What Is Your Number One Complaint About The Va?

[Slowlane]

If you had a chance to "air" your number one complaint about the VA what would it be?

1. Medical care?

2. Claim backlog wait time?

3. Total communication breakdown (no way to make your point)?

4. C&P lies?

5. Hamster wheel tactics and deny deny until they die? (my favorite)

CNN has opened the nations eyes over the medical scheduling crimes. Jeff Miller has said that "this is just the tip of the iceberg". CNN has a "Contact Us" link on their website.

This might be our big chance of get some national attention on some of the above items if this (Hadit) website could unite together and go forth in numbers.

However, sadly, this thread will die in less than three days. No messages will go forward to CNN. An opportunity to get some attention before the latest scandal blows over will be lost.

Slowlane

[Berta]

"If the VA fabricated numbers to cover medical appointments they more likely than not fabricated numbers to cover claim backlogs. "

Of course they did. I brought that up recently to the IG.

There are other 'secret ' lists in a addition to the waiting lists at Pheonix and other VAMCS......

I already mentioned the one at OGC ( violation of the NPDB mandate ) meaning.... know one knows ( except the OGC just how many vets deaths under FTCA has occurred)

The other list is the one at the ROs....These are the wrongful death 1151 awards to surviving spouses.

Not to mention the regular 1151 awards, by which the malpractice didn't cause the death of the vet, it caused additional disability that,in some cases could become the cause of their death.

One major reason the Interim IG report is so devastating is because long ago, VA manipulated their malpractice stats and got away with it.

Knowing they would have no accountability on that, it must have been easy for them to refuse timely care (which the Phoenix scandal, now involving other VAMCS ( I think Fox said 40 so far) is all about

No one really knows how many vets have died at the hands of VA for failure to timely and properly treat them.

Or will, in the future. die directly due to VA health care.

My prime goal, as an advocate, after reading this horrendous IG report, is to have those secret lists revealed to the H VAC.

[Notorious Kelly]

If there's a Woodward & Bernstein out there, the VA is prime pickins!

[john999]

Remember, before 1990 the VA did not even have to list evidence in a disability claim. In effect, you could not prove or disprove the VA ever considered your evidence. This affects vets from WWII, Korea, Vietnam and everything else that happened before 1990. Just because the VA gets around to partially fixing a due process problem what about the millions of vets who suffered under the old assumptions. The existing assumption that the VA uses to maintain that if they say they have put something in the mail and you never get it, well, too bad. We vets send the VA certified/ return receipt and they say "prove what was in the letter". The VA sent me a decision letter. It was returned to sender "addressee unknown" because they used the wrong address. This is my failure according to the VA. I still should have known about my appeal rights. The system should just be blown-up except then my paper C-File would go with it. Here in 2014 my entire C-File in on paper with no computer backup. Thousands of military records were burned up in 1973 (Including my Dad's) at St. Louis, and 40 years later the VA still maintains a paper system for C-Files. Why can't Tricare and VA health care be merged or all merged under Medicare for All?

[Chuck75]

If there's a Woodward & Bernstein out there, the VA is prime pickins!

Only if "right of discovery" can be enforced!

Congress was finally able to use the subpena process to make things happen!

Even the VA cannot ignore that one!

There's nothing like getting multiple generations of disabled veterans thoroughly "pissed off".

Us older veterans have a bit more time available to express our displeasure in detail.

Many of the younger ones are buried in the details of just surviving in a hostile economy.

Keeping food on the table, and a roof over the heads of a family, etc. is a daunting task,

even without having to deal with disability.

A fair number of the younger veterans just don't have the time to try to deal with the VA, the VA knows it,

and has taken advantage if the situation for as long as I can remember.

Edited May 31, 2014 by Chuck75

[Slowlane]

If they can cheat you out of your service connection with their C&P department, they don't have to cook any books because you don't exist.

[NavyWife]

Slowlane--

Thank you for getting this going.

I started a thread before the VA Scandal hit the news, called "What Tricks has VA used to Deny You" and a lot of vets had the same stories over and over.

So clearly these issues are systemic and built into the way VA does business. I summarized from that post and this current post below:

If we had to pick just one issue for the claims side of VA, I think it has to be the "DENY, DENY TIL THE SOB DIES"!

And this could be alternately phrased as "Illegal Repeated VA Disability Claim Denials".

This would be the umbrella item over which all the other things happen. Things such as:

--illegally ignoring federal regulations which govern how claims are to be processed

--unfair, biased C&P exams with veterans statements altered or left out of report

--illegally ignoring claims evidence such as outside doctors reports

--illegally destroying evidence

--illegally weighing evidence and not giving the "Benefit of the Doubt" as mandated by law

--denying they received evidence which they did receive

--taking extreme amounts of time to process claims, typically 1 to 2 years

--taking extreme amounts of time to process appeals, typically 3 to 5 years

--hiding the true amount of appeals by not including them in the claim reports main total number which gets reported to the media (Monday Morning Workload Report). This makes it appear as if there are less claims and appeals than there actually are and it is accounting fraud. Major companies have gone out of business for this type of accounting fraud.

My hubby has personally experienced every item on the above list dating back to 1990 and I would be willing to bet most vets who have filed a VA claim have as well.

I hope someone; you, Berta, Commander Bob can send this to CNN and or FOX News or Huffington Post.