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"Troubled Phoenix VA doled out $10 million in bonuses" Associated Press June 18, 2014
PHOENIX — Workers at the Phoenix VA Health Care System — where investigators say veterans’ health was jeopardized when employees covered up long wait times for patients — received about $10 million in bonuses, newly released records show.
Do you get a bonus for doing your job (if you are lucky enough to have one)?
Beyond that, this is the reason so much time was spent phoning up appointment lists.
Documents from the US Department of Veterans Affairs indicate about 2,000 got bonuses over the course of a three-year period, The Arizona Republic reported Tuesday.
Related: Salaries of VA employees in Phoenix
All those six-figure salaries are only in Phoenix, folks!
Did they really need the bonuses?
The records, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the bonuses kept increasing.
The VA paid $2.5 million in 2011, $3.5 million in 2012, and $3.9 million last year.
The merit-based bonuses were doled out to nearly 650 employees each of those years. The employees included doctors, nurses, administrators, secretaries, and cleaning staff.
I'm not saying people shouldn't get raises, but the priorities of public $erpants are $kewed these days. Meanwhile, vets care is lagging and they are dying!
‘‘The VA employee recognition and awards program provides an entire range of rewards to recognize employees who make contributions that support goals and objectives across the facility,’’ Phoenix VA spokeswoman Jean Schaefe said.
A VA inspector general’s report found that 1,700 veterans seeking treatment at the Phoenix VA hospital were at risk of being ‘‘lost or forgotten’’ after being kept off the official waiting list.
Oh, no, no more bonuses!
Phoenix VA director Sharon Helman and two others were placed on administrative leave last month following allegations that some veterans may have died waiting for appointments and schedulers manipulated records.
Helman, who is paid a $169,000 salary annually, had her $4,900 bonus from last year rescinded by federal VA officials.
And that is the lower-end of the pay $cale!
Helman could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But she told the Associated Press the day she was put on leave that she was appalled by the idea that she would manipulate wait times and put patient lives at risk to collect a bonus.
Imagine how we all feel out here finding that is exactly what happened! The indignity is indicative of high-horse syndrome, where one is guilty of the accused conduct and says "Well, I never!"
Federal lawmakers are working on legislation that would ban bonuses at the VA.
Will that bring back the dead?
‘‘It is highly disturbing that while patient care suffered, bonus pay skyrocketed. This must be the subject of a full investigation — in addition to the FBI investigation that is ongoing — and serves as another example of the systemic, cultural problem at the VA that must be addressed,’’ Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said.
I'll bet he has always gotten top-notch care and an immediate appointment.
The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee plans to conduct a hearing Friday on how bonuses are awarded to senior VA executives.
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Related: One Week Stay at the VA
Had to check back in:
"Bill would double spending for veterans’ health care" by Matthew Daly | Associated Press June 15, 2014
WASHINGTON — Spending on veterans’ health care could double in three years under the Senate’s solution to the long waits experienced by thousands seeking medical care at VA hospitals and clinics, according to congressional budget experts.
Kind of owe it to them, really. It's the first line item in my "defense" budget; last lines are weapons procurement.
Analyzing a bill the Senate passed overwhelmingly last Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the measure would add $35 billion over the next three years to the $44 billion the government now spends annually on medical care for veterans.
Chump change when compared to the trillions the banks got.
Now let's not lie them into anymore wars, huh?
Both the Senate bill and a House version also passed this past week would dramatically expand government-paid health care.
Ya think that will help because that is what they had.
They would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay private providers to treat qualifying veterans who can’t get prompt appointments at the VA’s nearly 1,000 hospitals and outpatient clinics or who live at least 40 miles from one of them.
Why were they not already doing this?
Once the program was fully in place, the budget office said, it expected that veterans ‘‘would ultimately seek additional care that would cost the federal government about $50 billion a year’’ — double current spending, the report said.
That is assuming no new wars, right?
The bills are Congress’s response to a growing uproar over patients dying while awaiting VA treatment and mounting evidence that workers falsified or omitted appointment schedules to mask frequent, long delays. The resulting election-year firestorm prompted VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign two weeks ago.
