Veterans Affairs Scandal

[Lucille]

Yeah, the damn propaganda WHITE HOUSE turned around and threw the whistleblower right under the bus of his boss... how criminal of the LIAR and CHIEF.

I wonder what Bathhouse Barry is attempting to hide... he's only making much worse. Bit it's a deflection from Benchazi CIA terrorist arming and training, IRS targeting innocent civilians, discrimination, killing round the world, rigged racketeering markets, Fast and Furious.... frigin covering-up and hiding everything. But Obama and company don't give a shit, he and his gang lame duck president/White House and the only thing he's putting effort into, is attempting to save the 2014 and 2016 elections.

I don't recall a presidency that had so many scandals, let alone going on all at once. Great clip. Always projecting, that guy.

SMH @ "expedited" ...

You'd think being under scrutiny like this, they'd be on their best behavior (or act like normal human beings) and wouldn't watch people die while they follow their idiotic policy! Was there seriously not one person there who GAF about that man's life?!

Scandal-Plagued VA Is Overpaying Workers By Millions Of Dollars, Internal Audits Find
http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/10/scandal-plagued-va-is-overpaying-workers

The scandal-plagued Department of Veterans Affairs is systematically overpaying clerks, administrators and other support staff, according to internal audits, draining tens of millions of dollars that could be used instead to ease the VA's acute shortage of doctors and nurses.

The jobs of some 13,000 VA support staff have been flagged by auditors as potentially misclassified, in many cases resulting in inflated salaries that have gone uncorrected for as long as 14 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/va-overpaid-workers_n_5564766.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

At the VA central office, meanwhile, the review of those 13,000 jobs has not yet begun, Molloy said. And the overpayments continue, leaving classification specialists fuming.

PuffHo seems shocked that the massive bureaucracies they love so much are totally out-of-control, unaccountable, and the greedy bureaucrats who work for them happily take advantage of the unmanageable system.

 

[Suzanimal]

Nothing to see here folks....

VA says no proof delays in care caused vets to die

WASHINGTON —

The Department of Veterans Affairs says investigators have found no proof that delays in care caused any deaths at a VA hospital in Phoenix, deflating an explosive allegation that helped expose a troubled health care system in which veterans waited months for appointments while employees falsified records to cover up the delays.

Revelations that as many as 40 veterans died while awaiting care at the Phoenix VA hospital rocked the agency last spring, bringing to light scheduling problems and allegations of misconduct at other hospitals as well. The scandal led to the resignation of former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. In July, Congress approved spending an additional $16 billion to help shore up the system.

The VA's Office of Inspector General has been investigating the delays for months and shared a draft report of its findings with VA officials.

In a written memorandum about the report, VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald said: "It is important to note that while OIG's case reviews in the report document substantial delays in care, and quality-of-care concerns, OIG was unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely quality care caused the death of these veterans."

McDonald acknowledged that the VA is "in the midst of a very serious crisis." He also promised to follow all recommendations from the inspector general's final report.

"We sincerely apologize to all veterans and we will continue to listen to veterans, their families, veterans service organizations and our VA employees to improve access to the care and benefits veterans earned an deserve," said McDonald's memo, which was also signed by Carolyn Clancy, VA undersecretary for health.

The inspector general's final report has not yet been issued. The inspector general runs an independent office within the VA.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson stressed that veterans are still waiting too long for care, an issue the agency is working to fix.

"They looked to see if there was any causal relationship associated with the delay in care and the death of these veterans and they were unable to find one. But from my perspective, that don't make it OK," Gibson said. "Veterans were waiting too long for care and there were things being done, there were scheduling improprieties happening at Phoenix and frankly at other locations as well. Those are unacceptable."

In April, Dr. Samuel Foote, who had worked for the Phoenix VA for more than 20 years before retiring in December, brought the allegations to Congress.

Foote accused Arizona VA leaders of collecting bonuses for reducing patient wait times. But, he said, the purported successes resulted from data manipulation rather than improved service for veterans. He said up to 40 patients died while awaiting care.

