Fire That Sumbitch
You know how we were promised that the Veteran’s Affairs was going to clean up their act?
So you can now remember how that didn’t happen because we have a partisan hack heading the VA again?
Pretty soon we’re going to need a Secretary in Charge of Firing the VA Secretary.
Look, the Disneyland quote was one of the least offensive things this guy has said.
The new matrix for success at the VA is that patients are given a survey saying how they liked the service. Of damn course veterans who get seen are happy. They get health care. Veterans who are dying while waiting to be seen don’t get a damn survey. Holy crap, what is wrong with you people? I’m not smart and even I figured that out.
Putting a pretty face and nice comments on an agency that is treating our veterans like scum is deplorable. President Barack Obama should not fire Secretary McDonald. Instead, he should stroll over to the VA office and kick the sumbitch in the crotch and THEN fire him.
Mr. President, I don’t care if you put a Republican in the job, just so long he’s competent. This is a a horror.
This snot nosed hissy fit was brought to you by a veteran sitting across the table from me for breakfast this morning.
I know the VA hospital in NYC does a good job. One friend (RIP, unrelated) had a very complex fracture of his arm, and with their care it was healed enough for him to continue making art. An acquaintance’s life was saved after he had a heart attack at work.
I have no opinion on who should be running the VA as Secretary.
1God bless you, JJ! Anybody remember Max Cleland? Wounded severely in Nam. In a wheelchair. Remember what happened to him? I propose putting the devil in charge. Can’t get any worse and could get a helluva lot better!
2There should be a zero tolerance policy for people who hurt vets. These men and women are already struggling enough (Personal experience with PTSD) without casting aspersions on their difficulties accessing the care they were promised over and over again.
3Caution is recommended when discussing the future of the VA. There’s a pool of $$$ that the snacilbupeR want to privatize. We’ve seen the ‘success’ of privatized prisons. We’ve seen the ‘success’ of hospitals for profit. Whoever the ‘saint’ in charge of the VA might be will come under attack for failing to do more with decreased spending.
Dubya and the snacilbupeR created a surplus of disabled veterans. The “young guns” of Congress have created a scandal of under funding.
Whether the current Secretary McDonald, or with a future sainted Secretary Tammy Duckworth, Tulsi Gabbard, or John Kerry, the task cannot be done without Congressional funding. It’s a no-win set-up to fail.
Ms JJ, good suggestion to place a nacilbupeR in charge of the VA. However, I seriously doubt that if given the job soon to be ‘retired’ Senator McCain would succeed with this Congress. $$$ abound for the next war, modernizing the Nuclear Triad, and tax breaks for billionaires who currently pay no taxes, but even their sainted Johnny could not shake a dollar loose from their craven paws.
At the risk of sounding jingoistic, the future depends on stopping the snacilbupeR whores for the .01%. What needs to be either rebuilt or reformed cannot happen without the necessary funding. That means taxation of those who benefited from the wars and requiring them to pay for their mistakes as well as their fair share of taxes.
5 years. 10 years or ? years of the Eisenhower 90% taxation plus fines. That’s a hard sell. But realistically that is what will be required to fully pull us out of the Reagan-Dubya Ditch.
4If President Obama includes a crotch kicking when he fires Secretary McDonald, I’d also suggest he schedule an appointment for the kick 60 days ahead of time, as there are no earlier openings available at this time.
“Oh and Secretary McDonald? Please fill out a survey on your way out the door.” Thank you.”
5I see Ken Paxton is going to sue the Administration over the transgender bathroom situation.
6How much money will they waste that could be going to underfunded schools?
The R’s MO is to underfund something then yell about “gubmint not working” when it fails then selling it or passing a no bid contract to a campaign contributor. This is just another example.
I’m a vet who despises the VA. Some get disabilities for playacting or twisted ankles. (I work with these scum bags at he PO and they brag about it). The VA indirectly killed both of my WW2 era parents. I actually have in my will that if anyone ever takes me to a VA facility no one gets anything.
Yes I am bitter.
7About those surveys. . . When I taught at UTSA, I had a young woman in my class who had just gotten out of the military and was back from Iraq only a few months. She clearly was suffering from PTSD. When I talked to her about whether she had accessed any help about transitioning home she said, “No.” When I delved a little deeper she said everyone leaving Iraq was asked to complete a survey about their mental health. She said no one said they had any problems or it would delay you getting home. Plus, her officers didn’t like to see any paperwork coming back with negatives on it. So much for surveys of any kind. If you know the people in charge don’t want to see any negatives, you don’t write any negatives or check any boxes that get you noticed.
8And yet, everyone on BOTH sides of the aisle proclaim how much they love and care about our Veterans. However, it seems that the RWNJs are the ones who are so adamant about refusing to pass anything that would help the Veterans. I’ve not heard or I’ve not paid attention to what is going on with Democrats on any of this. I’m hoping they are at least striving to do something to help. At least President Obama appears to want to take steps to clean up the mess with the VA.
9I don’t have anyone who has to rely on the VA for anything, so not staying totally up on all of this is my only excuse!!
In my personal encounters with VA docs and from family who’ve visited, the medical staff and care have been first-rate. There’s also a fair amount of evidence in the peer-reviewed medical literature that, once people get INTO the system and are seen, they get very good care.
Among other things, the VA has a full electronic health record, and they are considered top-tier for trauma and burn treatment.
But there are, as noted, a lot of barriers, and the system is sorely underfunded, especially given the increasing demands from aging veterans from the Vietnam era and the large number from the Bush wars. Numbers treated increased from 2.8 million in 1996 to 4.3 million in 2003, and still going up. And a lot of political pressure at higher levels in the military (and Congress) not to acknowledge how devastating the burden of war has been for the participants.