Growing uproar?
An audit released recently showed that more than 57,000 veterans have had to wait at least three months for initial appointments. An additional 64,000 veterans who asked for appointments over the past decade never got them.
The VA has confirmed that at least 35 veterans died while awaiting appointments at VA facilities in the Phoenix area, although officials say they can’t say whether not getting VA treatment caused any of the deaths.
Not getting it could not have helped.
More than 8 million of the nation’s 21 million veterans are now enrolled in VA health care, although only about 6.5 million seek VA treatment every year. The CBO analysts said the VA now covers about 30 percent, or an average $5,200, of those veterans’ annual health care costs, excluding long-term care.
The Senate bill would open up VA health care to as many as 8 million veterans who now qualify for care but have not enrolled, the budget office said. By making it easier to get outside care, the Senate bill and a companion measure in the House also would encourage veterans to seek VA coverage for a bigger portion of their health care, the report said.
Both bills would make it easier to fire or demote senior agency officials, and both would end bonuses to regional VA officials and other administrators based on meeting patient scheduling goals — a practice investigators say led some officials to create phony waiting lists to ‘‘game’’ the system.
I'm appalled you would $ugge$t $uch a thing!
But the Senate bill also would devote at least $1 billion to leasing 26 facilities in 17 states and Puerto Rico for use as new VA hospitals or clinics and $500 million more for hiring more VA doctors and nurses. Declaring the long appointment waits an emergency, the Senate averted having to raise taxes or find spending cuts elsewhere to cover the bill’s costs.
They can find money when they want to, huh, just not for food stamps and unemployment checks at home.
‘‘By resorting to abusing the emergency escape clause, Washington is once again looking for the easy way out,’’ said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan policy group devoted to cutting federal deficits.
It's an election year, and this scandal hurts both branches of the War Party.
MacGuineas’s group criticized the Senate’s bill in a lengthy blog post, saying it would swell the government’s debt by creating a new unfunded entitlement program bigger than Congress’s expansion of Medicare in 2003 to cover prescription drugs.
‘‘We can’t just write a blank check and think it will solve these problems,’’ said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, one of three senators who voted against the bill.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and one of the bill’s authors, lashed back: ‘‘If it is not an emergency that we have neglected the brave men and women who have served this country and keep us free, then I do not know what an emergency is.’’
Okay.
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It's been an emergency for decades, and how long mc cain $erved in Congre$$.
"Vocal VA workers faced retaliation; Discipline or dismissal awaited whistle-blowers" by Eric Lichtblau | New York Times June 16, 2014
WASHINGTON — Staff members at dozens of Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals across the country have objected for years to falsified patient appointment schedules and other improper practices, only to be rebuffed, disciplined or even fired after speaking up, according to interviews with current and former staff members and internal documents.
That is how the U.S. government deals with whi$tleblowers.
The growing VA scandal over long patient wait times and fake scheduling books is emboldening hundreds of employees to go to federal watchdogs, unions, lawmakers and outside whistle-blower groups to report continuing problems, officials for those various groups said.
Oh, no! This scandal is standard operation procedure and massively endemic!
In interviews with The New York Times, a half-dozen current and former staff members — four doctors, a nurse, and an office manager in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Alaska — said they faced retaliation for reporting systemic problems. Their accounts, some corroborated by internal documents, portray a culture of silence and intimidation within the department and echo experiences detailed by other VA personnel in court filings, government investigations and congressional testimony, much of it largely unnoticed until now.
Unnoticed or IGNORED?!!?
The department has a history of retaliating against whistle-blowers, which Sloan D. Gibson, the acting VA secretary, acknowledged this month at a news conference in San Antonio.
“I understand that we’ve got a cultural issue there, and we’re going to deal with that cultural issue,” said Gibson, who replaced Eric K. Shinseki after Shinseki resigned over the scandal last month. Punishing whistle-blowers is “absolutely unacceptable,” Gibson said.
Just don't deal with the war culture we are all living under, for it undergirds $o many things.
The federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistle-blower complaints, is examining 37 claims of retaliation by VA employees in 19 states, and recently persuaded the VA to drop the disciplining of three staff members who had spoken out. Together with reports to other watchdog agencies and the Times interviews, the accounts by VA whistle-blowers cover several dozen hospitals, with complaints dating back seven years or longer.
Dr. Jacqueline Brecht, a former urologist at the Alaska VA Healthcare System in Anchorage, said in an interview that she had a heated argument with administrators at a staff meeting in 2008 when she objected to using phantom appointments to make wait times appear shorter, as they had instructed her. She said that the practice amounted to medical fraud, and she complained about other patient care problems as well.
Being a little whiny there, no?
Days later, a top administrator came to Brecht’s clinic, put her on administrative leave, and had security officers walk her out of the building.
“It’s scary to think that people can try to stand up and do the right thing, and this is the reaction,” said Brecht, now in private practice in Massachusetts.
Her complaints were corroborated by other Alaska personnel and were the subject of an email that Brecht sent to a military doctor at the time. Brecht wrote that administrators “schedule fake patient appointments (i.e. commit FRAUD).” They do so, she wrote, “just so our numbers look good to DC (and the administrators get their bonuses for these numbers).”
I'm not even a veteran and I read that with anger, outrage, sadness, and dejection.
I never wanted them to go in the first place.
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Said for years the costs are more than you even think, but did anyone listen (other than my beloved readership)?
"Veterans health spending to jump with new programs" by Matthew Daly | Associated Press June 17, 2014
Said for years the costs are more than you even think, but did anyone listen (other than my beloved readership)?
"Veterans health spending to jump with new programs" by Matthew Daly | Associated Press June 17, 2014
WASHINGTON — Spending on veterans’ health care could significantly rise in three years under the Senate’s solution to the long waits experienced by thousands seeking medical care at VA hospitals and clinics, according to congressional budget experts.
Analyzing a bill the Senate passed overwhelmingly last Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the measure would add $35 billion over the next three years to the $44 billion the government now spends annually on medical care for veterans.
Both the Senate bill and a House version also passed this past week would dramatically expand government-paid health care.
As we, the civilian population, get increased costs and cuts under Obummercare!
The bills are Congress’s response to a growing uproar over patients dying while awaiting VA treatment and mounting evidence that workers falsified or omitted appointment schedules to mask frequent, long delays. The resulting firestorm forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign two weeks ago....
That diagnosis looked so familiar.
That diagnosis looked so familiar.
A lofty greeting for Bush’s 90th birthday
George H. W. Bush: Why he jumped
Bush’s tandem skydiver is focused on helping vets
Big names reunite at Phillips Academy
Honestly, the Globe really has gone to the dogs.
Those who were there:
"Iraq turmoil evokes painful memories for veterans" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff June 16, 2014
The Iraqi Army, assembled and armed by American dollars, has fled as Sunni insurgents push toward Baghdad, severely damaging US hopes for a stable, inclusive democracy in the heart of the Middle East.
Still following that PNAC playbook?
Thought we got rid of that with, oh, yeah.
For many American veterans who fought in Iraq, the images of jihadists, some brandishing US-made weapons commandeered from US-trained troops, are gut-wrenching. Psychic wounds are being reopened, and nagging questions are being asked again.
Was eight years of sacrifice — in blood and treasure, in lives lost and lives shattered — worth the effort?
Short answer? No f***ing way!
To veterans of Iraq, the answer, like the war itself, is complex. There is pride in a difficult mission, and in gains made in Iraq’s civil society. But the flight of the Iraqi Army and the bitter political fragmentation there have prompted reactions ranging from disappointment to disgust.
They forget that before 1991 Iraq had the highest standard of living, best universities, and was the most liberal in the Middle East regarding women. That is not to claim it was paradise or even argue about it, because the U.S. smashed it and it is what it is now.
