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The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) expressed cautious optimism about recently announced legislation aimed at improving staffing and addressing wait times at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities. AFGE also applauds provisions to extend advance appropriations to the full VA budget, expand GI bill benefits and enhance medical services for victims of military sexual assault.The legislation, spearheaded by Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Bernie Sanders and Senator John McCain, recognizes the severe staffing shortages at VA medical facilities by authorizing $500 million to hire new doctors and nurses. AFGE applauds provisions for expedited hiring authority and urges swift action to fill...

Accusations at a VA hospital in Phoenix that patient records were falsified by staff are emerging in other facilities, including a New Mexico medical center where alleged bookkeeping misrepresentations were investigated last year. A whistleblower working at the Raymond G. Murphy Medical Center in Albuquerque, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity, said in a complaint sent to the VA’s regional Office of the Inspector General in September 2013 and again early last month to the national OIG, that “clinic staff were ordered to enter false information into veterans’ charts, because it would improve the data about clinic...

<p>It began with secret texts to untraceable phones. Meetings took place in seedy bars, dark alleys, gas stations. Actual documents came in packages without notes, without return addresses.</p> <p>You would think the secrets being passed dealt with national security, organized crime or the corruption of high public officials. Nope.</p>

Dozens of Veterans Affairs workers who have come forward with stories of mismanagement and patient abuse say they have faced retaliation within the scandal-scarred agency, according to federal investigators. In one case, a VA employee with a spotless record over two decades was suspended after reporting patients had been inappropriately restrained, according to one of 37 such complaints filed with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC). In another case, an employee claimed to have been demoted after disclosing alleged mishandling of patient care funds. The employee was temporarily reassigned and an investigation is still ongoing, OSC officials said. The...

Brix, France — Some of the veterans attending the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings here in France have fascinating stories. Take George Ciampa, the most vibrant and spry 89-year-old I have ever met. In 1944, he landed in Normandy as a soldier assigned to the 84th Graves Registration Unit. “I spent the next few years going from France to Germany helping to bury people,” he told me. He was involved in setting up the temporary military cemeteries in Normandy that have now become stirring memorials to our fallen dead.

While many focus their disgust for the federal government towards the occupants housed in the IRS, DoJ, VA, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this latest deserter-for-Taliban trade puts the spotlight on another particular building. ... It was the late Army Colonel David Hackworth who bestowed the title of “perfumed princes” on senior military leaders who stood not for the men and women in uniform but rather for their own career advancement. As we live through the decimation of our armed forces it’s difficult to say Vaughn doesn’t have a point. Vaughn believes “There is no way that the White House could...

A former Veterans Affairs official apologized Thursday for suggesting that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl may have left his post in Afghanistan five years ago because he was surrounded by “psychopaths.” “While I just wanted to make the point that the public should wait before passing judgment, I unfortunately used my own poor judgment in choosing inappropriate language that many view as disparaging to U.S. service members,” Brandon Friedman, who currently serves as a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told BuzzFeed. “That was certainly not my intent and I regret making the comments on my personal account...

Sitting in the boardroom, a dozen social workers, salesmen and developers were waiting for the Health IT CEO to kick off the meeting. As we rocked in our chairs, my boss — an MSW-cum-Chief Sales Officer — complained about his “black sheep” cousin who was shaming the family name. “The rest of us went to college but he’s stuck in the Army,” he said. “Sounds like a good start to me,” I replied, as the only employee with military experience. Those assembled rolled their eyes while my boss looked at me with pity. “He enlisted, Jon. He obviously isn’t the...

A veteran died of a stroke after Veterans Affairs police beat him because he refused to wait any longer for treatment at a VA hospital in California. Now his widow is suing the government over the brutality that led to his death. Jonathan Montano had been at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Loma Linda, Calif. for four hours with a shunt (a needle apparatus) in his arm, awaiting dialysis. Tired of biding his time, he decided to head to a different VA hospital in Long Beach, and asked his wife Norma to get the car. But instead of...

While the Veterans Administration struggles to repair the damage caused by shoddy -- and in some cases fraudulent -- handling of health care for American service members, benefits for millions who served their country in four wars were wiped out in a fire more than 40 years ago, leaving many battling to this day to collect their due. The blaze that ripped through the National Personnel Records Center in a St. Louis suburb shortly after midnight on July 12, 1973, consumed 16 million to 18 million official military personnel files long before computers kept such records safe from harm. Few...