In May, the inspector general's office found that 1,700 veterans were waiting for primary care appointments at the Phoenix VA but did not show up on the wait list. "Until that happens, the reported wait times for these veterans has not started," said a report issued in May.

Gibson said the VA reached out to all 1,700 veterans in Phoenix and scheduled care for them. However, he acknowledged there are still 1,800 veterans in Phoenix who requested appointments but will have to wait at least 90 days for care.

The VA has said it is firing three executives of the Phoenix VA hospital. The agency has also said it planned to fire two supervisors and discipline four other employees in Colorado and Wyoming accused of falsifying health care data.

Gibson says he expects the list of disciplined employees to grow. Gibson took over as acting VA secretary when Shinseki resigned. He returned to his job as deputy secretary after McDonald was confirmed.

"The fundamental point here is, we are taking bold and decisive action to fix these problems because it's unacceptable," Gibson said. "We owe veterans, we owe the American people, an apology. We've delivered that apology. We'll keep delivering that apology for our failure to meet their expectations for timely and effective health care."

To help reduce backlogs, the VA is sending more veterans to private doctors for care.

Congress approved $10 billion in emergency spending over three years to pay private doctors and other health professionals to care for veterans who can't get timely appointments at VA hospitals, or who live more than 40 miles from one.

The new law includes $5 billion for hiring more VA doctors, nurses and other medical staff and $1.3 billion to open 27 new VA clinics across the country.

The legislation also makes it easier to fire hospital administrators and senior VA executives for negligence or poor performance.

http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/top-news/va-says-no-proof-delays-in-care-caused-vets-to-die/ng8kq/

 

[donnay]

SMDH.

 

[LibForestPaul]

The answer is simple. Allow Veterans to use Doctors, Hospitals, and Facilities of their own choice where they live. The money would still come from the taxpayers but would at least be used in the community that the veteran resides.

Like medicaid...
So the question is why not. I suspect it is to hide medical information when required.

 

[Lucille]

Of course.

So In The End, The VA Was Rewarded, Not Punished
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2014/08/so-in-the-end-the-va-was-rewarded-not-punished.html

People talk about government employees being motivated by "public service" but in fact very few government agencies have any tangible performance metrics linked to public service, and when they do (as in the case of the VA wait times) they just game them. At the end of the day, nothing enforces fidelity to the public good like competition and consumer choice, two things no government agency allows.

I will admit that government employees in agencies may have some interest in public welfare, but in the hierarchy of needs, the following three things dominate above any concerns for the public:

• Keeping the agency in existence
• Maintaining employment levels, and if that is achieved, increasing employment levels
• Getting more budget

But look at the VA response in this context:

• The agency remains in existence and most proposals to privatize certain parts were beaten back
• No one was fired and employment levels remain the same
• The agency was rewarded with a big bump in its budget

The VA won! Whereas a private company with that kind of negative publicity about how customers were treated would have as a minimum seen a huge revenue and market share loss, and might have faced bankruptcy, the VA was given more money.

Murry Rothbard via Bryan Caplan:

On the free market, in short, the consumer is king, and any business firm that wants to make profits and avoid losses tries its best to serve the consumer as efficiently and at as low a cost as possible. In a government operation, in contrast, everything changes. Inherent in all government operation is a grave and fatal split between service and payment, between the providing of a service and the payment for receiving it. The government bureau does not get its income as does the private firm, from serving the consumer well or from consumer purchases of its products exceeding its costs of operation. No, the government bureau acquires its income from mulcting the long-suffering taxpayer. Its operations therefore become inefficient, and costs zoom, since government bureaus need not worry about losses or bankruptcy; they can make up their losses by additional extractions from the public till. Furthermore, the consumer, instead of being courted and wooed for his favor, becomes a mere annoyance to the government someone who is "wasting" the government's scarce resources. In government operations, the consumer is treated like an unwelcome intruder, an interference in the quiet enjoyment by the bureaucrat of his steady income.

