Support For Secretary Mcdonald

[broncovet]

Lawmakers are upset with Secretary McDonald:

http://www.stripes.com/cordial-no-more-lawmakers-unhappy-with-va-s-mcdonald-1.344113

While I certainly agree that Mr. McDonald, being new on the job, has made some mistakes, and some of those mistakes hurt Veterans.

However, Secretary McDonald is the FIRST Secretary that I have seen who offers up his email address and, at least, attempts to actually solve Veterans issues.

The previous secretary's were mostly "unavailable" to even hear Veteran's complaints. On several occassions, Veterans on hadit have reported favorable outcomes by contacting undersecretary Hickey or Secretary McDonald about their personal issues.

I personally have contacted under Secretary Hickey, and Secretary McDonald in regard to my claims being trapped on a hamster wheel of delay and denial, mostly based upon VA's evidence they shredded in my file. While I am not happy with the outcome, this is the firs time my issues were even addressed and not swept under the rug.

For this reason, I support Secretary McDonald and undersecretary Hickey, as I see real results (tho not enough results) on individual Veterans.

[mojo13]

I support BOB, he help me when I needed help.

lets all remember all the vets he help without us knowing.

[Chuck75]

I agree with everyone above.

Secretary McDonald and Secretary Hickey have gone way out of there way to get long pending claims addressed immediately. I truly believe that because the way that the Veteran Affairs laws are written, in most cases, very ambiguous, they have their hand tied.

In some ways congress is part of the problem. For years, they have been having hearings on all sorts of Veterans Affairs issues, especially the claims backlog. But after the hearing and promises from past VA top officials that they would do better by the veteran, the same old hearing are just repeated.

The managers at the regional offices do not take an active role in the veterans claims until they are notified by higher ups (i.e. Secretary McDonald or Secretary Hickey). If the Regional Office Managers take the on hand approach as the two senior VA secretaries (accept Veterans email complaints directly and not through IRIS!!!), they would be able to identify the systemic problems at the respective agencies.

Secretary McDonald and Secretary Hickey should be commended for the progress that they have made to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs and regain the trust of the Veterans..

Add

A very telling remark was recently made by the (temporary?) director of our area VAMC. The previous director retired over issues related to the VA "consult" process at the VAMC.

Anyway the remark was to the effect that he didn't know what was really going on until and unless veterans told him directly. This sounded to me like a typical VA bureaucratic answer that

tries to minimize personal responsibility, and at the same time illustrates how the administrative side of the VA works. (Don't tell anyone what you don't want them to hear!, and don't say something to management that they don't want to hear either!)