Free Republic

[Full Title: CCHR Says Congress Should Look at Conflicts of Interest Influencing VA’s Failure to Investigate Psychotropic Drug Deaths] While Congress currently is focusing on the VA’s alleged poor quality of care due to long wait times for medical access, still little, to no, attention is being given to the hundreds of veteran cardiac arrests and suicides that occurred after being prescribed cocktails of dangerous psychotropic drugs, especially antipsychotics. Why? The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), the nation’s leading mental health watchdog, presented written testimony this year to Congressional hearings into military and veteran deaths and believes that conflicts...

The Department of Veterans Affairs said Tuesday it will investigate allegations that the appointment records of a retired Marine who died after having seizures were falsified to cover up delays in patient care at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System. Cathy Gromek, spokeswoman for the VA's inspector general's office in Washington, told the Associated Press she wasn't sure when the investigation would be finished. "We're working it and when we can report out, we'll report out," Gromek said. The announcement followed calls from Minnesota's congressional delegation for an investigation, one day after KARE-TV reported that VA records showed that a...

Where in the World is Russ Potts? By Chris Freund September 19, 2014 The new Republican majority in the state Senate quickly went to work reorganizing committees while in town for the special session on the budget and Medicaid. Of course, those who’ve been paying attention may remember the battles over committee makeup when Republicans took over the Senate with then LG Bill Bolling casting the tie breaking vote, only to see a reversal of fortune in January when Democrats took control with LG Ralph Northam. Bad blood has been flowing between the two caucuses ever since, so the changes...

Statement of House Speaker William J. Howell on HR566 RICHMOND, VA - Virginia House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) issued the following statement Thursday on the passage of House Resolution 566: "Today the House of Delegates passed HR566, a resolution authorizing the Speaker to employ legal counsel to defend the laws and Constitution of the Commonwealth, as well as protect the responsibilities, authority and prerogatives of the House of Delegates. "I am deeply concerned by Attorney General Herring's refusal to defend the laws and Constitution of the Commonwealth. His actions represent a dangerous threat to separation of powers...

This image of a VA letter revoking second amendment rights based on PTSD diagnosis appears to be legitimate.   I do not recall ever seeing this type of revocation being challenged in the courts.   As the decision is a bureaucratic one, not one that was made with due process through the courts, a challenge other than the appeal process might hold promise. The point here is that the VA should not have the power to unilaterally make this decision without court oversight.  The existence of an appeals process is not, in my opinion, sufficient due process.   I do not know...

Doctors say deaths, can be linked to delays. A starkly different view than the one painted by VA inspector general’s report. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., questioning of acting VA IG, Richard Griffin, about whether IG was corruptly influenced by VA officials.... Miller banged his gavel to stop acting shill Griffin's speel. “You want the truth?” Griffin, incredulously. "As a physician” Katherine Mitchell, I believe the OIG case review systematically overlooked relationships between delays and deaths. Mitchell, joined by VA doctor Samuel Foot. Foot, "VA IG’s office used a criminal activity, as damage control, rather than using it to get to...

Two Veterans Affairs Medical Center employees were arrested last week for using VA facilities to smuggle and deal cocaine, the Department of Justice recently announced. Robert Tucker and Erik Casiano had been using the U.S. Postal Service and the mailroom of a VA Medical Center in the Bronx to receive and distribute cocaine since “at least November 2013,” according to the press release. Tucker has worked for the VA since 1997, and in 2012 was promoted to supervisor of the Logistics Warehouse and Mail Center. Casiano, a pipefitter in the plumbing department, had worked for the center since 2012. All...

MINNEAPOLIS — Two former employees of the Minneapolis VA Medical Center allege they were pressured to falsify patient appointment dates and medical records to hide delays, a television station reported. In a report that aired Wednesday night, the ex-employees told KARE-TV that in some cases, they were told to falsify medical records by writing that patients had declined follow-up treatments when, in reality, they say the veterans had never been contacted. The former VA workers fear that patients' lives may be at risk because they say some cases involved suspected colon cancer. "Some of them were getting missed altogether," said...

The Veterans Affairs clinic in Wasilla is without doctors after the three physicians working under contract over the summer decided not to renew those. A nurse practitioner, who transferred from Anchorage last week, is now carrying the 1,000-patient caseload. The Mat-Su Veterans Affairs Community Based Outpatient Clinic is supposed to have two full-time doctors but has been down one since 2012. The last full-time doctor left in May, KTVA reported (http://bit.ly/1rxNG8o ). "There were three physicians at various times who had been selected to come work there and had dropped out for various reason or there were credentialing issues with...

While the national media is busy convincing the American electorate that the Supreme Court ruled that no one can ever touch a birth control pill ever again because the GOP hates women, let me present to you a story that would be a national outrage emblematic of half the country’s values…if it involved a Republican.