 

[Lucille]

Assistant Inspector General Concedes That VA Shenanigans 'Contributed' to Patient Deaths
http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/18/assistant-inspector-general-concedes-tha

Last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General insisted, after a close look at manipulated and secret waiting lists at the Phoenix Veterans Health Administration facility, "we are unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely quality care caused the deaths of these veterans." Yesterday, a hearing before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs got a bit heated as lawmakers pushed Inspector General Richard Griffin and Assistant Inspector General John Daigh to concede that confining sick veterans in bureaucratic limbo while they wait for care "contributed" to the untimely deaths of some. Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) says he got the concession, and in Daigh's case he clearly did.

Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.): Did the wait lists contribute to the deaths of veterans?

Daigh: Yes. Yes, no problem with that. The issue is cause, or a direct relationship.

Griffin probably thinks he hedged his way out of a tight corner, though he seems none too happy with his subordinate. Decide for yourself from the exchange embedded below.

Katherine L. Mitchell, M.D. Medical Director, Iraq and Afghanistan Post-Deployment Center, Phoenix VA Health Care System, and retired VA doctor Samuel Foote directly linked the gamed waiting lists to patient deaths in their testimony.

 

[Suzanimal]

VA employees doubt agency can police itself

...

The chief HEC whistleblower, Davis, said he and other employees have been unimpressed by the inspector general’s efforts. He said employees have provided documents and emails to back up allegations. Yet investigators don’t seem to grasp the problems or they don’t seem to want to dig deep in their inquiry, he said.

Davis said it took months after his Congressional testimony for inspector general investigators to contact him. He said they sent him a questionnaire in November that he answered. When investigators visited the HEC last week to interview employees, they set up in an office across the hall from Davis, but didn’t bother to interview him, he said.

The only followup from the November questionnaire was a request for him to provide names of the people inside the agency who had provided him information. There were no followup questions regarding the allegations that more than 800,000 health applications were frozen with no administrative decision from the agency, including more than 47,000 veterans who died while on the pending list, according to Davis.

Davis said some employees who spoke to investigators share his skepticism and doubt much will come of the inquiry. Davis said he’s been providing information to Congressional investigators and news reporters in an effort to make sure that information gets out.

“There’s significant concerns from VA staff that the preponderance of evidence provided to OIG will never make it into the final report,” Davis said. “The only way I feel the truth will come out is by notifying Congress and the media.”

Mason is among those concerned about the final report from the inspector general. She said she and other employees have been interviewed by the inspector general multiple times this year and each time they’ve outlined the same problems at the HEC.

She said she provided detailed information to investigators and even told them where to go to get the answers, yet they don’t seem to have followed up on her leads.

“Why does it take the IG eight times to get the same info and still nothing has changed?” she said.

She said if investigators don’t probe and really try to understand the intricacies of the broken enrollment system those who want to keep the problems hidden can “tap dance around it all day long.”

http://www.myajc.com/news/news/va-e...-police-itself/njQFp/#039a61a3.2470693.735582

 

[Suzanimal]

Controversial VA projects waste billions, say government reports and lawmakers

(CNN) -- While veterans in recent years were dying as they waited for care at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, the VA has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on controversial projects across the country, according to government reports and members of Congress.

Critics say budget overruns and construction delays on several projects are burning money that could have been used to help more veterans access timely health care, with one lawmaker even comparing the elaborate projects to the Taj Mahal.

For example, a massive construction project near Denver mired with problems ran hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and ended up in court over design and contract issues, according to court documents.

The joint venture building the medical center near Denver, Kiewit-Turner, estimated the total project would cost more than $1 billion -- almost double the contractual estimate of $583 million.

...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/politics/va-waste?sr=fb123214vaprojects7avodtoplink

 

[Weston White]

...And includes $600 Websites, $300 NASA space-pads, and ACA test runs for organizing "government death-panels".

