Sorry for your bad experience. My father was very pleased with Long Beach VA when he had to have bone shards removed from his knee caused during one of three crashes during WWII. Apparently the field hospital hadn’t appropriately smoothed the jagged edges of the bone at the time of incident, and over the years the bone deteriorated, and began breaking up protruding through his knee. Long Beach fixed him up in the late 1950’s, and he survived to 2009 passing on at 87 He was tailgunner in Liberators in South Pacific.
My own experience was at Pettis VA at Loma Linda in which I received the best of care when I was blinded by cataracts back in 2001. My eyesight was restored to 20/20. I have nothing but good things to say about my VA experience, and truly am saddened to hear others having so much difficulty.
Good you experienced excellent care, but keep in mind, the 1950’s Long Beach VA is quite different that the one today.
My experience (and pardon the editing errors):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3036216/posts?page=42#42
By the way, my official complaint against the Long Beach VA was forwarded by the Wash DC IG to to very hospital that provided abusive and rude/nasty ‘care.’ As you can easily imagine, they investigated themselves and of course they found my charges groundless.