By the numbers
If we look at things by the numbers. at first glance the VA should be doing fine. After all, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total number of veterans in the U.S. declined by nearly 5 million between 2000 and 2013.
The problem is that the decline is from veterans of World War II and Korea who weren't eligible for healthcare from the VA dying off. The number of veterans who are eligible for healthcare at the VA has risen dramatically. That's why the budget for the VA has been rising in recent years. If only adding money were the solution, things would be great at the VA. Throwing money at a problem isn't always the answer.
Of the roughly 22 million veterans in the U.S. at the moment, nearly 8.8 million are being served by VA facilities. The VA's priority system is byzantine but the basic rule of thumb is that if a veteran has a service-connected disability, or served after January 28th, 2003 and were discharged less than five years ago; or if they are eligible for Medicaid or have limited financial resources, then they qualify in one of the eight priorities.
The White House report calls the goal of seeing veterans who seek treatment within 14 days "unrealistic" and that may be true. The last time I saw a particular specialist the earliest follow-up appointment (they wanted to see me after three weeks) was so far off that they couldn't schedule it. They put me on "re-call" which is a system where you get a postcard telling you to call for an appointment. I got a message to the doctor who found a way to get me in right when he wanted to see me. However, I can understand calling the 14 day goal unrealistic.
I'm helping someone with filing a claim for a service-connected disability. It's for a World War II veteran who was released from the Army due to a medical condition. Unfortunately for him, it appears that the Army never documented the problem in his medical records and that's going to make it extremely difficult to get him the care he's entitled to. I'm certain that if the diagnosis that caused him to be released during a time of war could be documented, his disability rating would be high enough to put him into one of the top two priority groups.
Another problem is even if we can obtain documentation of the service-connected disability, it may take too long to get the claim through the system. A report released by several U. S. Senators looking into the problem of backlogged disability claims at the VA states quite clearly that there are more than 400,000 claims for disability benefits that have been in the system more than 125 days. Some have languished for a year or more.
So what do we do? For the person I'm helping, we request the records from the St. Louis Military Personnel Records Center and hope for the best. For the VA as a whole, there's a key phrase in the summary of the White House report that reads “A corrosive culture has led to personnel problems across the Department that are seriously impacting morale and by extension, the timeliness of health care...” There needs to be wholesale housecleaning among the VA's upper and middle management. Every single employee who ordered data to be falsified, who threatened any whistleblower, or who engaged in any other actions that resulted in veterans being improperly denied or delayed in receiving treatment; needs to be disciplined. A number of them need to be allowed to retire, while some need to be fired for cause. Some quite probably need to be prosecuted.
Then again, assuming we don't get dragged into any more wars in the next few decades, the problem of an overburdened VA system will be resolved through attrition. Eventually most of the veterans, those being cared for and those who were ignored, will die off. Not the best solution.
* * *
Governor Brown and the state legislature are being penny-wise and pound foolish by refusing an offer from the California Endowment to help keep people from leaving the Medi-Cal program.
On the surface it may make sense. Fewer enrollees, costs go down and the state saves money. But that's not what will happen. The newly uninsured will take advantage of the fact that emergency rooms must provide treatment to anyone and everyone, regardless of whether or not they are insured, or can pay cash; and get treatment there. Hospitals, forced to eat the costs of providing care for these people will charge other people more to make up the difference. Everyone will pay more.
We may never get a perfect healthcare system, but the more people who are covered, the lower the cost on an individual basis. It's a basic axiom that the fearmongers who decry Obamacare as a failure choose to ignore. At our peril. Obamacare isn't a perfect solution, but it is the closest thing yet to one. We tried letting the free-market work in the insurance industry and thus far all we have is insurers making billions in profits while we see countless petitions on Change.org seeking to get these same insurers to change decisions where coverage for care was denied.
It's the same with abortion funding. One dollar for the funding for abortions will save eleven dollars in so-called "safety-net" spending.
* * *
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney is bloviating about how poorly the Obama Administration is handling the crisis in Iraq. Never mind this is a mess for which Cheney deserves at least as much, if not more blame than former President George W. Bush for creating, but his criticisms lack a general validity.
