Posts from — May 2014

So General Shinseki finaly got his resignation accepted, and he can put the impossible situation that he was expected to fix behind him. He is a good man who deserved better treatment by the government, but he was treated the way this government treats all vets – badly.

Ken Houghton at Skippy’s place has a post with links that covers the real problems with the VA. Ken is annoyed with Matt Yglesias, but he lays out the facts of what is really going on, not what the MSM and Congress want you to believe.

Here’s the deal – the number of vets needing assistance has been growing by leaps and bounds, while VA funding hasn’t kept up with inflation. That means that the number of people that the VA can see and treat has remained the same while the number of people who want to be seen and treated is increasing geometrically.

The record keeping fraud is a problem, and it can be dealt with by the existing system. Fraudulent reporting is more than enough justification to fire the people involved, and may be violation of law, depending on the definition in Federal statutes of malfeasance. You can fire Civil Service employees if they don’t do their job properly. If the people in the VA don’t understand the process, The School of Industrial Relations at Cornell University has a 40 hour seminar on it. It takes a little time and some record keeping, but there is no doubt as to how it will end, and union attorneys will advise workers to resign rather than waiting for the end of the process. There is no point in having new legislation. I know this works because I’ve done it. People who say that you can’t fire people on Civil Service, don’t understand Civil Service.

The reason people have to wait months to be seen at VA facilities is because Congress won’t adequately fund the VA to handle the number of veterans that Congress created when it approved so many wars.

Rudyard Kipling described the attitude of people towards the military in his 1892 poem, Tommy. The attitude is still the same.

Back-lit Vigilance

En garde!

[Editor: Ms Underhouse ignores me, but the kit stands guard.]

Friday Ark

About that ‘huge bureaucracy’ that the people keep saying the VA has – WRONG! While the number of people applying for benefits keep growning, the size of the VA is not keeping pace. The VA is remaining static while the need grows, so it isn’t surprising that there are long wait times.

The one bright spot for today is that the VA Benefits center doesn’t waste your time with holding. They tell you to call again later, or wait until after normal working hours to call and schedule a callback.

They are still pushing their impossible to use website which I already know doesn’t have the information I need. All I want to know is what I have to send to them concerning my Mother’s death, and what address I use. If I get the number of any forms required, I can do a search to find the PDFs. You need the numbers because the titles of the forms are usually worthless. I also need the procedure for returning an over-payment. Apparently credit unions know how to do it, but commercial banks don’t.

The VA’s “huge bureaucracy” only has one benefits center, so everything has to be done by mail.

The funeral home said they would contact Social Security, so I didn’t have to worry about that. The credit union charged back the automatic deposit from Social Security that was posted after the death, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

That’s why I was taken aback when the letters started arriving from the Social Security Administration wanting to know why the last deposit was returned. I called and told them because my Mother had died, and they said that they didn’t know she had passed away. I checked with the funeral home who confirmed that they had notified Social Security and gave me the confirmation number. Even after I called back and gave Social Security that information, the letters kept coming.

Finally I went down to the local Social Security office and waited to give them a death certificate. After 30-45 minutes my number was called and I presented all of the letters and a death certificate to the clerk who looked at his screen and said: ‘You didn’t need to come in, the funeral home reported her passing.’

I explained that the people in the benefits center in New York told me I had to file an official, certified, rainbow-colored, ten dollar death certificate.

The clerk looked at the screen for several minutes, and suddenly moved his mouse and clicked. He said that whoever got the report from the funeral home had neglected to check a box.

Apparently if you return money to any government agency except the IRS they freak out. This doesn’t bode well for the VA, my last major notification, and someone I need to return money to because of the automatic deposit.

This is for all of the people who don’t understand what the VA health care system actually is, which seemingly includes most of Congress.

The VA system is a network of actual clinics and hospitals where veterans receive health care. Like all health care systems there are a lot of ‘bureaucrats’. The average private sector hospital has many more clerks than medical personnel when compared to a VA hospital. The VA system is always rated at or near the top in studies involving effectiveness and efficiency in the health care sector.

While there has been a small annual fee instituted under the G.W. Bush administration, there are no co-pays and medication is provided free of charge. The major problem with the system has been the limited number of clinics and hospitals, not the quality of the care received. Veterans have to travel long distances if they don’t live near an existing VA facility.

The people suggesting that the VA system be replaced by Medicare don’t seem to understand all of the costs that Medicare recipients have to cover, costs that have created the market for so-called ‘Medi-Gap’ insurance, and the need to obtain a separate Part D insurance policy for assistance in purchasing medication. This replacement would shift significant costs to the veterans, but, then, the people complaining about the ‘huge VA bureaucracy’ don’t actually give a damn about veterans as anything other than a backdrop for a photo op.

