The VA started knowingly declining service to Vets as far back as 1972 when they started their bed reduction program that continues to this day. I had been warning faux news before the VA story even broke. The day it did break I mailed them (might have tweeted them) that there was much more to this story for them to dig deeper. Did they listen? Nope. Kind of like that stupide Viet Nam Vet who I encountered in a Wal Mart selling Humana. I asked to get information about Humana he asked why. I told him I was 100% svc connected and wanted to save my life by getting away from the VA. This was after I went to the VA ER with 104 degree temp given a bottle of Ibuprofen and told to come back on Monday if my symptoms hadn’t changed. Luckily I decided to go to public hospital where no more tha 2 hours later I had emergency surgery for an infection that could have cost my life. That stupid Vet yelled at me in front of the store at Wal Mart saying how the VA was the best thing since the Civil War. It may have been at one time. Its not a full service health care. They can’t do things that a normal health care provider could. It took me over 10 years to get them to write a letter so I could go back to school. I had eventually had to get a Congresswoman to investigate in order for them to write it. I despise the VA although I have no choice but to use them. There are good things about them like everything but I no longer have to commit suicide, I just need to walk into the nearest VA if I want to have it done for me.
**went to the VA ER with 104 degree temp given a bottle of Ibuprofen and told to come back on Monday if my symptoms hadn’t changed. Luckily I decided to go to public hospital where no more tha 2 hours later I had emergency surgery**
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I can relate to that. I needed surgery to remove a 30yr old shell fragment from my leg. The VA surgeon wanted to remove it fast because my system was growing tissue around it at a fast pace trying to reject it, about golf ball size. Ended up in a non-VA hospital to get it out fast since VA would not schedule surgery faster than 11 months. The growth had grown to fist size by then with the schrapnel snugly buried inside. Something wrong with the VA system when you need to have combat injuries attended to by a non-military hospital.
Has the bed reduction program been reported here as a thread? I’ll see what I can find online, too.