I have used many different VA facilities and like any hospital, there
are both good and bad.

I have nothing but good things to say about the VA.
They saved my life twice....so far.

Most of us have had good experiences there. We've received the top-notch health care we were promised. And Obama's VA budget increases and increases in staffing were a huge improvement.

Despite getting its largest funding increase in 30 years in Obama's first year in office, the infusion of new vets and and new participation of older vets continue to tax its resources.

I'm not sure why you think red states have something to do with hospitals gaming the system to report improved performance, as you haven't explained that.

Military and vets are assumed to be in the GOP's corner. Yet whenever Republicans trot out the idea of privatizing the VA, the vets are the first to shoot it down.

.. well for whatever reason.. not exactly sure. But, that should be changing radically now with all that the Obama Admin is doing for them.. way beyond lip service. And, for the fact the gop is going Way out of their way to disrespect our Military and Vets.

Since then, he ordered more resources for TBI and PTSD. Whenever you hear Republicans dissing Obama's treatment of vets there's plenty of actual facts to counter that BS.

whether it was a mere coincidence or something real.

No waiting for approvals for referrals or tests. Any time I needed urgent care on a walk in basis I was seen and treated within an hour.

The correlation between the desire for cash rewards and motivation for bad/criminal behavior is fairly broad. Consequently, wherever there is use of monetary or other valued bonuses as incentives there must always be monitoring for cheating.

I am rather open to the notion that cheating is a common feature of human nature. It's no great leap to suspect this particular behavior at these VA facilities is biased by both the nature of personalities and access & opportunity for misadventure as much as it is by 'red state culture'.

The good news is that the opportunity for this particular scam is exposed and someone will be assigned to attend to it. Of course, that internal policing of the VA scheduling system also requires diversion of re$ource$ from veterans' healthcare per se.

The sad reality of human behavior is that whatever effort is made to monitor this and other known weaknesses, the clever cheaters will be rooting out miss-gotten gains in other places.

that the VA was going to be overwhelmed after these soldiers started coming back.

Saw it with Vietnam vets who were dying of agent orange and agent blue and still getting the run around by the VA three decades afterwards.

Saw it with vets in the first gulf war and their battles with the va with gulf war syndrome decades after the war.


Said we were gonna be overwhelmed in the VA
when these soldiers started coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with depleted uranium and PTSS health worries.

My friend who was in the green beret force
fought the VA 15 years to get his disability of TBI recognized in the 90s and finally got it recognized at the end of the Bush regime.

This is not a democrat or republican issue but a Department of Defense issue which chews them up and spits them out since Vietnam.

I have an appointment today at the VA MONTANA. I have been told "why don't you people just go away". Refering to medical marijuana users. It took 6 months to get an MRI, AFTER they told me that Montana didn't have an open MRI that I would have to go to Wyoming, which was a lie according to Wyoming, so after I got irate they admit that I can have a civilian MRI which they found out I do need surgery but that is as far as it went. Still got the problem but no mention about fixing it. Today I suspect the same doctor that told me to just go away (she is my newly assigned doc) will cut me off of my pain medication it's ready for a renew on the script. Even though things have been good lately with my pain management,( I haven't drank for about 3 years) These people don't give a fuck about me, and I know it. My usual VA doc quit. He was young and probably seen what was going on and didn't want to participate by signing a new contract. But rather than kill myself I have decided to fight these spineless puppets at the VA in MONTANA. I put an ad in the paper for distressed or denied vets and I had plenty tell me that they were told "don't make waves or we will lose your files". Threats that just put these men further into the bottle for self medication. Each state has it's own policy administrator, not one policy for all VA, so if that particular writer is a right wing or anti marijuana or a bible thumper, they get to decide policy by their own prejudices. I got my own signs I stand out front of the clinic and try to shame them. I have been in a couple of news papers including the New York Times front page.
MONTANA VA SUCKS.

Maybe. They wouldn't want "big socialized medicine" to get a good name and start catching on in the general population, now would they? Gummint bad!!!

I don't know all the details of this VA "scandal" but one thing to remember is that VA hospitals have emergency rooms of their own. Nobody has to die because they couldn't get a regular appointment; emergency care is available.


Feeding the RW "make the gummint look bad" theory is stuff like Rachel's excellent story last night about the VA undersecretary who announced his retirement last September but then a few weeks ago some mainstream media tried to claim he was canned by the Obama administration for political reasons over the VA trouble. Gummint bad!!!

the recording says if this is an emergency HANG UP and call 911. There ain't no emergency at the VA.

Severe kidney stone attack. Drove to my VA emergency room where I was sedated and admitted until it passed. Went there one other time for something else and was treated and sent home.

The phone message probably means they don't have physicians available to help with your emergency over the phone, that you need to be seen by a physician, to call 911 and tell them to take you to the VA emergency room rather than to a regular emergency room. In some cases I think the VA will pay for outside ER visits if a VA ER is not available.

but this is Montana, one of the 8 that are in trouble.

ask around or look around your VA for signs or directions to the emergency room. If you don't find one then ask somebody who works there what you need to do in case of an emergency. If they don't have an ER then they may pay for your ER visit to a different hospital that does have an ER.

As I suggested in my first post above, there may be some political mischief going on to smear or otherwise make the VA/socialized medicine/government/Obama look bad. That could conceivably involve some RW administrators and even doctors who have joined the government-hating movement and are using veterans as pawns in their despicable political machinations.

for intestinal pain, 3 days later I ended in the civilian ER and the VA refused to pay any of it. So thanks for doing nothing for my initial visit (zantac) I end up in the ER 3 days later with a hospital bill, even after medicare paid their part. So the VA don't pay shit for me.

the VA probably won't pay for a civilian ER visit if there was a VA ER available to you.

or close to a hospital is 6 hours to Helena. My friend had to go to Salt Lake for lung cancer chemo. It was miserable for him to hop on a plane and travel that far sick with cancer. Jon Tester has done more for Montana vets than anyone. The clinics are spread out so far because of the size of the state and low population. They have VA vans, that volunteers drive the soldiers for hours to get them to a clinic or the Hospital. Lots of Vets are neglected in Montana just because of location. They are the ones that "fell thru the crack".

Obama is working overtime to try and help this situation and he has made great advancements...

Including the PTSD situation, I know people who have new houses and boats because they finally got what they deserved, their settlements.

I think we dont need to have a standing army, but I support those who were used by Bush