This is the CBS 60 minutes story (Jan 3, 2010) about the ineptitude of the Veterans Administration. Their records are bad. Their processes are inefficient. They give money to the wrong people at the wrong time. And leave to many Americans wounded in battle in a bureaucratic nightmare.
(60 Minutes story video link)“Delay, Deny and Hope that I die” is how veterans perceive their VA health care system.
A backlog of one million vets are now waiting for the VA to resolve their disability claims. The agency is absolutely overwhelmed.
The vet starts out by completing a disability claim form that is 23 pages long.
The VA takes on average 6 months to answer the initial disability claim. But if the veteran disagrees with the VA’s decision, the vet waits on average another 4 years for resolution. In the meantime the vet is probably receiving nothing to live on – and unless his family takes him in, he is probably screwed.
But of course before we fix this huge governmental health care program, Washington wants to add yet more bureaucracy and programs – all administered more poorly than the last. They are hard at work in their secret meetings trying to take over the health care system for the rest of us.
Is it unreasonable to ask them to fix the VA disability programs before they screw up yet another sector of our health care?
And of course the future health care and disability costs for treating our vets is never factored into a decision on whether we should go to Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan or Vietnam. Many times the up-front costs are a small percentage of the ultimate cost for America to take a military action. Our service men and women get injured and the government can’t cope with treating them.
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