That's your problem right there Paul, VA benefits should only be available to veterans with service related injuries. As a stateside pencil pushing JAG officer, it's unlikely you even have issues related to your military service. The VA emergency waiting rooms are filled with normal people with normal ailments who are taking advantage of a service that should be reserved for vets with legitimate service injuries.
I know three individuals who use and abuse the VA hospital simply because they served two years in the Army decades ago and never had an employer that provided them with health insurance.....
I should also have said that career veterans earned the right to continued care following retirement......
I always thought that was the case. Even though just recently I found out I can go to the VA, I never would even though I don’t have insurance.
In my years of Med School and Residency I had first hand experience with 6 different VA hospitals. I could not, at first, understand for the life of my why they were uniformly so crappy. Then it dawned on me. The Mission of the VA is to “care for him who has born the battle”. In peacetime there are very few to sustain demand but the building have to maintain the infrastructure to rapidly increase the services the VA provides should a war erupt. So they intentionally create or tolerate crappy services so only those most indigent who have no other recourse present themselves.
Which is why when you rush a ProTime to the lab for a “stat” so you can begin Coumadin the tech tells you you can put it with “the other stats” which literally have cobwebs on them. Which explains why your “Stat CT scan” for an emergency stroke patient “can’t be done because the tube isn’t warmed up, unless you have ten bucks.” Yes, I have quite a number of experiences that would make you cringe.
“I know three individuals who use and abuse the VA hospital “
My exwife’s father had a professional career for his whole life yet did nothing to prepare for retirement. He did two years in the Army in the 60s. No combat duty, no military related disability. I don’t think he ever even went outconus. The VA was treating him for diabetes, hypertension, and several other medical issues. I didn’t know the VA system till I saw that situation. Pretty ridiculous.