“I’m not young enough to know everything,” Oscar Wilde observed, as if reflecting on the Great Commencement Speaker Flap of 2014. However, Jimi Hendrix was young when he offered advice that today’s college students should heed — “knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” Unmindful that earned wisdom is derived from asking the right questions — not identifying the wrong answers — too many students graduate into a complex and conflict-riddled world without the insights that come from the clash of opposing viewpoints. Is it surprising then, that so many intractable problems plague our society, like military veterans dying from government-provided health...

The Taliban’s release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl dominated the Sunday talk shows, pushing Friday’s resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki from the headlines. The Sunday shows were packed with administration officials defending the decision and Republicans launching into political attacks against President Obama and the administration for transferring five Taliban members from Guantánamo Bay to Qatar in exchange for the release of Bergdahl, the 28-year-old whom the Taliban released on Saturday. "Disturbing" was how Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) put it on ABC's "This Week." "Dangerous," echoed House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) on CNN's "State of The Union."...

After the recent revelation of long wait times and delays in care at VA hospitals shocked the nation, congressional Democrats from both houses and independent journalists undertook their own investigation to determine the cause of the problem. What they found was shocking: evidence of a coordinated conspiracy among numerous ill veterans to avoid seeking medical care and blame their subsequent problems on President Obama. "It's racism pure and simple." said one congressional staffer who played a tape recording of a VA patient telling an undercover investigator "I'm supposed to go for a colonoscopy next week but I'm gonna skip it...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jeremy P. Amick, public affairs officer Silver Star Families of America Phone: (573) 230-7456 Email: jamick1@earthlink.net

Full Title - "EXCLUSIVE: Filth, Feces, Urine and Trash – Witness Describes Squalid State of St. Louis VA (Video-Photos)" This past weekend, Evita Simone Allen visited the St. Louis VA medical center at Jefferson Barracks to tend to an ailing uncle.“Vita” spoke exclusively to Jim Hoft of Progressives Today on Monday about the filth, feces, urine and trash she saw piled up in her uncle’s room at the VA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx35OoDGESsHere is Vita’s shocking story – along with pictures from her visit:“As we entered the room, we noticed a foul smell that smelled really bad. As we walked around in the...

As a former CPA with the Big 4, I have worked with many hospitals, non-profits, fortune 500 companies including manufacturing, service and financial companies. This allowed me to observe many organizational structures in many professions and environments. One general rule of management is that the line of authority must be upward within a company/organization and not lateral if you want performance and accountability. This is not the case at the VA Hospitals. A department head is usually an MD who has the highest and best knowledge in their profession. However the employees under him/her do not answer to the department...

Just 29% think President Obama has done a good job managing the VA in the wake of the department's patient-care scandal, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll. 43% surveyed say he's done a poor job and 22% rate his performance as only average. Meanwhile, 63% say Obama was either disengaged (29%) or that he "knows more than he claims" (34%) about the scandal. [snip] The public also overwhelmingly rejects the notion that money was the chief reason for the VA scandal.

About two years ago, Brian Turner took a job as a scheduling clerk at a Veterans Affairs health clinic in Austin. A few weeks later, he said, a supervisor came by to instruct him how to cook the books. “The first time I heard it was actually at my desk. They said, ‘You gotta zero out the date. The wait time has to be zeroed out,’ ” Turner recalled in a phone interview. He said “zeroing out” was a trick to fool the VA’s own accountability system, which the bosses up in Washington used to monitor how long patients waited to...

In the midst of America grappling with the reality that veterans are safer on the battlefield than on a VA hospital waiting list, on Memorial Day, Barack Obama, lover of all things military, flew to Kabul to surprise our U.S. servicemen and women. After Obama arrived at the troop rally at Bagram air base, Afghani President Hamid Karzai, who in 2008 pinned a medal on George W. Bush’s chest at the presidential palace in Kabul, sent word that because it was such short notice he would not be meeting with the U.S. president. Looking spiffy in a brown bomber jacket...

Last February, before the Veterans Affairs health care scandal broke, Sen. Bernard Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, joined with 28 Democratic co-sponsors to offer a bill increasing funding for the VA by $20 billion -- even though the agency had failed to use all the money Congress had given it in the form of big budget increases in recent years. Sanders' bill, S.1982, officially titled the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014, was a hodgepodge of several previous bills. "The package would improve VA health care and dental care,...