More Cow Patties, More Government-Run Health Care Horror Stories: US Military’s VA Health System (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 19, 2009
This is a companion piece to my previous post about horror stories in government-run health care: Walking Barefoot in a Pasture: Stepping in the Cow Patties of Government-Run Health Care Horror Stories (video).
To our heroic troops and military veterans, this one’s for you.
From Pundit & Pundette: VA bureaucrats to veterans: Maybe you’d be better off dead
If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
WDEF News: Veterans Hospital in Tennessee Unsanitary, Vets Exposed?
From The Questionable Authority: Military Health Care – It’s Broken:
The patient load increases the problems. The military medical system is dealing with thousands of additional patients as a result of the ongoing wars, and is doing so without much more in the way of resources than they had before the wars started. Part of the excess can be absorbed by farming the care of dependents (like me) and retirees out to the civilian market, but that’s not going to create enough space to take care of the demand.
That problem gets magnified when it comes to the medical bureaucracy. Getting out of the Army on medical grounds and having your military job changed for medical reasons are both lengthy processes, and the patient loads there have gone up even more than the outpatient loads. Wounded soldiers aren’t the only ones who need to go through the medical board process – a fair number of soldiers go through it prior to their unit’s deployment date.
Oh, and medical boards require that multiple doctors examine the patient, sometimes multiple times, and do a great deal of paperwork. These are not usually special doctors who aren’t doing other things. These are the same doctors who are either preparing to deploy with the unit, or working to see all the extra clinic outpatients, or both.
And then there’s money. As insanely expensive as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been, the military hasn’t been spending money for the sake of spending money. The administration has been trying their best to keep the costs down, to keep the pressure to kill the tax cuts low enough. The military simply does not have all of the money that it needs to do everything that it is supposed to. This means that things like facilities upkeep get shortchanged so that other things – like new armor kits to deal with new explosives – can be taken care of.
There are a lot of people who are to blame for this situation, and quite a few more people should lose their jobs before it’s over. Ultimately, though, the bulk of the blame rests with two groups. Most of the blame goes to the executive branch politicians, starting with the President, who decided that it’s a good thing to be the first administration ever to cut taxes during a war…
From Los Angeles Times:
Twice, the patient told doctors at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center that he did not want to be a guinea pig. But they went ahead anyway, keeping him on an operating table with an electrophysiology probe inserted in his heart for an extra 45 minutes to collect research data.
Another patient, a veteran so disturbed by mental illness that he was hiding bullets in his hospital room, also had his heart catheterization treatment prolonged for research purposes, though he did not give his legally required permission either.
Then there was Robert Hanson, a stocky World War II veteran who dropped dead of a heart attack in the hospital parking lot after taking an experimental heart drug. Hanson signed consent forms agreeing to be in a study of the drug, but some caregivers and his daughter insist the 71-year-old did not realize he was forgoing standard therapy to be in an experiment, with all the uncertainty and risk that implies…
From The Hip Hop Republican, Quit Messing with Veterans Benefits:
War is hell. If you lost a limb or have become impaired in some manner as to lose your livelihood, the wages of war are even more tortuous. We send young men to do battle on our behalf teaching them to extinguish the flames of life from those pegged our enemies. We have not fully appreciated the likelihood that those who have taken a life are most at risk for the development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD’s) and violence when they return. We don’t want to talk about this side bar of battle.
War is hell. Too many are they who have never served, who blazingly anxiously talk about war in glorifying terms having never tasted the waters of battle that we send our troops to face. In this need to take on everyone always remember our sons and daughters may be the unwitting collateral damage.
President Obama should be ashamed for even daring to consider asking veterans to finance [their] health care for service connected disabilities…
From Volokh:
If private companies had mismanaged outpatient care for veterans the way the V.A. system has, there would be strong calls from all the usual quarters for a government takeover, and proclamations of how we can’t trust “greedy” for-profit companies to take care of veterans.
From SportsRumorMill.com:
As if faulty colonoscopy equipment cleaning resulting in HIV infections to our veterans wasn’t enough, let’s screw up 92 out of 116 cancer treatments in Philly. This is your government provided health care at it’s finest folks. Sadly, most people state they support the troops, but I see precious little outcry from the masses on this gross mistreatment.
