Free Republic

In the battle between bureaucrats and veterans, the Obama administration stands with the bureaucrats. Last week the White House threatened to veto the VA Accountability Act, a bill that would moderately streamline the process for firing incompetent Department of Veterans Affairs employees. Under the terms of the act, the VA secretary can’t place employees on paid administrative leave for more than 14 days per year, employees’ initial-hire probationary period is extended to 18 months, and terminated employees have seven days to file an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. But these streamlined termination provisions — which still provide far...

The government watchdog for the Department of Veterans Affairs reported Monday that it was able to substantiate claims that the VA's Los Angeles office was sending mail from veterans to the shredder. The VA's Office of Inspector General said it launched an "unannounced inspection" of the Los Angeles office after hearing allegations that the VA staff there was shredding mail related to veterans' disability compensation claims. Though the OIG said it can't measure how often this might have happened, it did say it found some examples of mail lined up for the shredder that instead should have been opened and...

The Office of Inspector General for Veterans Affairs just found staffers with the Los Angeles VA Regional Office improperly shredded numerous disability claims, tossing them in the trash rather than giving them proper review. ... The IG report also stated: “The shredding of these documents would have prevented the documents from becoming part of the veterans’ permanent record and potentially affect veterans’ benefits.” Examples of the documents that were shredded included disability-compensation claims submitted by two homeless veterans, and a letter from a medical provider confirming a veteran was unemployable due to “service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder,”

Iraq War veteran David Rodriguez steps into a softly lit classroom at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, crosses his legs and sits on a pillow in front of an altar decorated with a rope, a model of a penis and a statue of a Hindu god. Rodriguez, a retired Navy lieutenant commander who led an engineering battalion that dismantled roadside bombs, is here for a class on “sexual bodywork.” When instruction begins, he will join his classmates in practicing different forms of masturbation. “They do vulva massage and penis massage and anal massage,” said...

Donald Trump appears to have gotten under the skin of not only Democrats, but also fellow Republicans and the news media. Has that subjected Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, to unfair and/or inaccurate reporting? An article in the Washington Post today is headlined, “Trump slams McCain for being ‘captured’ in Vietnam.” The article’s lead sentence states, “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump slammed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran, on Saturday by saying McCain was not a war hero because he was captured by the North Vietnamese [emphasis added].” Is this report accurate? In fact, Trump’s actual quote...

I am not a fan of John McCain because he has done so little for our Veterans and he should know better than anybody what the Veterans need, especially in regards to the VA. He is yet another all talk, no action politician who spends too much time on television and not enough time doing his job and helping the Vets. He is also allowing our military to decrease substantially in size and strength, something which should never be allowed to happen. Furthermore, he was extremely disrespectful to the thousands upon thousands of people, many of whom happen to be...

According to a leaked internal document from the Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly one-third of veterans awaiting healthcare coverage at the VA have already died. The April 2015 report, leaked to the Huffington Post by VA whistleblower Scott Davis, indicates that 238,657 of the 847,882 veterans waiting to be enrolled in VA healthcare are already dead, suggesting that over 28 percent of veterans applying for health coverage perished while waiting for it. VA spokeswoman Walinda West played down the number, insisting that some of those listed as having “pending” status may well have not completed their applications for healthcare coverage...

An internal Veterans Affairs Department report states that about one-third of the veterans waiting to receive medical care from the agency have already died. ... as of April, 847,822 veterans were awaiting healthcare and that of those, 238,647 were already deceased. The report was handed over by Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta He also sent copies to the House and Senate VA panels and to the White House. ... VA wants you to believe, by virtue of people being able to get health care elsewhere, it's not a big deal. But VA...

No one at the VA has gotten the ax for falsifying records that showed veterans waiting months for medical care. And no one will probably be fired for continued incompetence at the VA. Washington Times: The number of veterans seeking health  care but ending up on waiting lists of one month or more is 50 percent higher now than it was a year ago when scandal over false records and long wait times wracked the Department of Veterans Affairs, The New York Times reported. The VA also faces a budget  shortfall of nearly $3 billion, the Times reported in a story posted...

The nationwide scandal last spring over manipulated wait times at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals led to the ouster of the secretary of veterans affairs and vows from the new leadership that people would be held accountable. Then in February, the new secretary, Robert A. McDonald, asserted in a nationally televised interview that the department had fired 60 people involved in manipulating wait times to make it appear that veterans were receiving care faster than they were. In fact, the department quickly clarified after that interview, only 14 people had been removed from their jobs, while about 60 others had...

