasons why.
I disagree with the majority of your opinions, and have provided the reasons why.

If you disagree with what I say, tell me why - and prove it! I've challenged you many times, and asked you to show me where I've been wrong on any of my over 90,000 posts on a2k. You packed your tail in your arse, and never responded.

So, no one has actually advocated this and you were making a false statement. Stop doing that. It's not a valid way to argue.

I am a veteran. I have been receiving VA care for over 20 years at Las Vegas VA facilities. First of all I have always received great medical care from Las Vegas VA facilities. Yes, appointments can and has taken anywhere from 1 month, 2 months, and sometimes 3 months. It all depends on what kind of an appointment it is and who the appointment is with. Obviously longer appointment times means you don't have a enough doctors for the volume of patients. Whenever I've gone to a Las Vegas VA facilities the doctors, nurses, specialists, administration, technician, and all VA staff has shown to be knowledgeable and wonderful professionals. The appointment times can sometimes be little long, but the overall care is better than the private sector. I have also had medical care in the private sector. The private sector had shorter times for scheduling appointments, but the actual care is not as good as the VA. Remember I am only referring to the Las Vegas Nevada area. I can't speak for other cities across the country

Thank you for sharing your experience with both the VA and civilian hospital care. It proves that there are good and bad hospitals and care quality on all of them regardless of whether they are VA or other hospitals and clinics. It depends on the local management and their ability to recruit the right kind of professionals, and how they manage it.

Our Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara, California, was rated number 1 in California. Our hospital has many professionals from Stanford, UC San Francisco, and even Harvard medical school. I've had the same physician for several decades, and I know I get the best care; she's from India and received her education at Stanford.

I was also treated for prostate cancer at Kaiser in 2008, and have recovered very well from my radiation treatment. I couldn't ask for more.