HONOR THE TROOPS, AWARDS TO DOCTORS AND NURSES..
ROSE COLORED GLASSES CAN’T FOOL A CORPSE
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
This week, a veteran was denied disability for PTSD. He had to travel 300 miles for his Comp and Pension physical. It was in the basement of a private doctor. He was told he couldn’t have PTSD, as serving as a Combat Engineer in Vietnam, he wasn’t classified as someone who could have seen combat.
He had been diagnosed with PTSD already by a highly qualified doctor but was told he was faking in his “findings” from the VA, based on this “basement” evaluation. The VA never paid his travel expenses, though they have been filed more than once. Now, this may be the best part.
The VA is now trying to seize his Social Security for not making his co-pays on the meds he was prescribed for the PTSD he couldn’t have for the combat he imagined in Vietnam.
There has to be an award given to the clowns who handled this claim. Recently the VA awarded medical staff for, frankly, doing the job they are paid for. Is the award a pig with lipstick? How about a new award. We could call it “THE VETTY.” I am suggesting bronze, showing a man in a wheelchair being attacked by wolves. What do you think?
It’s obvious we are going to need to have many categories for THE VETTY. With such resourceful and imaginative people to honor for such diverse and bizarre acts, classification is going to be a problem. I am going to list some of the areas of outstanding performance deserving of this award but my list alone won’t even begin to cover it.
Always at the forefront:
1. Mysterious Document Disappearance: Hiding, shredding or burying in desks takes time and effort. With, potentially, millions of vital documents missing, a highly motivated group of individuals needs to be rooted out, recognized and rewarded for these efforts.
a. Did it all start with the “mysterious St. Louis fire” that destroyed the files of tens of thousands of veterans? Why have so many of the burned files now shown up yellowed but soot free decades later? Does the VA employ magicians? They need an award of some kind for sure.
2. Employee Intimidation and Retaliation: The hard work of keeping employees who witness corrupt practices and patient abuse from writing books and movie scripts or talking to the press or Congress has been a vital part of VA management for decades. The outstanding “hammers” in this area need and deserve recognition.
3. Medical Malpractice: The alphabet only has 26 letters but we give this a start:
a. The filthy endoscopy equipment believed to have infected vets with AIDS and hepatitis is only part of a tradition begun at the old “shotline” when soldier after soldier was inoculated with the same filthy gun. Lots of victims here and thousands of lives shortened. This one deserves particular recognition.
b. Blood work, tests, X-rays and dozens of other diagnostic procedures are continually mislabeled, mislaid or simply “forgotten.” A close friend at a VA lab in the midwest could keep you in chuckles for hours with stories about this.
c. “The Poisoned Pill” Prescription medications that turn vets into trembling, castrated zombies. Two pills to keep you awake, one to make you confused, 3 to make you sleep. One to make you big, one to make you small, the ones the VA gives you often don’t do anything, anything good, at all.
d. Misdiagnosis: Combat stress is always preexisting. Maybe we all grew up in Detroit. Agent orange cancer? Take 2 aspirin and come back in 6 months. Need a joint replacement? A facility in one state gives you a new hip and one in the next state gives you “a new appointment” and another and another until you go away.
4. Patient abuse: Another category constrained by the small alphabet we use.
a. Patients diagnosed, needing physical therapy or advanced treatment who NEVER get referrals to needed specialists unless they know how to “play the system.”
b. The “appointment shuffle:” Waiting a year for an appointment and being told that appointment was only to get you in to schedule you for your next appointment. No, I’m not kidding. They really do this. I saw an aging vet throw a chair thru a display case after one of these. “The lame shall walk….”
c. Cold storage: Hard chairs in noisy hallways with waits that can take up entire days, even if it is only to get a form signed. PTSD vets are the best, a few hours “misplaced” in a waiting room brings on some fascinating results. There is always the VA Police to get out the clubs or pepper spray to help with a panic attack. Trained professionals like these are never recognized.
d. Staff tirades at elderly, deaf or over-medicated patients who don’t leap to their feet immediately when their names are called at clinics, often horribly mispronounced or slurred. This one is going to be tough with, literally thousands of employees in the running.
e. The mysterious and always fatal “appeal process” on VA claims. Veterans who win appeals are immediately flown to Wright Patterson Air Force Base to be photographed with the Roswell alien bodies stored there. Haven’t heard of this? Could it be the “win” list at appealing errors by one of the world’s worst bureaucracies is a short one?
5. VSO’s: Veterans Service Officers/Organizations, though not part of the government themselves, many function as though they they were real, actual federal government employees.
a. Losing, misplacing claims forms or filing for wrong categories. Up to 40% of service officers are utterly unqualified and almost none have the guts to tell veterans the kind of circus they are in store for when they file a disability claim.
b. “Not making waves:” Keeping “mum” about years of abuse out of feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Maybe we can get a hundred million of these awards. We certainly have enough people for them.
Last, but certainly not least, we need to award Congress for its “attention deficit” approach to veterans reform. Their ability to turn humans into “special interest groups” or “line items” has made all of this possible.
I can’t finish without thanking the news media and the American people for looking the other way as long as someone else is the victim. Many will cry like babies when billionaires are threatened with losing their offshore money laundering rights or huge corporations are threatened with having taxpayer financed subsidies cut.
A veteran is supposed to show up in a funny hat every November 11 and “warm our hearts” with his quiet dignity and patriotism. Those people living under bridges can’t be “real veterans.”
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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