******************
Chris Lessard, a 36-year-old Newton firefighter who was a Marine machine-gunner in Iraq from 2004 to 2005, said he believed in the US mission while he was fighting in Iraq, based near Fallujah. But now, with the Iraqi Army in disarray and Sunni and Shi’ite unable to work together, Lessard does not want the United States to reenter a centuries-old conflict that massive amounts of American money and military force could not resolve.
“This is Iraq’s problem now,” Lessard said....
See: In Iraq, let the leaders lead
The war in Iraq took the lives of 4,486 American service members. During the better times, spurts of progress occurred in civil society, infrastructure, and military training. But during the worst, the threats of improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, and snipers made the country a hellish place for US troops.
!!!!!!!
Imagine living there after all the destruction and death brought by AmeriKa, and with the polluted environment and general chaos left behind.
Doug Harding, who was raised in Lincoln, was there at the beginning and at the end. He commanded a front-line artillery battalion in the March 2003 invasion, and he watched the last US troops cross from Iraq into Kuwait in December 2011. Like many other veterans of that long war, he is digesting the reports from Iraq with disappointment.
“What a shame, because I was pretty proud of what we accomplished over the years,” said Harding, a retired Army colonel who lives in Leavenworth, Kan. “Watching the last soldiers come out of Iraq, it felt like there was still some unfinished business. But I felt we had provided that country with an opportunity.”
OMG!
As Sunni insurgents rumble toward Baghdad, President Obama and his aides are urgently weighing the US response. Obama has said he will not recommit troops to the country, but that airstrikes are not off the table....
I was told stalled and no troops, but.... sigh.
Seth Moulton of Salem, who was part of the first Marine company to enter Baghdad, served four tours in Iraq, and is challenging Representative John F. Tierney for the North Shore congressional seat in the Democratic primary. “But it’s still difficult to see it fall apart because a lot of Americans gave their lives to try to make a better future for Iraq.”
Related: Monday Moult Down For Massachusetts Democrats
Brian VanRiper, a former Pembroke resident and Marine who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, does not frame war in terms of lives lost and sacrifices made. An analytical approach to recent events in Iraq better serves the cause, he said.
Sorry, but I DO! Nothing is more important in this world than the gift of life, and once it is gone -- no coming back!
“I would urge caution in making a quick, emotional, reactionary decision as opposed to one that is best for the people of Iraq and the people of America,” said VanRiper, 33, who lives in Los Angeles. “I’m not quite sure what we could do for the government of Iraq that we haven’t already done that can guarantee their success in this situation.”
That is how we got in this mess.
Glenn Benoit, a former Army National Guard sergeant who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, said he felt he made a positive difference in helping train Iraqi police.
“The progression during the year I was over there went very well,” said Benoit, a 36-year-old who lives in Northampton in transitional housing provided by the nonprofit group Soldier On. But that was then, and this is now.
The HOMELESS VETS SCANDAL is another failure by this government.
“All I can say now is back off and let what’s going to happen, happen,” Benoit said. “All the money we’ve spent, all the lives we’ve lost, it’s ridiculous.”
Harding, the retired colonel, who spent 30 years in the Army, said part of his reaction to the setbacks in Iraq is intertwined with the toll that three tours took on his family. During dinner recently, Harding said, he spoke with his wife and two younger boys about the war and about the sacrifices they all had made.
“This was never about occupying another country,” Harding said in an interview. “It was about getting rid of an Iraqi dictator, and I got to see how happy the Iraqis were in those first days. I thought the sacrifices we made were tough but worth it.”
:-(
I suppose they have to tell themselves that; otherwise, they are monsters in the mirror.
More than two years have passed since the last US troops left Iraq, but the long war has never ended for many veterans and their families. For them, the news of city after city falling to the insurgents has made the war seem fresher still.
It LITERALLY never has for Iraqis.
“There are a lot of Americans that have a lot invested in this,” Harding said. “It’s OK to go two steps forward and one step back, but it’s not good to go two steps forward and five steps back.”
?????????
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More painful memories best forgotten as a failed public relations stunt:
"Bowe Bergdahl ‘looked good’ in returning to US, Army says" by Juan A. Lozano | Associated Press June 14, 2014
SAN ANTONIO — Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl ‘‘looked good’’ after arriving back in the United States and is working with health professionals after being held by the Taliban for five years in Afghanistan, military officials said Friday.
