Veteran Denied Care At Two VA Facilities Thought No One Would Believe Him, So He Filmed It

The VA clinic in Lawrenceville, Ga., initially turned him away for the same reason, which is why he decided to bring his camera along to the Community Based Outpatient Clinic in Oakwood. He received the same response. But this time, he captured the interaction on camera.

The full video shows 33-year-old Dorsey waiting for five minutes before telling an employee that he needs a transfer from the VA system in Athens.

“We’re not accepting any new patients — not this clinic,” the VA employee said in response, signaling an abrupt end to the interaction.

Dorsey, who served in Iraq in 2003, has PTSD and was seeking treatment for escalating symptoms. Aside from the Oakwood clinic, Dorsey’s other option is in Atlanta, which is more than 50 miles away from his current location. PTSD is a fairly common diagnosis in veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The VA states that anywhere between 11-20 percent of those veterans suffer from PTSD.

“It takes a lot to say, ‘You know what, I need to get help,’” Dorsey told the New York Daily News. “And for a veteran to be told on multiple occasions that they can’t get help is just very, very discouraging.”

While this means that the VA Choice program applies, no employees offered that information. It was only after he had discussed his experiences at the two clinics with another veteran that he learned of the program.

“We have some very serious geographical issues. Now we have the VA Choice card but we have doctors who won’t accept it or don’t understand it,” Jerry Edwards, founder of North Georgia Veteran’s Outreach Center, told Military Times.

Not only do doctors often refuse to accept the program, but internally, the VA has previously tried to interpret the legislation establishing the program to mean that if any facility exists within 40 miles of a veteran, regardless of whether that facility provides appropriate care, then that veteran can’t access the program.

Other administrative problems have plagued the VA. Over 500,000 veterans have inquired about the VA Choice Program from the period between November 2014 and May. Just 50,000 received authorization for appointments.

Via: American Spectator

Continue Reading....

New York: City Council seeks ban on e-cigarettes in public places as high-tech successor to smoking ban

The City Council will hold a hearing Wednesday on a bill to prohibit the use of batty-operated, tobacco-free vaporizers in places where people can't smoke tobacco cigarettes, including restaurants, offices, parks and beaches.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ILLUSTRATION; PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The City Council may push the e-cigarettes ban through before the year's end. Mayor Bloomberg supports it.

First the city banned smoking in most public places. Now it’s moving to snuff out the use of smokeless electronic cigarettes as well.

The City Council announced Wednesday that it will hold a hearing Wednesday on a bill prohibiting the use of the battery-operated, tobacco-free vaporizers in restaurants, offices, parks, beaches and other places where smoking regular cigarettes is not allowed.

RELATED: NYC LAW BANNING TEEN CIGARETTE BUYERS MADE OFFICIAL

Councilman James Gennaro (D-Queens) is a sponsor of the bill to ban e-cigs and calls it a "high-tech successor" to 2002 tobacco cigarette ban.

The goal is to enact the new law by the end of the year, before the Council’s current session ends.

E-cigarettes have emerged as a trendy alternative to tobacco cigarettes, their popularity fueled by a perception that they are healthier and that they can help people kick conventional cigarette habits.

Via: New York Daily News
Continue Reading.....

Our choice for America’s future: The Daily News endorses Mitt Romney for president

Four years after endorsing Obama, News finds the hopes of those days went unfulfilled

America’s heart, soul, brains and muscle — the middle- and working-class people who make this nation great — have been beset for too long by sapping economic decline.

So, too, New York breadwinners and families.

Paychecks are shrunken after more than a decade in which the workplace has asked more of wage earners and rewarded them less. The decline has knocked someone at the midpoint of the salary scale back to where he or she would have been in 1996.

LIVE BLOG: FOLLOW THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN THE AFTERMATH OF SANDY

PHOTOS: THE DAMAGE LEFT BEHIND BY HURRICANE

Then, the subway fare, still paid by token, was $1.50, gasoline was $1.23 a gallon and the median rent for a stabilized apartment was $600 a month. Today, the base MetroCard subway fare is $2.25, gasoline is in the $3.90 range and the median stabilized rent is $1,050, with all the increases outpacing wage growth.

A crisis of long duration, the gap between purchasing power and the necessities of life widened after the 2008 meltdown revealed that the U.S. economy was built on toothpicks — and they snapped.

Nine million jobs evaporated. The typical American family saw $50,000 vanish from its net worth, and its median household income dropped by more than $87 a week. New Yorkers got off with a $54 weekly hit.

Our leaders owed us better than lower standards of living, and we must have better if the U.S. is to remain a beacon of prosperity where mothers and fathers can be confident of providing for their children and seeing them climb higher on the ladder.

Via: The Daily News

Continue Reading...