A Veterans Affairs hospital in West Virginia switched out patients’ prescribed medications with older drugs to cut costs, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) announced in a letter to Congress and the White House Wednesday. . . . The investigation also found that hospital’s pharmacy and therapeutics committee was chaired by a non-physician, another departure from VA policy.

Documents obtained by The Daily Caller and interviews with American veterans reveal a shocking government program: The Department of Veterans Affairs is disarming America’s veterans by getting them placed on the FBI’s criminal background-check list. The VA sends veterans’ personal medical and financial information directly to the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which can seize their guns in home raids. Veterans deemed mentally incompetent or financially incapable are finally speaking out about the errors in the system and the fearful harassment they and their families face from the federal government. And it all starts when vets...

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder expressing deep concerns over Veterans Affairs evaluations classifying veterans as "mentally defective" and banning them in the federal background check system from purchasing or owning a firearm. According to Grassley's office, the VA "reports individuals to the gun ban list if an individual merely needs financial assistance managing VA benefits," keeping them from exercising their Second Amendment rights. (Bolding is mine) "The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is effectively a national gun ban list and placement on the list precludes...

The inspector general of the VA is looking into why Diana Rubens received $288,000 in relocation reimbursement for a 140 mile move. The average relocation check over the past three years is just a tad over $12,000. Relocation pay is supposed to help cover the costs of moving including househunting, moving, terminated leases and temporary housing. Housing doesn’t seem to be the problem as Rubens sold her house in Alexandria last July for $770,000 to Stone Financing, who sold the property for a loss of over $80,000. Hmmm. She then bought a house in Pennsylvania for $589,000. Her relocation check...

And some of them never lived to see their rightful benefits from service to our nation. The VA in Oakland, California routinely ignored the query letters from veterans seeking various benefits, despite regulations requiring a response. When the issue came to the attention of VA leadership in 2012, they assigned a team to go through the records — and then deep-sixed those records when it became obvious that something very wrong had taken place. In fact, as one whistleblower tells CBS News, the cover-up lasted until “a few months ago,” cheating thousands of veterans:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) But whether the veteran was dead...

Craig Schroeder was injured in 2006 while serving with the Marines in Iraq and suffers from traumatic brain injury and pain, for which he has been on a steady regimen of opioids. WASHINGTON — New federal rules that make it harder to get narcotic painkillers are taking an unexpected toll on thousands of veterans who depend on these prescription drugs to treat everything from missing limbs to post-traumatic stress. The restrictions, adopted last summer by the Drug Enforcement Administration to curb a national epidemic of opioid abuse, are for the first time, in effect, forcing veterans to return to the...

Middletown police say they expect to charge a Dayton VA employee next week with patient negligence, falsifying records and possibly theft in office because “he’s getting paid to do a job he’s clearly not doing.” Lt. Scott Reeve, of the Middletown Division of Police, said detectives have been investigating the home health care worker for the past 10 months and are close to proving he falsified reports about a Middletown veteran who died last year. Officers found Calvin Coleman, Jr.’s body on March 28 at a residence in the 2200 block of Carolina Street, but investigators believe he died four...

Unauthorized and potentially counterfeit, dangerous surgical devices and medical supplies have flowed unchecked into the Department of Veterans Affairs supply chain and into VA operating rooms, according to internal agency correspondence from a major supplier who blamed new procurement rules. The bogus supplies gained a foothold when the department started using reverse auctions to fulfill some contracts, according to both department officials and a 2012 memo from Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest medical device business. In the memo, the company told the VA it was getting surgical supplies bought from unauthorized distributors through the so-called “gray market,” and said...

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs finally removed an Alabama director of Alabama Veterans Healthcare. James Talton, had been on paid ($118.23/Hr) leave since August. Participating in or being oblivious to systematic falsifying of records, creative and recreational crank cocaine and prostitution therapies and covering thousands of unread patient X-rays "routinely lost" until recently. Multiple administrators on all levels, knew and turned a blind eye or actively tried to cover it up. Jim was removed after an investigation by the Office of Accountability Review investigation substantiated allegations of “neglect of duty,” according to a VA statement.

A VA whistleblower who spoke out in an interview with Neil Cavuto says he's faced harassment and retaliation for going public with his allegations about the lack of medical care for veterans.