The truth is, we went into the war in Iraq with plenty of plans for winning the war and not a single thought given to winning the peace afterward. Depose Saddam Hussein, install democracy and live happily ever after was the height of insanity. It ignores the ethnicity and religious divisions that deeply separate three main groups in the nation.
The Sunni Muslims, the Shia Muslims and the Kurds (who are mostly Sunni but also contain many other faiths among their ethnic population) are the main groups. 65% of the Muslim population of Iraq is Shia with the remaining 35% being Sunnis. The Kurds make up roughly 17% of the overall population (remember, they are mostly Sunnis) while Iraqi "Arabs" make up 75% of the total population.
Since the current Prime Minister is a Shia, who took power in the elections of 2006 after a Sunni post-war government failed, the Sunnis are the "aggrieved" population, along with the Kurds. They claim they are being discriminated against. ISIS, who we've all heard about, now considers itself a sovereign state. Actually, they claim to be a caliphate and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadiis their Caliph.
Is there an easy solution. Sure. Divide Iraq into three autonomous states within the nation, one Sunni, one Shia and one Kurdish. Divvy up the nation's natural resources and voila, peace would prevail. Yes, that was sarcasm. There is no simple answer. These are age-old divisions (dating back to AD632) and they've only grown deeper with the passage of time.
And only time will tell what will happen in Iraq. However, I'll wager the 300 advisors already in or on their way to Iraq won't be the last people we put in harm's way to continue to try to fix a mess of our making.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Like anyone else, Tim Cook's sexuality is nobody else's business. Just because you're a CEO shouldn't entitle everyone to know about your private life. Unless you're doing illegal things, which he isn't (to the best of our knowledge).
On the other hand, since it appears that former American Apparel CEO Dov Charney may have engaged in behavior that resulted in a plethora of lawsuits, who can blame the company's Board of Directors for getting rid of him?
Choosing former Proctor & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald to be the next Secretary of Veteran Affairs is an outside of the box choice by President Obama. It didn't matter who he chooses, the nominee is going to be grilled by the Senate like a hot dog on the barbeque on July 4th, during the confirmation hearings. Good luck Mr. McDonald.
Did Maria Sharapova's chances of winning Wimbledon improve with the early exit of Serena Williams? Damn right they did.
Heidi Klum spend $14 million on a Brentwood home, spent "several million more" in improvements and has now listed the place for a mere $25 million. Sad thing is, she'll probably get it, given how hot high-end homes are in L. A. at the moment.
The good news is that on average, we drive cars that get better gas mileage. The bad news is that because of this, the fund to repair the nation's highways is going broke, because gas tax revenues are down. Some politician will find some way to fix this by robbing some other fund.
Buy a new laptop and turns out the sound sucks. Not sure what to do. Take it back and see if something is wrong, exchange it for a different model or what. Will sleep on it.
Why is it that when a famous, wealthy man dates a woman of modest means, her wealth and earnings aren't news, but when a famous, wealthy woman is married to a man who earns only 18,000 pounds (English) a year, that's news?
Not having Shia LaBeouf in the new "Transformers" movie didn't hurt it at the box office wars. Meanwhile, both "Snowpiercer" and "Begin Again", indie films I highly recommend did boffo at the box office, both averaging over $20,000 per screen. Sadly, "Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon" barely broke $700 per screen and looks to be on its last legs. Funny how fickle audiences are.
What is it with Florida and vote tabulation? I say this because just days after a woman was crowned Miss Florida, she lost her crown when an error was discovered in the vote count.
The Marine who just turned himself in after his second instance of desertion should be kept under lock and key until court-martialed.
Some op-ed piece on www.cnn.com is claiming the GI Bill is shortchanging today's veterans. Well, the 1985 Montgomery G.I. Bill sure shortchanged me a lot worse. I was given less than 30 months to use four years of educational benefits. I know, I am bitter.
I feel bad for the Army vet whose storage unit was auctioned off while he was in another state, taking care of his ailing mother.
* * *
June 29th in History:
226 – Cao Pi dies after an illness; his son Cao Rui succeeds him as emperor of the Kingdom of Wei.
1149 – Raymond of Poitiers is defeated and killed at the Battle of Inab by Nur ad-Din Zangi.
1194 – Sverre is crowned King of Norway.