Bergdahl’s family has not joined him since he arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston after midnight Friday, and Army officials would not say when relatives might show up.
So odd. That is the first thing anyone would want; where is my family?
Major General Joseph P. DiSalvo said during a news conference Friday that Bergdahl was in stable condition, ‘‘looked good,’’ and showed ‘‘good comportment’’ after being transported to Texas from an Army medical facility in Germany.
‘‘The reintegration of Sergeant Bergdahl is comprehensive. There is no set timeline,’’ said DiSalvo, who will be in charge of that process.
It means he is being tortured, 'er, brainwashed, 'er, drugged, 'er, debriefed, yeah, that's the word.
As far as Bergdahl’s interaction with relatives, Colonel Bradley Poppen, an Army psychologist, said a soldier typically determines when to reunite with his or her family. Poppen declined to release further details, citing the family’s request for privacy.
Holding it in is not healthy. He should know that.
Military officials declined to give details on what Bergdahl might remember about his capture or what he knows about the public uproar surrounding his capture and release.
Yeah, turns out the polls are saying we shouldn't have made the deal.
A three-vehicle convoy greeted Bergdahl at Fort Sam shortly after midnight Friday. Officials said he was able to walk on his own and appeared ‘‘a little nervous,’’ as they said any sergeant would be when greeted by a two-star general. In the short time he has been back on US soil, Bergdahl has been on a bland diet and has shown a fondness for peanut butter, they said.
Information I needed to know.
Bergdahl also arrived speaking English, though officials indicated his speech had been affected by being in captivity for so long. ‘‘Overall, our assessment is that he did not have the opportunity the past five years to practice and speak his English,’’ said Colonel Ronald Wood, who is in charge of Bergdahl’s medical care.
Why not? His captors spoke English(!)
Army officials briefed the media at a golf course near Fort Sam Houston and said no reporters would be allowed onto the base or in the hospital.
Officials have kept a lid on Bergdahl’s condition out of concern that he not be rushed back into the public spotlight.
Yeah, we broke that code already.
The Idaho native was captured in Afghanistan in June 2009 and released by the Taliban on May 31 in a deal struck by the Obama administration in which five senior Taliban officials were released from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Army has not formally begun a new review into the circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture and whether he walked away without leave or was deserting the Army when he was found and taken by insurgents.
Whadda you mean? The thorough and meticulous mixed messages I got from the NYT was fiction then?
In a statement Friday, the Army said that after Bergdahl’s reintegration it would ‘‘continue its comprehensive review into the circumstances of his disappearance and captivity.’’
The answers to those questions will be key to whether Bergdahl will receive more than $300,000 in back pay owed to him since he disappeared. If he was determined to have been a prisoner of war, he also could receive roughly another $300,000 or more, if recommended and approved by Army leaders.
Is that how much is being offered for his silence, or is the kid asking for much more?
I think I'm $eeing why he is being held under wraps. Pretty $mart move, that de$ertion.
Before his departure from Germany on Thursday, officials in Washington said Bergdahl would not receive the automatic Army promotion that would have taken effect this month if he were still in captivity. Now that he is back in US military control, any promotions would depend on his performance and achievement of certain training and education milestones.
Bergdahl had been at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center since June 1, the day after the prisoner exchange.
Many have criticized the Obama administration for agreeing to release the Taliban prisoners in exchange for Bergdahl. Some of Bergdahl’s former Army colleagues have accused him of deserting his post.
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Haven't seen him since.
Related:
Bowe Bergdahl, ‘Homeland,’ and the kindness of strangers
Hagel Hammered by House Over Bergdahl Deal
Bergdahl Deal Backfiring on Obama
Impeachable, but that talk has died down amongst the next diversion and script we will address soon, as well as other serious breaches that are being hidden in the hopes you will miss them.
I didn't know Marcia Clark got a job at the IRS after the OJ trial, did you?
