307,000 Veterans May Have Died While Waiting for VA benefits. The VA Status Quo Must Change.

Remember the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal in April, 2014 that exposed veterans had died as a result of waiting for healthcare?

Veterans were placed on fake wait lists and were signed up for ghost clinics and records were manipulated.

Deceit had become the norm in order to make the VA look better in an attempt to not draw attention to the dysfunctional leadership failures running rampant through the bureaucracy.

The result: veterans suffered, veterans died.

Nearly a year and a half later what has changed? Nothing.

CNN has reported that the Veterans Affairs Inspector General has found that roughly 800,000 records and applications were delayed in the VA system for healthcare enrollment.

Of those delayed, 307,000 veterans may have died while waiting on an answer from the VA on their application for benefits.

These aren’t veterans waiting on healthcare appointments who are already in the system, but veterans merely trying to accomplish the first step, applying for VA healthcare.

The investigation additionally discovered that a veteran who died in 1988 still had an unprocessed application in the system 26 years later.

Another veteran had applied for VA healthcare enrollment in 1998 had a “pending” status on his record 14 years later.

The Inspector General also found that due to improper management and marking of unprocessed applications, Veteran Affairs employees had likely deleted over 10,000 applications in the past five years.

The report additionally noted that in 2010, employees concealed veterans’ applications in their desks so they didn’t have to process them at that time.

In standard VA practice, the employees were not recommended to be disciplined for their actions.

Recently Veteran Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald voiced his concern that politics were setting the VA up for failure.

His attempt to shift blame is unacceptable as the VA’s top leader.

Enough with the excuses, veterans deserve better than that.

They deserve the quality and timely healthcare they earned, but sadly are not getting.

It’s time for results, not continual empty rhetoric.

The agency has an annual budget of roughly $160 billion. In 2014 congress gave the VA an additional $16.3 billion to provide veterans with more choice when it came to their healthcare.

The VA manipulated the intentions behind the choice program, making the option virtually impossible for veterans to use. Again, the VA chose to put the agency ahead of veterans well-being.

The VA has evolved into a massive bureaucracy that facilitates an unethical culture that refuses to accept change.

Its leadership climate fosters zero accountability within the department.

A year and a half after the scandal broke, the VA continues to resist reform that will produce effective results.

Enough is enough. The status quo is unacceptable. The VA needs accountably, choice and access for private care options, and a cultural shift that puts veterans first.

VA reform must become a priority now. Veterans have made tremendous sacrifices and put country before self.

They deserve a VA that serves them, not the other way around.

Because as it stands now, the disgusting reality is that our nation’s finest are left to fight for the benefits they’ve earned – some dying without receiving any of them at all.

Via: Daily Signal

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House Passes VA Reform Bill; White House Threatens Veto

The House passed a measure aimed at allowing the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire or demote incompetent VA workers, but the White House is threatening to veto it. 

The VA Accountability Act of 2015 passed Tuesday largely along party lines by a vote of 256-170, however, it did have some Democratic support, The Washington Post is reporting. 

The bill was authored by House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller. The Florida Republican said that it will allow the VA secretary "to remove or demote any employee for poor performance or misconduct." 

However, prior to the vote, the White House released a statement saying that it would veto the measure if it makes it to President Barack Obama's desk, the Military Times reported. 

"The bill could have a significant impact on the VA's ability to retain and recruit qualified professionals and may result in a loss of qualified and capable staff to other government agencies or the private sector," the statement said. 

The Republicans think the bill is necessary because there has not been an increase in firings after the scandal that hit, in which VA patients allegedly died while their names were put on fake wait lists. 

During debates on the measure, which had no support from Democrats on the House VA committee, the Post says that Miller pointed out several times that Obama and the Democrats supported similar rules that allowed only VA senior officials to be fired in the last VA reform bill, which the president signed in 2014. 

Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, told the Post that "We are amazed that this bill, which mirrors last year's Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, is only now causing alarm within the Administration."