1444 – Skanderbeg defeats an Ottoman invasion force at Torvioll.
1534 – Jacques Cartier is the first European to reach Prince Edward Island.
1613 – The Globe Theatre in London, England burns to the ground.
1644 – Charles I of England defeats a Parliamentarian detachment at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge, the last battle won by an English King on English soil.
1659 – At the Battle of Konotop the Ukrainian armies of Ivan Vyhovsky defeat the Russians led by Prince Trubetskoy.
1776 – First privateer battle of the American Revolutionary War fought at Turtle Gut Inlet near Cape May, New Jersey
1776 – Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California.
1786 – Alexander Macdonell and over five hundred Roman Catholic highlanders leave Scotland to settle in Glengarry County, Ontario.
1807 – Russo-Turkish War: Admiral Dmitry Senyavin destroys the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Athos.
1850 – Autocephaly officially granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to the Church of Greece.
1864 – Ninety-nine people are killed in Canada's worst railway disaster near St-Hilaire, Quebec.
1874 – Greek politician Charilaos Trikoupis publishes a manifesto in the Athens daily Kairoi entitled "Who's to Blame?" in which he lays out his complaints against King George. He is elected Prime Minister of Greece the next year.
1880 – France annexes Tahiti.
1881 – In Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad declares himself to be the Mahdi, the messianic redeemer of Islam.
1888 – George Edward Gouraud records Handel's Israel in Egypt onto a phonograph cylinder, thought for many years to be the oldest known recording of music.
1889 – Hyde Park and several other Illinois townships vote to be annexed by Chicago, forming the largest United States city in area and second largest in population.
1895 – Doukhobors burn their weapons as a protest against conscription by the Tsarist Russian government.
1914 – Jina Guseva attempts to assassinate Grigori Rasputin at his home town in Siberia.
1916 – The Irish Nationalist and British diplomat Sir Roger Casement is sentenced to death for his part in the Easter Rising.
1922 – France grants 1 km² at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes".
1926 – Arthur Meighen returns to office as Prime Minister of Canada.
1927 – The Bird of Paradise, a U.S. Army Air Corps Fokker tri-motor, completes the first transpacific flight, from the mainland United States to Hawaii.
1927 – First test of Wallace Turnbull's controllable pitch propeller.
1928 – The Outerbridge Crossing and Goethals Bridge in Staten Island, New York are both opened.
1945 – Carpathian Ruthenia is annexed by the Soviet Union.
1956 – The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System.
1972 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case Furman v. Georgia that arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
1974 – Isabel Perón is sworn in as the first female President of Argentina. Her husband, President Juan Peron, had delegated responsibility due to weak health and died two days later.
1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Soviet Union to Canada while on tour with the Kirov Ballet.
1975 – Steve Wozniak tested his first prototype of Apple I computer.
1976 – The Seychelles become independent from the United Kingdom.
1995 – Space Shuttle program: STS-71 Mission (Atlantis) docks with the Russian space station Mir for the first time.
1995 – The Sampoong Department Store collapses in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, killing 501 and injuring 937.
2002 – Naval clashes between South Korea and North Korea lead to the death of six South Korean sailors and sinking of a North Korean vessel.
2006 – Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law.
2007 – Apple Inc. releases its first mobile phone, the iPhone
Famous Folk Born on June 29th:
Emperor Go-Mizunoo of Japan
Maria of Aragon, Queen of Portugal
William James Mayo
General Ludwig Beck
James Van Der Zee
Nelson Eddy
Ruth Warrick
Ezra Laderman
Jackie Lynn Taylor
John Bocabella
Stokely Carmichael
Little Eva
Gary Busey
Fred Grandy
Dan Dierdorf
Colin Hay
Maria Conchita Alonso
Kimberlin Brown
Sharon Lawrence
Amanda Donohoe
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Melora Hardin
Samantha Smith (so much promise, taken much too soon)
Nicole Scherzinger (yes ma'am, I wish my girlfriend was hot like you)
The problem is that the decline is from veterans of World War II and Korea who weren't eligible for healthcare from the VA dying off. The number of veterans who are eligible for healthcare at the VA has risen dramatically. That's why the budget for the VA has been rising in recent years. If only adding money were the solution, things would be great at the VA. Throwing money at a problem isn't always the answer.