The VA provides health care – Medicare provides health insurance. They are not the same.

This is a picture from one of the columbariums at the Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of many of those who served the United States since the middle of the 19^th century.

That is my Father’s marker. He didn’t know those located around his marker, but they all shared service to their country as part of their life.

The country continues to ask for service and people still respond to that call. As you think about the sacrifices represented by Arlington and other cemeteries, ask yourself if you have done what you could to prevent misuse of the willingness of some to serve.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Towel Day

You do know where your towel is?

The NRA scored another 7 deaths and 7 injured in Isla Vista, California next to the UC Santa Barbara campus. We are to believe that a college student decided to go on a shooting spree because he couldn’t get a date.

He started his rampage with the stabbing deaths of his three roommates, and then dropped his three legally purchased handguns into his BMW and drove through town gunning people down.

The gunman’s family has told authorities that he was being treated for Asperger’s Syndrome, but the Aspies I know are not violent people, and understand their problem – the inability to understand non-verbal language. They tend to be very literal and have a hard time understanding some humor, or the social clues that people send all the time. Just because someone has Asperger’s doesn’t mean they can’t be bipolar or schizophrenic as well.

This individual was being professionally treated for a mental health problem and he was still able to legally purchase three handguns thanks to the NRA and craven politicians.

Bathing

Do you mind?

[Editor: Ms Underhouse takes a cat bath while the kit prefers the solar variety.]

Friday Ark

In addition to all of the things I’m dealing with concerning my Mother, and an annoying complaint by the town that must be pandered to, I have actually been doing some maintenance of a program that I wrote three decades ago.

This program has been chugging along in MS-DOS 3.1 through Windows XP and took a hit from the latest iteration of the HP LaserJet. They made a minor change to the driver that scrambled the printer output.

It took a while to figure out what they had done, because it wasn’t technically a real change, but the strict enforcement of some program standards. What they did was in a passing comment in an HP programming manual, so I finally tried it, and the program is again pumping out paper.

It’s always nice to be useful.

As I have progressed through the various businesses, organizations, and bureaucracies to tie up loose ends, I dread having to deal with men. Men just don’t seem to be as engaged and knowledgeable about their organizations and processes.

Today it was a bank, where I had to wait for a half hour to see anyone, and it was apparently a manager of some kind who was constantly looking at his computer screen to figure out how to close an account. He finished by having the teller give me cash.

Teller looked at the amount and looked at the manager several times before she started the process, as if she couldn’t believe what he was doing. It wasn’t enough to buy a new car, but it would have made a very nice down payment.

I then had to make an unplanned trip to the credit union to unload the cash, because it made me nervous. Normally I would want to be armed carrying around that much money. The teller had me move close so she wouldn’t have to count it where anyone could see it, and put it in an envelop so it wasn’t obvious.

The lady at the insurance agency took care of switching the car insurance and got me a decrease in the cost, because I am a much safer driver than my Mother was.

Sorry, but I’m convinced that women are just better at this type of thing, and I don’t want to deal with men. I guess that makes me a sexist.

We had a power outage today as the result of the suicide attack of a ninja squirrel that caused the step-down transformer for three houses to go ‘BOOM!’ The ‘warrior’ was cooked faster than in a microwave [4KV does that].

I was over at my Mother’s house today and turned on the television to one of the news channels while I worked [my Mother doesn’t have a good radio].

They did a story on the current VA scandal and included statements by John McCain and Jefferson Beauregard Miller. Those two have a lot of damn gall complaining about the VA.

The report of 40 deaths without healthcare at the Phoenix VA Hospital should not have come as a surprise to McCain. He is one of Arizona’s Senators, and I can’t believe that none of the 40 called his office. We have called four Senators and two Congresscritters over the delay in my Mother’s paperwork, so someone seriously ill would have certainly complained to their Congressional delegation. Where was John McCain when this was happening? Why did this come as a surprise?

Miller is the chairman of the committee that is supposed to be overseeing the VA. Why didn’t he know about the problems? Where was the Congressional oversight?

It is amazing that when there is a ‘scandal’ the committees never include their oversight role when looking to fix the blame.

Not everyone I’m dealing with is a hemorrhoid, there have been organizations and businesses that deal with death in a reasonable fashion.

The Davis Watkins Funeral Home made their process simple and straight-forward, keeping me informed of the progress. They are the people having to deal with the mess at Arlington.

Eglin Federal Credit Union took care of returning the necessary money to Social Security, and creating a new account. They are keeping both accounts open until we know that Social Security is sending my check to the new account.

Even the people on Eglin Air Force Base took care of all of the Department of Defense notifications required in minutes when I turned in my Mother’s ID card.

I still have the local Social Security office, the local VA office, and a commercial Bank to go, but there is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel for everything except the transfer of my Mother’s remains to Arlington.