Via: Newsmax

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Almost A Third Of Veterans On The 847,000-Long Waitlist Have Died Without VA Care

A new leaked document from the Department of Veterans Affairs indicates 238,657 veterans have died while waiting for health care appointments.

There are a total of 847,822 veterans on the enrollment waitlist, meaning a third have been declared deceased while in line for care, The Huffington Post reports.

Nevertheless, the problem isn’t quite as bad as it first seems. The VA has no method of removing applicants from the list, and so the death toll is spread out over a much longer period of time, as noted by the Analysis of Death Services report.

Moreover, according to VA spokeswoman Walinda West, many applicants never even finished the application, but because of the way the system is designed, they still remain on the list. In other words, since the VA is incapable of keeping its records clean and up to date, it’s difficult to ascertain exactly how many veterans have died over the past year while on the waiting list. The list has been maintained since 1985, West said, so data on the deaths could extend back for decades.

Whistleblower Scott Davis, who works as a program specialist at the VA Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta, argued West was wrong on all counts. First, incomplete applications are not actually counted in the pending list. Second, the list only goes back to 1998, since that’s the date the enrollment process became a requirement.

“VA wants you to believe, by virtue of people being able to get health care elsewhere, it’s not a big deal,” Davis told The Huffington Post. “But VA is turning away tens of thousands of veterans eligible for health care,” he said. “VA is making it cumbersome, and then saying, ‘See? They didn’t want it anyway.'”

Aside from evidence of abysmal record-keeping and wait times at the VA, what’s worse is that 34,000 of the veterans on the list, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, shouldn’t even be there. In a letter to GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, Davis noted that combat veterans are owed five years of health care eligibility.

In the past, Davis has faced harassment and retaliation for sending information about wait times to the media. Back in 2014, after he appeared on “Fox and Friends,” Davis said he received a notice from his supervisors asking him not to talk in public again about VA issues.

Via: Daily Caller

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Answers demanded after vets’ disability claims found in cabinet

One number will hang over a congressional hearing Wednesday looking into mismanagement at a U.S. Veterans Affairs regional office in Oakland: 13,184.

That’s the number of compensation and disability claims that were found in 2012, wrongfully stashed in a filing cabinet — some dating to the mid-1990s and many unprocessed. But what the number represents remains the source of fierce debate.

Employees who came forward about the claims say it’s the number of veterans whose much-needed benefits may have been delayed, or not paid altogether, because of what they described as organized negligence that continued even after the cabinet was emptied. …

Via: SF Chronicle

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Vets agency furloughs 7K, closes offices

Regional offices run by the Department of Veterans Affairs closed Tuesday as furloughs began for 7,000 employees of the agency’s Benefits Administration (VBA). 

“All public access to VBA regional offices and facilities will be suspended ... due to a lack of funds,” Veterans Affairs Department spokeswoman Victoria Dillon said in a statement provided to The Hill. 

The government shutdown, in its eighth day, has caused agencies to send government workers home who are deemed “nonessential.” 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example, called some of its furloughed employees back to work to track Tropical Storm Karen, but they were then refurloughed Monday. 

No one would be answering phones at regional VA offices, which veterans call to check on the status of their disability benefits. 

Consequently, many veterans’ benefits will be delayed. VA’s ability to reduce the claims backlog, Dillon says, is hampered without claims processors who work overtime. Overtime was eliminated when the shutdown began.  

“Clear progress for Veterans and their families is at risk without immediate action by Congress to make fiscal year 2014 funding available by passing a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government,” her statement said. 

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) slammed Senate Democrats for not agreeing to piecemeal bills to fund the VA. The ball, Miller said, is now in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) court.

“Harry Reid could stop these furloughs and ensure veterans’ benefits immediately by acting on either of these bills, but instead he’s content to let them gather dust on his desk," he said in a statement. "It’s well past time for Harry Reid to stop the games and fund VA. If not, he owes America’s veterans an explanation for why he’s putting their benefits at risk.”

Via: The Hill

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