Of the roughly 22 million veterans in the U.S. at the moment, nearly 8.8 million are being served by VA facilities. The VA's priority system is byzantine but the basic rule of thumb is that if a veteran has a service-connected disability, or served after January 28th, 2003 and were discharged less than five years ago; or if they are eligible for Medicaid or have limited financial resources, then they qualify in one of the eight priorities.
The White House report calls the goal of seeing veterans who seek treatment within 14 days "unrealistic" and that may be true. The last time I saw a particular specialist the earliest follow-up appointment (they wanted to see me after three weeks) was so far off that they couldn't schedule it. They put me on "re-call" which is a system where you get a postcard telling you to call for an appointment. I got a message to the doctor who found a way to get me in right when he wanted to see me. However, I can understand calling the 14 day goal unrealistic.
I'm helping someone with filing a claim for a service-connected disability. It's for a World War II veteran who was released from the Army due to a medical condition. Unfortunately for him, it appears that the Army never documented the problem in his medical records and that's going to make it extremely difficult to get him the care he's entitled to. I'm certain that if the diagnosis that caused him to be released during a time of war could be documented, his disability rating would be high enough to put him into one of the top two priority groups.
Another problem is even if we can obtain documentation of the service-connected disability, it may take too long to get the claim through the system. A report released by several U. S. Senators looking into the problem of backlogged disability claims at the VA states quite clearly that there are more than 400,000 claims for disability benefits that have been in the system more than 125 days. Some have languished for a year or more.
So what do we do? For the person I'm helping, we request the records from the St. Louis Military Personnel Records Center and hope for the best. For the VA as a whole, there's a key phrase in the summary of the White House report that reads “A corrosive culture has led to personnel problems across the Department that are seriously impacting morale and by extension, the timeliness of health care...” There needs to be wholesale housecleaning among the VA's upper and middle management. Every single employee who ordered data to be falsified, who threatened any whistleblower, or who engaged in any other actions that resulted in veterans being improperly denied or delayed in receiving treatment; needs to be disciplined. A number of them need to be allowed to retire, while some need to be fired for cause. Some quite probably need to be prosecuted.
Then again, assuming we don't get dragged into any more wars in the next few decades, the problem of an overburdened VA system will be resolved through attrition. Eventually most of the veterans, those being cared for and those who were ignored, will die off. Not the best solution.
* * *
Governor Brown and the state legislature are being penny-wise and pound foolish by refusing an offer from the California Endowment to help keep people from leaving the Medi-Cal program.
On the surface it may make sense. Fewer enrollees, costs go down and the state saves money. But that's not what will happen. The newly uninsured will take advantage of the fact that emergency rooms must provide treatment to anyone and everyone, regardless of whether or not they are insured, or can pay cash; and get treatment there. Hospitals, forced to eat the costs of providing care for these people will charge other people more to make up the difference. Everyone will pay more.
We may never get a perfect healthcare system, but the more people who are covered, the lower the cost on an individual basis. It's a basic axiom that the fearmongers who decry Obamacare as a failure choose to ignore. At our peril. Obamacare isn't a perfect solution, but it is the closest thing yet to one. We tried letting the free-market work in the insurance industry and thus far all we have is insurers making billions in profits while we see countless petitions on Change.org seeking to get these same insurers to change decisions where coverage for care was denied.
It's the same with abortion funding. One dollar for the funding for abortions will save eleven dollars in so-called "safety-net" spending.
* * *
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney is bloviating about how poorly the Obama Administration is handling the crisis in Iraq. Never mind this is a mess for which Cheney deserves at least as much, if not more blame than former President George W. Bush for creating, but his criticisms lack a general validity.
The truth is, we went into the war in Iraq with plenty of plans for winning the war and not a single thought given to winning the peace afterward. Depose Saddam Hussein, install democracy and live happily ever after was the height of insanity. It ignores the ethnicity and religious divisions that deeply separate three main groups in the nation.
The Sunni Muslims, the Shia Muslims and the Kurds (who are mostly Sunni but also contain many other faiths among their ethnic population) are the main groups. 65% of the Muslim population of Iraq is Shia with the remaining 35% being Sunnis. The Kurds make up roughly 17% of the overall population (remember, they are mostly Sunnis) while Iraqi "Arabs" make up 75% of the total population.