An independent review recently identified key things needed to reform and improve the VA system. Results were summarized in a New England Journal of Medicine perspective article in October: free text available here: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1511438
You could urge your representatives, and President Obama, not only to replace the head of the VA, but to fully fund the key changes needed to make it work!
10I am always bragging about the VA here in Nashville – it is connected to Vanderbilt University Medical Center so you have world-class doctors. Our current problem is when one group graduates, they fail to schedule enough people to work before the new class comes in – so, it takes a month to get an MRI appointment.
Yes, I sit across the table from a Viet Nam vet myself; the whole family wears green and we believe the veterans should be treated like gold.
11Excellent points, everyone. As Eykis has mentioned, it is imperative that we have community participation as exemplified by Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Laurel, you touched upon the under funding for the VA. That’s key. Despite what Rummy said, the people we send into battle deserve the best we can do by them.
Again, I hearken back to Eisenhower. Restore the GI Bill to what it once was and fully fund the VA.
okie-dokie, I hear you. My Grandfather can speak an anecdote about a guy in his division that had a heart condition prior to service who received full disability later. My Dad can tell of a woman in his squadron who received a 40% rating for a non connected service disability because she had a hysterectomy. That’s two. Two anecdotes. But given the years of wars and the numbers who have served, it doesn’t begin to approach a degree of fraud. Because a very infinitesimally small relative handful of people have abused the system in 70 plus years is no reason to doubt what we owe to those who need the VA.
90% tax rate. Eat that Donnie; Drumpf and Rumsfeld. You too Cheney. That is a small price to pay for your crimes. Speaking of crimes, Donnie. About all that off shore money. Forget about repatriating it at a fraction of the taxes owed. Let’s say we RICO it. All of it as a condition of your consideration for less than the death penalty for your crimes.
12Anybody who wants to start a war should be forced to calculate the costs, short-tail and long-tail, and then convince her/his party and the other party to pony up the money before getting involved (and that’s Biblical, by the way–Jesus said a king who thinks about fighting a war will consider whether or not it’s too expensive or winnable…tell THAT to the right-wing GOP crowd.)
Working on a rural ambulance, we took quite a few vets up to Temple to the VA Hospital there: we were required to do so even if their illness or injury was beyond that hospital’s capability and we’d have to sit there until someone produced the right piece of paper to take the person on to Scott & White. One night we took in a guy in really bad shape, had him on O2 all the way in, and when we took him into the VA (we’d called ahead; we always did; they were never ready) there was nobody in their pitiful ER. Someone said “I’ll see if I can find the doctor. Just put him in there.” And walked off. We had a doctor with us, but not in a fancy white coat. He wasn’t thrilled that the person who had finally shown up after we rang the bell several times was ticked because we’d waked him up, and said “Oh, he doesn’t look too bad” about the patient.
So our doctor hooked the patient up to hospital oxygen and waited, and waited, and finally their doctor showed up and immediately started berating our doctor (whom he didn’t recognize as a doctor) for starting O2 and other things, and our doctor reamed him a new one right then and there. Our doctor being also a veteran (‘Nam, 101st Airborne.)
I know the VA’s underfunded for the number of severe casualties seen in Iraq/Afghanistan combat…and I know that Republicans, including those who claim to represent me, have refused to increase the VA’s budget enough, while encouraging private rehab centers for vets (money donated by their 1% buddies)–centers that don’t begin to treat enough vets well enough, but are shiny and new and look good on paper.
But any VA director who makes a Disney World-type comment should get his butt kicked out for not having the guts to tell it like it is about funding and call out every single politician involved in those votes, plus the politiicians who wanted the war but didn’t want to pay for it.
13Elizabeth Moon, thank you. Every patient whether VA, Medicaid, Medicare or unknown payee deserves to be transported and treated at the nearest qualified facility known to the first responders. Otherwise we have a full snacilbupeR produce your for profit insurance card or die system.
However, before we kick Secretary McDonald to the curb for his Disney comment, maybe we should thank him, too, for opening this much needed discussion. I seriously don’t know where he was going with that comment, but it’s not a bad thing that he opened this discussion.
14I haven’t seen mention around that perhaps the biggest problem the VA has is simply one of demographics. Hospitals are high-capital facilities that take extensive time to build and staff.
Boomer and Vietnam veterans, meanwhile, are reaching retirement age, and have been moving in large numbers to Florida and Arizona, which don’t have the VA facilities to handle the floods of patients moving there.
Resolving this is straightforward: $$$. Nobody wants to spend it though, when scapegoating a long succession of administrators seems adequate to keep the “news” services from asking the hard questions…
15Just had a story tonight in Minn about unqualified medical types doing traumatic brain injury evaluations for the VA. Doctors who are not specialists and not qualified by the VA’s own rules are deciding that vets don’t have a TBI.
This is not limited to Minnesota.
16Don’t know about others but my care at the Austin Outpatient Clinic has been excellent.
17I am in the VA system.As a matter of fact I was just up there this past monday for a hearing exam.I don`t have one complaint,not one.I have been treated in a timely manner and with dignity.I use the VA hospital in Indianapolis,IN.I have a lot of friends who go there and I haven`t heard one complaint.
18My husband Ed is currently in treatment for cancer at the VA system in Boston. He has been getting all his health care from the VA since 2005 and loves it all. We live in Vemont and our hospital is connected to the Dartmouth hospital, doctors work at both. No one has ever been too busy to spend time with us, appointments are timely, everyone friendly and helpful, especially the fabulous nursing staff.
19I hope Bernie Sanders gets to appoint the head of the VA. He has been very vocal for years about the need to take care of the vets sent to fight on our behalf.