Is the VA Really Supporting Our Troops? 

 Veterans tend to take a dim view of the way they are treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Due to the scandal at Walter Reed; the VA is now facing tough questions about its health care and the 400,000 pending benefit claims for disabled veterans. Despite any testimony given to congress as to why the VA is in a state of chaos, many veterans believe they already have the answer. They sum that answer up in six words that seem to be a growing mantra among veterans’ blog sites: Delay, Deny, Hope that I die. They believe that the VA is simply delaying or denying care/benefits to veterans in the hopes that they will just fade away thereby lowering cost to the government.

Although this isn’t the universal view of how the VA bureaucracy functions; can it be discounted?

Is there any real evidence that might support their view? Are the following stories by news services such as the Associated Press (AP), Knight-Ridder News Service, ABC News and sources within the VA proving the veterans right or merely adding fuel to a conspiracy fire?To take a closer look at this subject, various extracts of relevant news stories and documents are provided below. For the sake of brevity, only partial extractions of the following news stories will be used and links are given to the full stories, where possible.On health care;

The AP (7/28/2006)

http://www.vawatchdog.org/old%20newsflashes%20OCT%2006/newsflash10-08-2006-4.htm

Veteran, suffering from heart condition, dies after showing up to Spokane VA Hospital and is denied treatment. Why, because he arrived at 4:35 pm and the hospital urgent care closes at 4:30.

The Star Tribune (1/27/2007)

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/963363.html

Iraq veteran Jonathan Schulze, after suffering from thoughts of suicide requested that the St Cloud VA hospital admit him into their mental health unit. However the veteran is informed that there is a waiting list and that there were 26 other veterans trying to gain access. Jonathan Schulze commits suicide 4 days later.

Times Union (12/5/2006)

http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfDEC06/nf120606-3.htm

Widows sue the VA for wrongful death of veterans who died in a corrupt cancer research program at the Stratton VA Medical Center. Hospital researcher, Paul H. Kornak, posed as a doctor at Stratton, including carrying the title “M.D.” on his VA-issued business cards and being introduced to patients as “doctor” even though he never finished medical school. His supervisors knew about his lack of credentials and Kornak was hired even though he had a felony conviction.The hospital earned thousands of dollars for each patient enrolled in the programs, in which pharmaceutical companies tested new drugs on cancer patients to obtain approval for them from the Food and Drug Administration.

ABC News (4/15/2002)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/15/health/main506136.shtml

Chart Check For Gov’t Doctors

(AP) More than 100 federal government doctors have been convicted of crimes or disciplined by state medical boards, including one physician now treating veterans who was convicted of helping a terrorist group, an Associated Press review of medical licenses has found.Dr. Suzy Melkonian, who is paid $48 an hour as a blood cancer specialist at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Los Angeles, was convicted 21 years ago in Switzerland of extorting money for a group that staged terrorist bombings and assassinations.That certainly seems to support the claim of the VA hoping or even helping veterans “fade away”.But the VA’s record on disability benefits must be better right?

VAOIG semi-annual report to Congress Oct. 1, 1999 to March 2000

VAIG finds VA attorney concealing veteran’s records

Investigation disclosed the individual knowingly allowed …(1300 veterans claims)… to accumulate in and around his office and he falsified weekly reports in order to conceal the existence of these unprocessed materials including 500 items containing evidence related to veterans’ appeals including some of the aforementioned urgent, time sensitive items, as well as Congressional materials.

ABC - 20/20 (7/2/2000)

Fighting For Justice

VA attorneys destroyed records to deny veterans claims and earn cash bonus.The attorneys …worked for the Board of Veterans Appeals, and each drew prison time for separately committing outright fraud in 1994 and ’95. Destroying records that were sent to them for review then rejecting the veterans’ cases on the grounds that the records were missing. The attorneys said they believed the quick denials would make them appear more productive and eligible for bigger bonuses. A belief some say has encouraged denials in the past. Whatever the cause, the VA insists that in most cases the records aren’t technically missing, because they exist somewhere in the system.

Knight Ridder Newspapers (3/6/2005)

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/special_packages/veterans

Discharged and dishonored: Shortchanging America’s veterans

After 47-year wait, veteran faces new delays in getting compensation

A Board of Veterans Appeals judge ruled Sept. 20 that Fong was entitled to disability payments for his blindness for the period July 1950 to August 1997 - the 47 years the VA had wrongly denied his claim. Veterans face lengthy delays if they appeal the VA’s decisions. The average wait is nearly three years, and many veterans wait 10 years for a final ruling. In the past decade, several thousand veterans died before their cases were resolved, according to an analysis of VA data.

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

Joel Waldman, President AFGE VA Regional Office, Cleveland, 2005

AFGE President tells Congress - VA Denies Veterans Due Process

It is an often repeated statement that less than 10% of veterans appeal their decision therefore just getting the claim done by hook or crook has little negative impact on the agency in reporting its annual performance. Instead, VA policy makers boast about the number of claims completed, regardless of due process errors.Individual veterans and Veterans Service Organizations as a whole should have no confidence in receiving a technically correct, legally accurate, and an equitable rating decision when the entire system contains institutionalized, unaddressed fundamental flaws in applying Due Process under law.

Conspiracy or disturbing Comedy of Errors?

Over the years older veterans have seen a disturbing Comedy of Errors perpetuated by the VA leading to needless deaths. And even though the VA hospital has cleaned up (remember Walter Reed is an Army Hospital) its act to become one of the best care givers in the nation it’s still impossible to make a good “second” first impression. So many of these vets will remain undeterred from their first impressions of the VA and every new report of “evil doings” at a VA hospital, even if isolated, will merely reinforce that bad first impression. Chalk this up to a disturbing Comedy of Errors.

However consider the charge of intentionally denying benefit claims.Since the AFGE represents the (VA) employees that decide granting or denying a veterans’ benefit claim - that makes Joe Waldman’s letter the smoking gun.

In the full transcript of Mr. Waldman’s letter to congress he asserts that supervisors pressure their employees to close cases as quickly as possible. For every benefits case closed that VA office receives a “work credit”. These are received regardless of the job being done correctly or not. Employees obtaining a set level of “work credits” are rewarded by the VA in cash bonuses.The same cash bonuses that actually encourage the denial of benefit claims for disabled vets by the unscrupulous on the VA payroll.

Then there is the Knight-Ridder story stating that thousands of vets have died while their cases were in appeals. That a few veterans where still waiting since WWII to get their benefits.Considering the overwhelming case load of 400,000 unresolved claims, plus the 200,000 projected new claims by those retuning from Afghanistan/Iraq; is it really hard to imagine why some veterans believe the VA is simply waiting them out?