The VA is an epic, deadly, monstrous failure according to a former Special Forces soldier and medic who served his country for 25 years. “They’re getting billions of dollars, and they treat veterans like s**t. There’s no accountability, no buy-in, among civilian unionized employees. We mean nothing to them. It’s like going to the DMV for your health care.”
Over the past four years, this particular veteran has been under direct VA care for two major line-of-duty-related injuries, including one combat-related injury. One the medical centers that treated him, or mistreated him, is the Coatesville, Pennsylvania VA center, where four vets died due to medical malpractice that lead to a one million plus settlement, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting. The harrowing cases included two fatal failures to monitor patients, improper management of a psychiatric patient, and wrongful diagnosis or misdiagnosis of another.
According to the former soldier, “I have been misdiagnosed, had a missed diagnosis, and delays of care lasting for months. My records were lost, changed, split and mismanaged.” He has also experienced firsthand the same “slow walking” of care that millions of other vets have encountered and scores have died from, a systemic modus operandi of “lie, delay, deny” and lie again. When appealing for help and advocacy within the system, he was met with a stone wall of “not my job-ism.”
Politicians, attempting to appear concerned, want to throw more funding at the VA, but there is ample money to address the needs. As most veterans are aware, the problem is worse than just secret waiting lists. “It is utter fraudulent expenditure of enormous budgets, not on veterans, but on overpaid lazy, surly civilian employees that often make it clear that they do not like veterans and that veterans are a nuisance. The problem is epidemic, at every level. Veterans have become incidental to the process at the VA.” The system is “an enormous cash cow, warehousing tens of thousands of overpaid employees who keep the gravy-train rolling.”
This vet’s appeal: “Please, don’t let this die.” Don’t let the Obama administration make this go away with slight of hand. Our veterans deserve better.
Having experienced first- hand the VA bureaucracy in action, a thoughtless bureaucracy that I hold accountable for my brother’s premature death, I have the deepest of sympathy for those caught in the quagmire. Yet, I also know first-hand that there are those facilities, nurses, and doctors who do care but whose hands are tied by Washington’s bureaucracy.
Any system operated by faceless unaccountable government bureaucracies is a death sentence to those who need it the most. Welcome to socialized medicine.
Source: Daily Events “A Fed-up Veteran Blasts VA’s Lie, Delay, Deny Abyss, by Michelle Malkin
