Posted on 08/05/2018 6:10:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. - The phones rang early in the morning and late in the evening. They rang, always, in the middle of the night. They were ringing now, as Mary Hendricks sank into a swivel chair and settled in beside her co-workers for another day of answering them.
The calls came from veterans who were about to be evicted. Veterans who couldn't get hold of their doctors. Veterans who needed to talk about what they saw in Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam.
Mary pressed a button. Her headset clicked on.
"This is the White House VA hotline," she said, introducing herself by first name only. "How can I help you?"
Here in a small West Virginia town, 74 miles from the White House, a Donald Trump campaign promise is being fulfilled. He told the country's 20 million veterans that if they had an issue with the Department of Veterans Affairs, there would be a number they could call 24 hours a day to talk to a real person.
On this day in late July, as Mary was beginning a conversation with one of those veterans, Trump was standing before a crowd of them at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Missouri, introducing a new VA secretary, Robert Wilkie.
The department Wilkie was about to take over had endured months of turmoil....
(Excerpt) Read more at lmtonline.com ...
Every positive thing Trump does, the Fake News tries to make into a negative.
It’s what they do.
Good. They SHOULD call - he WILL fix. Actually they should never have to call for help, but until we get the VA on the right track this is a good expedient.
Trump cares. Obama sure as hell never did.
Oh that's right...he didn't have one.
Plus decent jobs for West Virginians who seem to care. My job at the unemployment office was finding jobs for veterans and I did so thousands of times. Makes you feel good at the end of the day.
The press actively ignored what Obama did to the VA.
My brother died last October in a VA hospital in Atlanta, one of the better VA hospitals. He died because the surgeon screwed up..
Got no gripes with Trump, regarding VA. It just didn’t happen soon enough for my brother. Glad they finally got a new head administrator. There’s a lot that needs to improve there. It will take a while...just hope for progress.
I finally realized that it wasn’t a mistake.
Government employees were stealing from me.
It was organized.
They covered for each other.
And if they were stealing from me, then how many other Veterans were they stealing from?
VA doctors should get a small base salary then be paid like doctors in the real world... BY THE SERVICE GIVEN. I have a friend - a retired doctor and he says too many VA doctors feel they’ve ‘done their time’ in private practice and now they’re ‘taking it easy’.
The VA won’t get better until financial incentive patterns for doctors are changed.
But they can’t report on him stopping to talk to firefighters. They can eat out of the sewer.
The one thing that really epitomizes the VA’s behavior towards Veterans is The Magic Disability Percentages Chart.
After the medical personnel list your disabilities, a clerk than assigns percentages of disability to each problem.
They use The Magic Disability Book To determine the percentage of disability.
That’s a story for another time.
The percentage can be anywhere from 0% to 100%.
Then those percentages are run through The Magic Disability Percentages Chart.
The chart does not allow any percentage to increase.
All percentages, after the first, are reduced.
Why?
They have no answer.
There is no logical explanation for the reductions.
A medical issue diagnosed by a Doctor and listed as 60% disability, “magically” becomes 10%.
It is illegal and immoral and a slap to the face of every Veteran.
But the VA clerks use that chart every day to reduce the benefits due the Veterans, and nothing is done.
I stand waiting for anyone from the VA to explain why they use this Magic Chart.
The DC ComPost tries to spin this toward the negative. We haven't had one muzzie fatal terrorist attack at a US base since we rid ourselves of Soetero. Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
Somebody said the press was the enemy.
I guess this is proof.
[It was President Trump who said the press was the enemy -- for the benefit of some evil Demon Rat looking at FreeRepublic...]
Sorry for your loss. Lost my only brother who was a Vietnam Vet back in 1995.
I’m a veteran, but if I was desperate for help, the VA is the last place I’d ask for it.
God bless you.
That’s great work you have done.
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