 

[Suzanimal]

Veteran Dies After 4-Years Of Trying to Convince The VA That He Was Sick

An East Texas widow says her Air Force veteran husband died last week of Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as ALS, after 4 years of trying to convince the Veteran Affairs (VA) that he was sick. Janie Michels said her husband, Bradley Michels, would do it all over again, if given the chance. “He absolutely loved his country. He said it was important to fight for our rights and our freedoms.” said Janie. Bradley served in the Air Force from 1986 to 1996. He was stationed in South Korea, Germany and Arizona. His tour ended in 1996, but his wife noticed changes in his health. “I noticed his health decline right after he got out of the military…right after he cleaned up after Desert Storm,” recalls Janie. “He started having neurological problems…he had a slurred voice sometimes, and he started having cramps in the balls of his feet that went into his knee and into his thigh.” Janie believed that these symptoms pointed to ALS. In 2010, they filed for disability benefits with the VA. The claim was denied twice. Their most recent appeal was filed a few months ago. Janie asked for ALS testing repeatedly, but Bradley’s doctor said no. “In the beginning, he said he didn’t know what was wrong,” said Janie. “After a lot of pushing, he said it was not ALS and that it was psychosomatic.” The Michels spent four years filing paperwork, going to doctor visits, and making calls to the VA. Then, three weeks ago, a neurologist agreed to test Bradley for ALS. The test came back positive, but his claim for benefits remained denied.

Read more at http://conservativevideos.com/veteran-dies-4-years-trying-convince-va-sick/#cyFGVIiytHakw7is.99

 

[Suzanimal]

Report: Wisconsin VA hospital turns patients into 'zombies' with opiates

Doctors at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Wisconsin dope up veterans with unusual amounts of painkillers, turning them into "zombies" to keep them sedated and easily managed, according to patients and onetime staff, a new investigation found.

The Center for Investigative Reporting wrote Thursday that doctors at the VA hospital in Tomah, Wis., wrote 25,000 prescriptions for opiates in 2012, up from about 2,000 11 years prior.

At least one patient has died of the drugs while in VA care. Many of the patients were there to work through psychological trauma, but instead, the VA deadened them emotionally, one former VA psychiatrist said.

“We were supposed to be doing hard work, getting these veterans to fight through their anxiety and fear,” Jennifer Brooks said. “But their eyes would be dilated, their sentences would be blurry. Sometimes they’d be on so many medications that they’d fall asleep.”

The hospital is run by David Houlihan, a psychiatrist who was previously disciplined by the Iowa Board of Medicine “for being 'inappropriately engaged in a social relationship with a patient,' hiring a current or former patient and bringing a patient’s medicine home with him,” according to CIR.

VA's inspector general has received numerous complaints about Houlihan's prescription patterns, and wrote a report on it in March. But the VA IG never made the report public or shared the report with Congress.

The IG found that while Houlihan hasn't faced sanctions, the whistleblowers who raised concerns were forced out.

One former VA pharmacist who said Houlihan gladly refilled subscriptions for veterans who implausibly claimed they had lost their opiates five times, now works at Wal-Mart.

No senior agency official was willing to comment on the issue to CIR.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/r...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

[Suzanimal]

Investigation Reveals Oakland VA Intentionally Ignored Thousands of Veterans

...
McDonald apologized for the inaccuracy of that statement, saying, “I incorrectly stated that I had been in special forces. That was inaccurate and I apologize to anyone that was offended by my misstatement. I have great respect for those who have served our nation in special forces.”

But this is the least of his problems.

The CBS investigation goes on to chronicle the efforts of five whistle-blowers from the Oakland facility, who discovered more than 13,000 claims dated from 1996 to 2009 that were simply ignored.

“Half of the veterans were dead that I screened. So almost every other piece of paper that I touched was a veteran who had already passed away,” Rustyann Brown said, upset by the alarming trend when she researched the backlog.

To make matters worse, Brown told reporters that “[w]hether the veteran was dead or still alive, VA supervisors in Oakland ordered her team to mark the claims ‘no action necessary’ and to toss them aside.”
The news not only comes from these whistle-blowers, but from the Office of Inspector General.

