Posted on 05/27/2014 11:12:05 AM PDT by Nachum
The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) expects to have more money for medical care than it can spend for the fifth fiscal year in a row, The Daily Caller has learned. Republican lawmakers and veteran groups are currently calling for the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki over secret waiting lists kept at the Phoenix VA Medical Center that led to preventable veteran deaths. Despite liberal claims that VA needs more funding, based on a report from the labor union the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) that VA is underfunded, the scandal-plagued department actually has a surplus
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
Jack up the pension accounts!
Cha-ching!
If that’s the case why are they killing our Veterans?Lousy Government parasites.
I heard on the radio that the problem is that the VA specialists are only able to see 2-3 patients per day rather than the 50 per day seen by private practitioners something to do with union rules and golf.
What? Doctors at this VA get a strict 20 minutes per patient, and they have money they’re not spending?
Hire some doctors, you bureaucrat scum.
“The Daily Caller reported that VA spent more than $3.5 million on furniture the night before the government shutdown on the last day of fiscal year 2013 so as not to lose that money in the department’s budget the next fiscal year.”
That’s business as usual at every government organization that has a budget.
AND training trips in Hawaii.
VA needs to stop being... give the soldiers vouchers - they can find their own health care. Then abolish the VA and fire the parasites who work there...
And I’ve been asking for six years to see a specialist. Thanks VA.
You have a specific source for that? I am putting the statements of angry Vets on my Twitter feed. I would like to post that and give a source to it.
I read the other day that cardiologists at the VA typically see only two patients a day on office days. That is far less than private practice cardiologists see.
Have a source for that?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/18/exclusive-v-a-scandal-hits-new-hospital.html
“There are eight physicians in the cardiology department. But at any given time, only three are working in the clinic, where they see fewer than two patients per day, so on average there are only 36 veterans seen per week. That means the entire eight-person department sees as many patients in a week as a single private practice cardiologist sees in two days, according to the doctor.”
Thanks for that.
VA Hospital Grand Junction recently lost six doctors within a matter of days.
Doctors are required to see a patient every 20 minutes come hell or high water, as though they were working on an assembly line.
Regular patient exams were extended from quarterly to semiannually.
Despite this poor care, they found money to install a new and very expensive solar power system in their inadequate parking lot.
I went there at 1000 on Monday April 14 complaining of severe and growing pain in my abdomen over the previous three weeks.
I was told that a nurse could triage me at 1500. That nurse was contemptuous and hostile. She told me I could be seen by a doctor on the following Friday.
I asked her, “Do you think that’s right? I come in on Monday and tell you I’m in pain, and you tell me to go away and come back Friday?”
She flew into a rage, and gesturing violently screamed, “I’m not telling you to go away. I’m telling you to go to the emergency room. Go! Go!” Or words to that effect and carrying the same tone.
I did. A CT scan showed “liver damage,” according to the ER doctor. On the 22nd I was called in for a sonogram—unrelated to the liver damage.
Two weeks went by without any more word on the CT scan or the liver damage. I went to the patient advocate about the whole thing, and was assured that a nurse would call me to schedule an appointment to go over the findings of those two tests. I said that would happen when Satan skates to work.
Some days went by, and I dropped in to tell the “patient advocate” that I had been right about the non-call. A few days later I got a call from a different nurse. Guess the one that screamed at me couldn’t bear to provide me service according to her job description.
I got an appointment with my “new” primary care physician on the Monday following all that. Notice the passage of time.
This was less an appointment with a physician than it was a fencing bout. The doctor was clearly on pins and needles to avoid doing anything that I could complain about. Any verbal feint drew an immediate response from him. It was obvious that he had been told that I was “one of those patients.”
He said he saw no problems on the CT or the sonogram. Well, I have a good amount of experience with pain, of various flavors and kinds, and one thing I know for sure is that pain like that ain’t nothing. Which is to say, nothing is the one thing it ain’t.
The only time I broke through his shell, his “handling the difficult patient shell,” was when we talked about his refusal to see me days before. He said that he had looked at my “chart” and didn’t think my symptoms indicated an emergency. I asked him if he had inquired as to my pain level. “Did you even ask how much pain I was in before you sent me packing?”
At that point, to his credit, he had the grace to look embarrassed for just a second, and immediately offered me oxycodone without acetaminophen. That told me he had been thoroughly briefed, because we had not discussed acetaminophen before.
My previous primary care doctor, who had done IMV a crappy job, refused to give me oxycodone without acetaminophen because it was his (mistaken) opinion that it is quite safe, and because he thought that the reason I wanted it without acetaminophen was because I was seeking drugs to abuse or sell. Acetaminophen is liver toxic, and FU Dr. L if you haven’t taken the time to bring yourself up to speed.
The new doctor, Dr. S, just handed them over, as part of “handling” the difficult patient. (Oh, it was medically indicated, don’t get me wrong, but indicated or not, Dr. L was not going to prescribe them.)
He also jumped on it when I asked if it could be my gall bladder. He immediately offered to send me to the local civilian hospital for a fancy test using radioactive materials. At this point it was obvious to me that I was being “handled” rather than treated, so I made a point of saying that I wasn’t demanding this test, but would undergo it if it was his medical opinion that it should be done. He said it was. I didn’t believe him, but I went for the test anyway.
Another week or ten days went by, then I got a letter from Dr. S telling me that my gall bladder was not functioning properly (score one for the self-diagnosing PITA patient), and telling me that he had set up a consult with the surgeons for this Thursday. I don’t know what to do now. I am reluctant to let them cut on me.
These days, people who should never be in charge of anything are in charge of just about everything, and that’s certainly true of the Grand Junction VA.
I wasn’t notified that I have cirrhosis of the liver by a doctor, nurse, or other medical personnel. An admin type just happened to be looking at my file on his computer screen and mentioned it in passing. That’s how I found out. And it’s one of the ways I found out that confidentiality is a joke at the Grand Junction VA. You tell them something, you’ve told the whole world.
I’m confident that no one at the VA would tell the truth of these matters. The solar power system is there for all to see, and the dates of appointments may still be in the computer, along with reams of their self-justification, obfuscation, and outright fabrication.
No, I haven’t seen the self-justification, obfuscation, and fabrication, but I’ve been around for 6.3 decades, now, and I’d bet my few remaining years that it’s there.
I anticipate further retaliation.
Thank you for that story...
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