There have been two constants since the veteran community had the misfortune of seeing the current empty-suited, anti-American racist bigot veteran-hater elected to the White House:
1. He has shattered his promise to eliminate the so-called VA backlog on disability claims (Which has, if anything, become geometrically worse) and
2. He has accomplished absolutely nothing concerning the issue of wait times for non-emergency medical care, first made infamous by the deaths of veterans around the system resulting from delays and administrative efforts to cover up VA short-comings due to lack of staff and facilities in the face of huge increases in the veteran population.
Eighteen billion dollars was wasted a few months ago to implement the joke of a plan called the "Veteran's Choice" plan, which was supposed to fix the backlog.
I've detailed my adventures with that clown car, which ultimately led to my rejection of it altogether.
On, appropriately enough, tax day, I am again undergoing surgery on my right hand to either fix or amputate my right little finger which is now, essentially, worthless as a result of the medical care the VA has provided over the past 30 months or so and which is now stuck in a perpetual question mark shape, unable to bend or grip anything.
The president campaigned back in 08 on improving veteran's care and like so many other things he's lied about (An essentially endless list, I might add) you can put this one towards the top of the list as well.
It took months to see the surgeon who operated on my hand the first time and, in spite of his assurances that my hand would be addressed within 60 days of that appointment (24 Oct) here we are almost 6 months later...and, well, those numbers speak for themselves.
Given the incompetence and indifference of the Obama Administration, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be surprised by his all too typically abysmal outcome.
My crumpled up right little finger, which makes mundane tasks like writing with a pen or pencil almost impossible, serves as a constant reminder of a system that is designed to perpetuate a bureaucracy that is unresponsive, underfunded, ill-equipped and which has led to veteran suicides in VA parking lots.
While I have never reached that level of despair, I can certainly understand the acts of those who have.
Meanwhile, the veteran community was temporarily placated by the Veteran's Choice thing, a response to the well-known abuses of the system generally and the Phoenix VA hospital particularly.
The worthlessness of the system became clear to me when I discovered the bogus nature of the program: veterans have no choices in the matter, no outside system medical care is provided without prior authorization by the VA or it's surrogate, and even then the reimbursement rates are absurdly low for the services provides, resulting in zero incentive for non-VA (On the economy) health care providers.
Essentially, it's the kind of Obama/democrat program we've come to know and despise: smoke-and-mirrors signifying nothing... the institutional confusion of motion.... with action.
A complete waste of time and billions.
1. He has shattered his promise to eliminate the so-called VA backlog on disability claims (Which has, if anything, become geometrically worse) and
2. He has accomplished absolutely nothing concerning the issue of wait times for non-emergency medical care, first made infamous by the deaths of veterans around the system resulting from delays and administrative efforts to cover up VA short-comings due to lack of staff and facilities in the face of huge increases in the veteran population.
Eighteen billion dollars was wasted a few months ago to implement the joke of a plan called the "Veteran's Choice" plan, which was supposed to fix the backlog.
I've detailed my adventures with that clown car, which ultimately led to my rejection of it altogether.
On, appropriately enough, tax day, I am again undergoing surgery on my right hand to either fix or amputate my right little finger which is now, essentially, worthless as a result of the medical care the VA has provided over the past 30 months or so and which is now stuck in a perpetual question mark shape, unable to bend or grip anything.
The president campaigned back in 08 on improving veteran's care and like so many other things he's lied about (An essentially endless list, I might add) you can put this one towards the top of the list as well.
It took months to see the surgeon who operated on my hand the first time and, in spite of his assurances that my hand would be addressed within 60 days of that appointment (24 Oct) here we are almost 6 months later...and, well, those numbers speak for themselves.
Given the incompetence and indifference of the Obama Administration, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be surprised by his all too typically abysmal outcome.
My crumpled up right little finger, which makes mundane tasks like writing with a pen or pencil almost impossible, serves as a constant reminder of a system that is designed to perpetuate a bureaucracy that is unresponsive, underfunded, ill-equipped and which has led to veteran suicides in VA parking lots.
While I have never reached that level of despair, I can certainly understand the acts of those who have.
Meanwhile, the veteran community was temporarily placated by the Veteran's Choice thing, a response to the well-known abuses of the system generally and the Phoenix VA hospital particularly.
The worthlessness of the system became clear to me when I discovered the bogus nature of the program: veterans have no choices in the matter, no outside system medical care is provided without prior authorization by the VA or it's surrogate, and even then the reimbursement rates are absurdly low for the services provides, resulting in zero incentive for non-VA (On the economy) health care providers.
Essentially, it's the kind of Obama/democrat program we've come to know and despise: smoke-and-mirrors signifying nothing... the institutional confusion of motion.... with action.
A complete waste of time and billions.
VA Makes Little Headway in Fight to Shorten Waits for Care
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Apr 9, 2015, 4:05 AM ET
A year after Americans recoiled at new revelations that sick veterans were getting sicker while languishing on waiting lists — and months after the Department of Veterans Affairs instituted major reforms costing billions of dollars — government data shows that the number of patients facing long waits at VA facilities has not dropped at all.Nearly 894,000 appointments completed at VA medical facilities from Aug. 1 to Feb. 28 failed to meet the health system's timeliness goal, which calls for patients to be seen within 30 days.No one expected that the VA mess could be fixed overnight. But The Associated Press has found that since the summer, the number of vets waiting more than 30 or 60 days for non-emergency care has largely stayed flat. The number of medical appointments that take longer than 90 days to complete has nearly doubled.
More:That means roughly one in 36 patient visits to a caregiver involved a delay of at least a month. Nearly 232,000 of those appointments involved a delay of longer than 60 days — a figure that doesn't include cancellations, patient no-shows, or instances where veterans gave up and sought care elsewhere.
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