“According to the Office of Inspector General, a VA management team came to the office in 2012 to help sort out its problems and found about 14,000 informal claims — those requesting initial assistance — in a filing cabinet that had not been processed. Some were over 20 years old,” reports Doug Oakley of the Bay Area News Group.

However, this isn’t the worst of it. Investigators from the Office of Inspector General visited the site in July, nearly two years after the problems were first reported, and none of the records in question could be located. Investigators were only able to find a spread sheet with a list of old claims that had not been processed and noted that adequate records were not kept and that employees needed proper training.

This incident is just the most recent in a long series of events where the VA destroyed records in an effort to cover ineptitude and laziness.

In 2009, it was discovered that records, still sealed in the envelopes they were submitted in, were hidden or destroyed to cover up improper handling. In 2011, an investigation found that nearly a quarter of disability claims were processed incorrectly or wrongly denied in regional VA offices nationwide. The scandal in 2014 that garnered the attention of mainstream media outlets also uncovered that veterans were intentionally kept on long wait lists and thousands of records were destroyed in several VA clinics.

...

http://ivn.us/2015/03/10/investigat...=facebook&utm_medium=wallpost&utm_campaign=FB

 

[Ronin Truth]

The US Federal government has been lying, abusing, short changing, and ripping off war veterans for over at least a hundred and fifty years.

It's really a wonder that they can ever get anyone at all to volunteer. Desperation and naivete, I guess.

 

[Lucille]

Not "we," Jim. They, the ineducable dumbass progs.

VA Inspector General Report: 307,000 Veterans Died Waiting For Health Care
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2...307000-veterans-died-waiting-for-health-care/

After seeing how the government manages the healthcare of our veterans, we decided to put them in charge of the healthcare for the whole country. We deserve to get it good and hard.
[...]
Before Dan Doherty departed, he wrote about how the Veterans Affairs estimated that hundreds of thousands of their patients had died while waiting for care. At the time, Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA Health Eligibility Center, divulged a report that was conducted within his department and that of the VA Office of Analytics titled “Analysis of Death Services. It was released in April of 2015. Now, we the Veterans Affair Inspector General’s report has given the exact number: 307,000. That’s how many veterans have died before their application had been process by the Eligibility Center (via CNN):

Hundreds of thousands of veterans listed in the Department of Veterans Affairs enrollment system died before their applications for care were processed, according to a report issued Wednesday.The VA’s inspector general found that out of about 800,000 records stalled in the agency’s system for managing health care enrollment, there were more than 307,000 records that belonged to veterans who had died months or years in the past.

In a response to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs’ request to investigate a whistleblower’s allegations of mismanagement at the VA’s Health Eligibility Center, the inspector general also found VA staffers incorrectly marked unprocessed applications and may have deleted 10,000 or more records in the last five years.

In one case, a veteran who applied for VA care in 1998 was placed in “pending” status for 14 years. Another veteran who passed away in 1988 was found to have an unprocessed record lingering in 2014, the investigation found.

VA Deputy Inspector General Linda Halliday noted that whistleblowers have provided essential information “to pursue accountability and corrective actions in VA programs.” In all, nearly 900,000 veterans still have their claims pending review. Additionally, the report found that the Health Eligibility Center (HEC) deleted 10,000 records from the Workload Reporting and Productivity (WRAP) tool since co-workers improperly marked applications as complete. Yet, a full review is not possible due to improper cataloging and storage of data:

While the HEC often deleted transactions for legitimate purposes, such as the removal of duplicate transactions, information security deficiencies within WRAP limited our ability to review some issues fully and rule out manipulation of data.WRAP was vulnerable because the HEC did not ensure that adequate business processes and security controls were in place, did not manage WRAP user permissions, and did not maintain audit trails to identify reviews and approvals of deleted transactions. In addition, the Office of Information and Technology (OI&T) did not provide proper oversight for the development, security, and data backup retention for WRAP. OI&T also did not collect and retain WRAP audit logs, evidence of administrative and user interactions within the database, in accordance with VA policy. In the absence of the audit logs, OI&T cannot analyze system activity for unauthorized or inadvertent undesired activity.