Officials say missing pilot fatally injured Posted: Aug 27, 2014 10:30 AM EDT Updated: Aug 29, 2014 1:18 AM EDT By Rachel Lucas, Digital Journalist - bio | email Officials have confirmed Thursday that the pilot in Wednesday's crash F-15C Eagle was fatally injured. No word on whether officials have found the pilot's body. The pilot's name is being withheld pending notification of family members.

It wasn’t exactly the roaring, adoring, campaign-style crowd President Barack Obama is accustomed to. On Tuesday, the president spoke to the American Legion’s national convention, facing a crowd of veterans deeply concerned about widespread corruption at the Veterans Administration and the resultant deaths of some veterans awaiting health care. So when Obama began by lecturing the veterans about cynicism and explaining his most recent foreign policy choices — instead of addressing the VA crisis — the audience clearly wasn’t pleased. Fox News cameras captured a sea of blank or frowning faces looking silently back at the president as he paused...

President Barack Obama faced a tough crowd on Tuesday – American military veterans – and fell flat on his applause lines as he failed to win over the American Legion's convention-goers.The 35-minute speech seemed to have reminded the audience of the stark divide between the White House's policy choices and the feelings of the men and women often called on to carry them out.A Virginia legionnaire who served in the U.S. Marine Corps told MailOnline that 'a small group of Obama's admirers – and there are some here – sat near the front and tried to generate applause for him...

The VA Inspector has been investigating the deaths for months and has now shared draft of his findings with Top Officials. The new VA Secretary McDonald said: "It is important to note" that while the report documents deficiencies in quality and substantial delays in care, OIG was unable to conclusively assert that the absence of quality or care directly caused the death of any these victims. This May, the inspector found that 1,700 veterans, waiting for primary care appointments at the Phoenix VA, did not show up on the wait list. An additional 1,800 will have to wait at three...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Veterans Affairs says investigators have found no proof that delays in care caused any deaths at a VA hospital in Phoenix, deflating an explosive allegation that helped expose a troubled health care system in which veterans waited months for appointments while employees falsified records to cover up the delays. Revelations that as many as 40 veterans died while awaiting care at the Phoenix VA hospital rocked the agency last spring, bringing to light scheduling problems and allegations of misconduct at other hospitals as well. The scandal led to the resignation of former VA Secretary...

Okay. I'm not sure how I missed the updates/reports other than the fact that they appear not to have been posted here at FR. Principal source link is the PDF report to Congress in regards to a prior post here:("Final Report to the Congressional Defense Committees in Response to the Joint Explanatory Statement Accompanying the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014, page 90, “Radiation Exposure” "). (link will open/download the PDF) An update on the USS Ronald Reagan crew lawsuit re their mysterious illnesses in the wake of Operation Tomodachi is here: ("USS Reagan Sailors’ Lawsuit Found ‘Lacking’ Nuclear Expert...

MEDIA CONTACT: Josh Baumgartner 703.766.4467 info@fairfaxgop.org The fight for the integrity of the election process and against election fraud took a big step forward Wednesday in Fairfax. The General Registrar for Fairfax County, Ms. Cameron Quinn, was presented with a challenge to the registration of over 14,500 voters in Fairfax County. The challenge was based upon information showing that those voters are registered to vote in both Fairfax County and Maryland. The challenge was made by Mr. Reagan George, President of the Virginia Voters Alliance (VVA), on behalf of himself and three other residents of Fairfax County, under the provisions...

In 2010, the Veterans Administration rolled out a new online application that promised the nation’s veterans a quick, easy way to access one of the chief benefits of military service: enrollment in the VA’s vast network of hospitals and health care facilities. Veterans across the country responded. In fact, the online system did the opposite of what it promised, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found. Instead of making it easier and faster to apply for benefits, the online system sent some veterans who used it into administrative limbo where their applications received no action, delaying their access to...

the insane ways that the VA focused on solar energy and wind towers over vets. Three years before Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki would be forced out of his job because of the veterans who had died under him, he visited the Massachusetts National Cemetery. He wasn’t there to see the men and women who had died because of him. While vets were dying, Obama and Shinseki had turned their attention to something truly important; seeing to it that all the cemeteries where they were being buried had wind or solar power. ... The cemetery turbine had cost $533,000....

The Obama VA may be running a back door gun registry under the guise of a “free gun lock” program. A Progressives Today reader sent in this letter they received with the following worrisome comment attached: Is this a backdoor way of the VA attempting to create a gun registry on vets? I think it is… (Click to enlarge) Dear Veteran:The James E. Van Zandt VA Medial Center is extending the opportunity to request free gun locks to the Veterans we serve. We are providing this opportunity because, as your partner in health care, we are committed to keeping you...