Since the current Prime Minister is a Shia, who took power in the elections of 2006 after a Sunni post-war government failed, the Sunnis are the "aggrieved" population, along with the Kurds. They claim they are being discriminated against. ISIS, who we've all heard about, now considers itself a sovereign state. Actually, they claim to be a caliphate and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadiis their Caliph.
Is there an easy solution. Sure. Divide Iraq into three autonomous states within the nation, one Sunni, one Shia and one Kurdish. Divvy up the nation's natural resources and voila, peace would prevail. Yes, that was sarcasm. There is no simple answer. These are age-old divisions (dating back to AD632) and they've only grown deeper with the passage of time.
And only time will tell what will happen in Iraq. However, I'll wager the 300 advisors already in or on their way to Iraq won't be the last people we put in harm's way to continue to try to fix a mess of our making.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Like anyone else, Tim Cook's sexuality is nobody else's business. Just because you're a CEO shouldn't entitle everyone to know about your private life. Unless you're doing illegal things, which he isn't (to the best of our knowledge).
On the other hand, since it appears that former American Apparel CEO Dov Charney may have engaged in behavior that resulted in a plethora of lawsuits, who can blame the company's Board of Directors for getting rid of him?
Choosing former Proctor & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald to be the next Secretary of Veteran Affairs is an outside of the box choice by President Obama. It didn't matter who he chooses, the nominee is going to be grilled by the Senate like a hot dog on the barbeque on July 4th, during the confirmation hearings. Good luck Mr. McDonald.
Did Maria Sharapova's chances of winning Wimbledon improve with the early exit of Serena Williams? Damn right they did.
Heidi Klum spend $14 million on a Brentwood home, spent "several million more" in improvements and has now listed the place for a mere $25 million. Sad thing is, she'll probably get it, given how hot high-end homes are in L. A. at the moment.
The good news is that on average, we drive cars that get better gas mileage. The bad news is that because of this, the fund to repair the nation's highways is going broke, because gas tax revenues are down. Some politician will find some way to fix this by robbing some other fund.
Buy a new laptop and turns out the sound sucks. Not sure what to do. Take it back and see if something is wrong, exchange it for a different model or what. Will sleep on it.
Why is it that when a famous, wealthy man dates a woman of modest means, her wealth and earnings aren't news, but when a famous, wealthy woman is married to a man who earns only 18,000 pounds (English) a year, that's news?
Not having Shia LaBeouf in the new "Transformers" movie didn't hurt it at the box office wars. Meanwhile, both "Snowpiercer" and "Begin Again", indie films I highly recommend did boffo at the box office, both averaging over $20,000 per screen. Sadly, "Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon" barely broke $700 per screen and looks to be on its last legs. Funny how fickle audiences are.
What is it with Florida and vote tabulation? I say this because just days after a woman was crowned Miss Florida, she lost her crown when an error was discovered in the vote count.
The Marine who just turned himself in after his second instance of desertion should be kept under lock and key until court-martialed.
Some op-ed piece on www.cnn.com is claiming the GI Bill is shortchanging today's veterans. Well, the 1985 Montgomery G.I. Bill sure shortchanged me a lot worse. I was given less than 30 months to use four years of educational benefits. I know, I am bitter.
I feel bad for the Army vet whose storage unit was auctioned off while he was in another state, taking care of his ailing mother.
* * *
June 29th in History:
Famous Folk Born on June 29th:
Emperor Go-Mizunoo of Japan
Maria of Aragon, Queen of Portugal
William James Mayo
General Ludwig Beck
James Van Der Zee
Nelson Eddy
Ruth Warrick
Ezra Laderman
Jackie Lynn Taylor
John Bocabella
Stokely Carmichael
Little Eva
Gary Busey
Fred Grandy
Dan Dierdorf
Colin Hay
Maria Conchita Alonso
Kimberlin Brown
Sharon Lawrence
Amanda Donohoe
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Melora Hardin
Samantha Smith (so much promise, taken much too soon)
Nicole Scherzinger (yes ma'am, I wish my girlfriend was hot like you)
posted by me at 9:34 PM
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