Veterans Affairs scandal is a fiasco, and a national disgrace regarding the inadequate care and attention that’s been given to those who have served our country. Waiting periods and “secret waiting lists” for sick veterans were unearthed in this tedious, frustrating, and wholly deplorable saga that still isn’t over. So far, only three Veterans Affairs personnel have been fired since the scandal broke in April of 2014.

 

[Lucille]

VA fires veteran for talking to Congress
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/va-fires-veteran-for-talking-to-congress/article/2571616

After a disabled VA employee and Army veteran reached out to Congress for help locating his lost benefits folder, the VA fired him out of retaliation.

Bradie Frink, a clerk at the VA's regional office in Baltimore, had written a letter to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., in Feb. 2013 when the agency misplaced Frink's benefits folder. Two weeks later, his superiors moved to fire him for alleged misconduct, despite having no concerns about Frink's performance prior to his congressional complaint.

The Office of Special Counsel announced Tuesday that Frink had been wrongfully terminated following his attempt to get help from Mikulski's office. Because the VA could not find Frink's file, the agency had stopped making certain payments to his family, according to the OSC report.
[...]
Frink's case is just the latest in a series of firings and demotions doled out by the VA to employees who blow the whistle on internal misconduct.

Whistleblowers have faced retaliation for reporting doctored appointment lists, shoddy patient care and even sexual harassment.

Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner told Congress in July that OSC has more than 300 active VA whistleblower retaliation cases across 43 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, with roughly 100 of those cases involving reports of patient health or safety.

"In 2014 and 2015 to date, OSC has secured either full or partial relief 99 times for VA employees who filed whistleblower retaliation complaints, including 66 in fiscal year 2015 alone," Lerner testified before the Senate Committee on Appropriations on July 30.

In Frink's case, the OSC found all three officials involved in his termination "had a clear motive to retaliate against him."...

 

[Lucille]

They only fire whistleblowers.

ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Watchdog: VA not firing officials for botched veteran care.

The government's Office of Special Counsel on Thursday told President Obama and top members of Congress that the Department of Veterans Affairs has failed to discipline VA employees for their role in the health care scandal, a conclusion many members of Congress have already reached.

OSC made this finding after examining the case of a VA doctor who was a whistleblower, and exposed many of the problems at the VA in Phoenix, Arizona.

Among other things, Dr. Katherine Mitchell said nurses lacked the proper training in medical triage, and 110 veterans "experienced dangerous delays in care."

Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said in her letter to Obama and Congress that her team substantiated those claims. But she said the VA has yet to impose any discipline on the VA.

"I am concerned by the VA's decision to take no disciplinary action against responsible officials," she wrote. She said the absence of any action against VA employees "sends the wrong message to the veterans served by this facility, including those who received substandard emergency care."

Lerner said her office asked why the VA hasn't fired anyone, but said "the VA did not provide an adequate justification."

Her letter listed several other examples in which the VA failed to fire officials, and noted that the VA seems to have no problem taking disciplinary action against VA whistleblowers.

"The VA has attempted to fire or suspend whistleblowers for minor indiscretions and, often, for activity directly related to the employee's whistleblowing," it said.

Congress passed legislation a year ago giving the VA more authority to fire people involved in the scandal, in which thousands of veterans were delayed care after they were put on secret waiting lists. Those lists served to hide the fact that they had applied for care months or even years earlier, and allowed the VA to claim they were getting people care quickly.

But so far, the VA hasn't fired anyone for the official reason that they worked to delay access to health care. Only a few have been fired, for other reasons, and others have been allowed to retire with full pension benefits.

