Good at Killing Veterans not Helping Them: Why Improving the Veterans Administration is Like Refurbishing a House on Fire

Imagine a house on fire – flames licking the walls, smoke billowing into the night sky, the structure groaning under the heat. In the middle of this inferno, there’s a team arguing about the color of the drapes and the style of the kitchen tiles. This is akin to the current state of the VA: a system so engulfed in the flames of inefficiency, outdated technology, and bureaucratic inertia that attempts at internal renovation resemble a futile effort to redecorate a house that’s already burning to the ground.

The VA’s efforts at modernizing, as evidenced by the debacle of the Oracle Cerner electronic health records system, are akin to slapping a fresh coat of paint on charred walls. With a staggering $16 billion spent and a plethora of issues, including missing critical data, this system is more a liability than a lifeline​.

Gwinn, 63, said it was easier and quicker to look for the first thing that would discredit a (veteran’s) claim and close it out, rather than find ways to approve it. –NBC News

The management challenges of the VA are vast and deep-rooted. Over 1,500 recommendations for improvement have been made since 2000, yet a significant chunk remains unaddressed. This is not just a failure of systems but a systemic failure, indicating a level of dysfunction that goes beyond the usual bureaucratic hiccups​.

Mental health and suicide prevention, areas of paramount importance for veterans, are treated with a band-aid approach. The VA seems to be more interested in managing symptoms than engaging in transformative care that addresses the root causes of veteran distress. The situation with the Veterans Crisis Line is even more alarming, plagued by mismanagement and inadequate responses to veterans in dire need​​​.

“We’re not catching these problems early enough,” said Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, a retired Navy SEAL. The veterans’ bodies and brains often are “broken” by the time they ask for help, he said. -Stars & Stripes

Then there’s the technical labyrinth that veterans must navigate to file their claims, a process mired in glitches and backlogs.

It’s a digital quagmire where veterans, already burdened by the challenges of post-military life, are forced to grapple with a system that seems designed to thwart rather than aid them​.

When I recently logged in after a confusing twenty minutes of navigating pages that failed to load and confusing login information, I finally just picked up the phone and dialed.

After listening to the suicide greeting, I was put on a 38-minute hold…

This is mainly a result of multiple private contractors building confusing systems, essentially roads to nowhere. It’s like when China built new highways for poor African countries in exchange for access to natural resources. African leadership didn’t realize there was no plan or infrastructure to maintain the roads in the long run, and decay set in.

It is incredibly frustrating, and I can only imagine someone who is really struggling and what they must feel. I read somewhere that a veteran’s chances of harming themselves actually go up if they engage with the VA healthcare system. An organization designed to help but is actually doing more harm than good and a massive waste of American taxpayer money.

Here’s a VA Highlight Reel

The Biggest Construction Failure in VA History

The Department of Veterans Affairs replacement Denver VA Medical Center is the biggest construction failure in VA history. Since the project’s inception, the cost of the hospital has ballooned from $328 million to $1.73 billion. Yet as the project spiraled out of control, VA ignored congressional pleas to get things back on track at almost every turn. Instead of putting forth a realistic plan for covering the enormous cost overruns in Denver by finding efficiencies in its existing budget and eliminating waste, VA has essentially demanded that taxpayers subsidize the department’s incompetence with an $830 million bailout. To date, no employees have been held accountable for this fiasco. Source: Washington

$10B misuse of procurement funds expended by VA by not following federal acquisition regulations and other laws.

According to VA’s Senior Procurement Executive, Jan Frye, billions have been illegally spent every year for many years, if not decades. Read more: Veterans Affairs improperly spent $6 billion annually, senior … West Los Angeles VAMC A senior VA employee at the West Los Angeles VAMC was identified to have purged approximately 40,000 Veterans care requests without conducting a medical review as a means to hide wait times. A senior VA official also testified that appointment wait times were “about four days” when VA’s own documents reveal wait times in Los Angeles to be an average of 48 days and some wait times as long as 90 days. -CNN

Numerous examples of VA’s practice of overprescribing medication were exemplified by the revelation of a VA doctor in Tomah, Wisconsin nicknamed “The Candyman.” Additional examples of overmedication, some characterized as suicides were identified in a year’s long HVAC-GAO investigation that revealed Veteran deaths due to drug interactions, drug toxicity, and improper medication management. -Infozine.com 

Thousands of Veterans Cannot Access Health Care

The access scandal of 2014 uncovered that Veterans were not receiving timely health care has been rocked by an ongoing HVAC investigation that noted hundreds of thousands of Veterans enrollment applications for care were never even processed by VA’s Health Eligibility Center (HEC) in Atlanta, in essence denying Veterans that initial access to care. VA’s own documents reveal more than 238,000 Veterans died while waiting for VA to enroll them for health care and a VA whistleblower further noted 34,000 Iraq/Afghanistan Veterans were denied access to VA healthcare despite having 5 years of guaranteed eligibility, 16,000 Iraq/ Afghanistan Veterans have lost their guaranteed eligibility due to VA errors and errors with the VA Enrollment System cause phone numbers to not port over to the NEAR LIST, meaning VA could not follow up with Veteran regarding applications.  -Theadvertiser.com

Summary

It’s worth mentioning that the people on the front lines at the VA have been incredible to me once you get them in person or on the phone however, it’s clear they are demoralized and forced to work in sweat shop-like conditions with no air conditioning and expected to do the impossible in a dysfunctional system.

My argument is for dismantling this failing system in favor of a more centralized, efficient model using private healthcare; it’s about respect, dignity, and the moral obligation owed to those who’ve served.

It’s time to take a bulldozer to the house on fire and rebuild the system entirely anew.

The government needs to build a centralized modern headquarters and leverage the existing private healthcare system to streamline the process for veterans. I would model it after the existing overseas veteran healthcare system (which is actually great and something I recently applied for) that allows veterans to choose their own healthcare providers for treatment.

This is not just another call for reform; it’s a call to extinguish the flames of a system failing those it was meant to protect and rebuild from the ground up. It’s high time the VA is overhauled, not with the timid strokes of incremental change, but with the bold, decisive action that our veterans rightfully deserve.

The military nonprofit world is also very confusing, and in 2024, SOFREP will build a massive veterans resource center onsite. This will consolidate all state and federal benefits available to the military and veteran community, in addition to all nonprofits, as a one-stop central hub.

In the meantime, the beatings will continue until morale improves…

SOFREP wants to hear from you and your experience with the VA. Please write to us here or share in the comments below.