I know it is long, but I did not want to make an excerpt or post to the bloggers post so bear with it.
I have always felt that, despite my service in the Marines, I was financially able not to use any VA benefits that may have been due me so that others more worthy of those benefits would be treated first. While that may sound a tad altruistic, after this I can add that I don’t have to put up with them.
As for Master Sergeant Robert Thomas Bowman, thank you for your service.
Thank you for sharing this. I do believe that a high level of incompetency is nourished in these government agencies, in order to require many more employees, who no doubt have an enhanced degree of job security “to correct the problems”. The ineptitude also allows the agencies to complain that they do not have enough funding, and if they only had more money, things would improve.
Typical government employees, IOW. If you are a gov't employed FReeper and that shoe don't fit, please don't put it on!
MSG Bowman, thank you for your service to our country.
My wife & I are retired warrant officers. We did our initial signup with the local VA two years ago, in person. Our experience has been such that we will cling to our civilian care providers with a death grip. It is like the VA doesn’t exist except as a special needs jobsite for those on the opposite side of the counter.
Many do not like the VA in Denver. The VA at Cheyenne is completely different. I think part is the state the hospital is in. I talked to a disabled Marine that got his layoff notice with the Post Office. His boss was never in the military and she seemed to have little experience at anything. Military preference seems to be gone in the Post Office now. He called OPM and the woman there said “I can’t help you”
5.56mm
After hearing so many stories like this on FR, I am thankful for the outstanding care and service I receive from my VA clinic in Viera Florida. It’s a damn shame the high standards here do not prevail throughout the VA.
I remember when I was in the Navy they told us that if we contributed $1000 for VA education benefits, we could get $10,000 in tuition assistance upon separation, so I signed up for the program. When it came time to pay up, they rules were long complex and impossible to comply with. I didn’t see a dime of that money.
I also figured that maybe I could get a VA loan to help finance my first house. I figured that they would vouch for my previous eight years, but no. They told me I had to be in my current job for 2 years.
After that waste of time, I figured the VA was worse than nothing. It wasted my time with no benefits.
It is not possible to motivate somebody who’s wages are set, and who can NOT be fired.
The hard workers get the same raises as the slackers.
The libs like the sure votes, so they will never allow consequences for poor performance.
Thanks for posting this.
Several thoughts:
If you’re interested in a career with lots of exciting risk, the morbidity and mortality rates for mental health workers are off the charts compared to the military and law enforcement, AND compared to the military mental health workers have much better healthcare options post injury.
I’m a vet. I never have and never will consider using VA services. It’s a Federal bureaucracy. Bureaucracies evolve such that their stated mission is never their true mission: their true mission is the perpetuation of the bureaucracy, the expansion of the bureaucracy, and the acquisition of funding, benefits and power for their bureaucracy. The VA and its workers have your needs as a very, very distant concern, if at all, which it is not required to be. (And, of course, they can’t be fired.)
I’m also a doc working in a navy town rich in military and vets and their families. The VA here doesn’t seem to be geared up at all to get people well, and they are so obstructionistic towards the efforts of those of us who do strive to get people well that I simply have to turn down any patient who comes to me in the hope that I will coordinate my efforts with the VA’s docs/lab/pharmacy/etc.
Gee, what a surprise.
Slight correction. shackashevely or whatever the hell his name is has been in the position nearly 6 years not just over 4 years.
When he ran up the notion for troops to pay their own medical bills for wounds received in combat told the whole story about this horse’s butt.
How he got to be a general is baffling.
So what’s Shinseki going to do? Order the guy a new hat?
Great letter from an extremely gifted letter writer!!!
I ran into a similar situation with the VA while trying to help a family member. It’s too long a story, but here’s the gist. The VA employee with whom I originally spoke was now unavailable because he was stationed to another part of the VA, and NOBODY could handle it but him.
After repeated calls and more shifting of the blame I wrote to the VA and included a letter I would write to the major local newspaper outlining the poor treatment of a man who had served his country with honor.
The next day I received a call from the VA and they had through some miracle fixed the problem. THEY HATE BAD PUBLICITY.
It took them about 500 days to reject my claim!!!