Read the OSC letter here:

 

[Suzanimal]

One year after VA scandal, the number of veterans waiting for care is up 50 percent

One year after an explosive Veterans Affairs scandal sparked national outrage, the number of veterans on wait lists to be treated for everything from Hepatitis C to post-traumatic stress is 50 percent higher than at the same time last year, according to VA data.

....

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/0...f-veterans-waiting-for-care-is-up-50-percent/

 

[Suzanimal]

VA Secretly Paid Exec Who Threatened Whistleblower $86,000 To Quit

A former Department of Veterans Affairs hospital director was paid $86,000 to resign after Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson determined he had retaliated against a whistle-blowing subordinate who reported him for doing little work, The Daily Caller News Foundation found.

Other offenses that preceded the payoff for Japhet Rivera included having sex with a female VA employee and then repeatedly talking about the goings-on to her daughter, who also worked there. When the daughter said she didn’t want to hear it, he wrote that she might have to “live the rest of your life without a mom,” the VA said in Rivera’s firing paperwork.

The VA has repeatedly told Congress in recent years that it doesn’t need new management powers to fire bad workers, but Rivera, a high-level, non-union employee, prevented his firing on a technicality by appealing to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The MSPB is a small federal panel that hears cases involving allegations of violations of civil service employee rights.

...

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/18/va-secretly-paid-exec-86000-to-quit/#ixzz3xtl6s3gx

 

[Suzanimal]

After Overpayment Of Benefits, VA Wanted $38,000 Back

Clay Hull has a stubborn sense of justice.

After an improvised explosive device blast in Iraq ended his time in the military, he fought the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs over the amount of compensation they awarded him for his injuries.

"If I'm in the wrong, I'll admit it. But I'm not going to let someone just push me around, especially the VA," he says.

It was complicated and drawn out, but Hull now gets the maximum the VA pays for disability.

The money pays for his mortgage, support for his young son and feed for the livestock on Hull's 3 acres in south central Washington — 2 1/2 hours from Seattle.

He has a day job as a shipping clerk and then comes home to work on his place. He's currently fixing a fence that runs along his property line.

Four years after he moved in, Hull went to prison on a weapons charge. Hull notified the VA he was in prison.

The VA was supposed to review Hull's disability payments to see if they should be reduced until he got out. But during Hull's entire 18 months in prison, the full VA payments kept coming.

In February 2014, when Hull was settling back into normal life, he received a letter from the VA: The agency wanted all the money back.

"Thirty-eight grand and they were wanting it in a lump sum payment," Hull says. "There was no negotiating with them. They would just shut off all benefits until they were repaid."

Hull couldn't pay. While in prison he had spent the money on his mortgage and child support for his son.

He says he had done his part by filing the right paperwork. Now the VA was threatening him.

"After the stress they caused, I'm sorry to have ever been a vet or served this country," he says.

Hull took his paperwork to Leo Flor, an attorney and veteran who served eight years in the Army. At the time, Flor worked for the Northwest Justice Project, a publicly funded legal aid program in Washington state.

The first thing he had to do in Hull's case was deal with the threat to cut off his benefits.

"This is the money they use to buy groceries; this is the money they use to put gas in their cars," Flor says.

He won that round, but getting Hull's benefits restarted was only the beginning.

Flor, who has worked with a lot of vets in this situation, had to prove that Hull's overpayment was the VA's mistake.

In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it overpaid 2,200 incarcerated vets more than $24 million. Money it then tried to get back.

The VA puts the burden on veterans. Vets are expected to file all the right paperwork — and do it from behind bars.

"It's not a system that's designed to be used while you're incarcerated and have your ability to speak by phone and have your ability to use the Internet gone," Flor says.

When Hull was in prison he was obsessive about keeping track of his correspondence with the VA. He made copies of every note he mailed them. In those letters he told them he was in prison and explained why he needed the benefits to support his family. He even kept receipts for money he withdrew to buy the stamps.

"You're always afraid you're going to lose an important piece of paper. And you have duplicates of so many things in so many different areas you end up with a stockpile of paper. I've honestly gone through at least a case of printing paper just making copies of things," he says.

All that paper meant Hull had a chance. And so he appealed: On March 5, 2014, Flor sent the VA all of Hull's records. Then on Dec. 18, 2014, the VA sent Hull another notice of intent to collect the debt.

Flor was incredulous. It was as if the VA hadn't read anything he'd sent. On Dec. 23, 2014, Flor sent the entire package of records to the VA again.

Eventually, Hull received a short letter in the mail.

"June 4, 2015 — that's when they sent it," Flor says. "It says, 'This is to inform you that your request for waiver of your compensation pension debt has been approved by the committee on waivers and compensations.' "

Finally, after a year and a half, Hull's $38,000 debt was erased.

The VA says it knows this is an issue.

"Without a doubt, we need to do a better job making sure that doesn't happen," says Dave McLenachen, the VA's acting deputy undersecretary for disability assistance.

He says the VA is swamped. The agency settled 3 million claims for benefits adjustments just last year.

"The month after we get the notice, we should be doing it quickly and doing the benefit adjustment to keep any debt as small as possible," says McLenachen. "There's no disagreement here. But given the resources available to us, we get to them as quickly as possible."

That still leaves many veterans like Hull on the hook to prove their case and win, or forfeit their benefits to pay back the debt.

Hull kept his home, but he's still angry over what he views as a betrayal of a promise by the VA.

"I'd worked awful hard, you know this place is paid for with blood money, my blood. Trying to get a future for him," he says, indicating his son, "and these a******* at the VA were gonna wipe that out in one fell swoop, because they didn't open up my mail, didn't read it, or just lost it, or just didn't care, and then thought they had an easy target."

...

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/27/46434...edition&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160127

 

[Lucille]

I haven't been watching the primary erection debates. Have Rs said anything in them about the epic and on-going failures of the VA? Ron did during both runs. How unsurprising that nothing has changed.

https://reason.com/blog/2016/02/05/sanders-and-clintons-deflections-on-vete

Clinton had an opportunity in last night's debate to jump on a real-world example of Sanders' failure to actually fix problems—the terrible disaster that is the medical system as run by the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.). The scandal that unfolded in 2014 while Sanders was chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee highlighted everything Americans fear about government-run health care: long waits, an apathetic bureaucracy, corruption within the system, government employees cashing in and getting bonuses while the customers they were supposed to be serving died, and ultimately a significant failure to hold people accountable for what happened.

Sanders' response to the crisis has been lackluster and last night was no different. But Clinton, rather than zeroing in on this serious failure in Sanders resume, ran to his side and helped deflect attention away from the crisis by complaining about "privatization."
[...]
What's absurd about Clinton's answer is that she thinks that having government in control of providing healthcare to veterans means that the care is "guaranteed," when the whole scandal was that, in fact, the government employees were not providing the care and had managed to somehow incentivize lying about it so as to get bonuses. There isn't guaranteed health care for veterans now.
[...]
Veterans organizations themselves do not seem to see Sanders the way he sees himself. Tim Mak at The Daily Beast takes note that at least one veterans group saw Sanders as dragging his feet on concerns about the agency, only acting once the scandal became national news:
[...]
As for blaming the Koch brothers and the Concerned Veterans for America, Clinton and Sanders are flailing away at a straw man. The report put out by Concerned Veterans for America (read here) actually calls for preserving the Veterans Health Administration hospitals, but calls for veterans to be able to choose where to get their treatment. It's not "privatization" so much as liberation. Shouldn't veterans have the same medical choices as the rest of us?

Frankly it's telling that neither of them actually say anything truly substantive about the problems with veterans care other than that it needs to be improved in some fashion (and Sanders' solution that he fought so hard for was to throw money at the problem, which hasn't changed much). Sanders even remains dismissive about the extent there's an actual problem. These are two people who want to have more government involvement in civilian health care and they seem, frankly, in utter denial about the extent of the problems with the health care the government is already responsible for.