Ex-military Man at St. Louis Health Care Forum – Why Government Health Care Plan Is Unconstitutional | July 2009
From ScrewedCentral.com:
I feel for Vets I really do…and I know that they feel that they deserve some special treatment from the US….agreed they do. But this is not a working choice…Vets all over the US die each year because they are forced to use the VA system instead of being able to seek private care. I can honestly say I have stood in the Marion VA ER and passed out patient rights to ER patients ….because the ill were not being cared for….outraged I took a stand….and a nasty one at that. I start explaining to everyone that people who are on Welfare receive better care than what our precious war heros do…and then passed out complaint forms…I even went room to room to personally give each person or their partner a complaint form for their “experience” at the ER room that day. You know every person I gave one to…I also watched them turn them in. That was a good feeling to know that everyone felt fed up too… However the VA will not reform its self based just on patient complaints…
Remember this horrific story back in March? Thankfully, after getting a ton of criticism, Pres. Obama backpedaled on his desire for wounded troops to pay for the treatment of their war injuries, but don’t get too comfortable with the thought that POTUS has completely taken it off the table: Obama Wants to Save Paltry $540 Million – Charge Wounded Troops for Their Own Medical Treatment
Related reading on government-run Native American health care:
NewsVine: Promises, promises: Indian Health Care Victims
Hot Air: An American Government Health Care System You Should Know
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Native Americans Against Obama: ‘The Hype’
Indian Country Today: Trahant: The double standard of government-run health care: Indian Health Service
Why Mommy is a Palin Supporter: Ta’Shon’s Story: A Look at the Government’s Record on Health Care
HoodaThunk?: The single-payer healthcare system in our own backyard.
Additional reading:
CNS News: Despite Obama’s Pledge, Veterans Not Ready to Support Democrats’ Health Care Overhaul
Goodtimepolitics: 1,200 Veterans Falsely Told by VA They had Fatal Disease
Telegraph.co.uk: Sufferers pull out teeth due to lack of dentists
Charles Krauthammer, National Review Online: Why Obamacare Is Sinking – You can’t fake health-care nirvana in legislation
Yahoo, Associated Press: Firms with Obama ties profit from health push
Fortune, CNN Money: 5 freedoms you’d lose in health care reform
Let Freedom Ring: The Death Book for Veterans
Ace of Spades HQ: AP Bends the Curve of the Narrative, Admitting Obama Is Kinda Blowing It
Michelle Malkin: “Let’s keep turning people out for these!” and Flashback: Who’s funding the Obamacare Astroturf campaign? and Sheila Leavitt: Another wacky doctor for Obamacare; Updated and Inconvenient links of the week: Obama and the LaRouche poster and Video: No, you can’t just ram Obamacare through “fast” and Axelrod’s profits: Uh, who’s on the take from the drug lobby again?!?! and All aboard the Astroturf bus! and Grass-roots revolt in Austin, TX: “Just say no!” to Obamacare; Pennsylvanians boo Sebelius & Specter, “How can you manage health care when you can’t manage Cash For Clunkers?” and The more he talks about nationalizing health care and spending more money… and Obamacare: Code Blue and Barack Obama speaks the truth! Update: Mayo not okay-o with Obamacare and The Obamacare horror story you won’t hear and Obamacare bogus statistic of the day and Obamacare bogus statistic of the day, Pt. 2 and Undercover at an Obama health care meet-up
Gerald Warner, Telegraph.co.uk: President Pantywaist in retreat: Barack Obama hoists the white flag over Stalinist health care proposals
Arlenearmy’s Blog: Will Doctors Bail Out?
QandO: Skeptical Americans Continue To Say No To Democratic Health Care Plan
Ann Coulter, TownHall: Take Two Aspirin and Call Me When Your Cancer is Stage 4
Jeffrey Jena, Big Hollywood: Stand Up Notes From Flyover Country: Sen. Sherrod Brown is Why We’re Angry, My Liberal Friends
American Thinker: Congress on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Right Angles: Single-payer horror stories
The B.S. Report: Video Of The Day: Glenn Beck; AARP: Leading The Elderly To The Slaughter?
Jim Blazsik: We have to face the fact that the President is not an honest guy
VotingFemale Speaks!: Obama-Pelosi Declare WAR; Demonizing Health Industry; Warning, Socialist Demons At Work
Lighthouse Patriot Journal: Govt Watch: “Change” For the Worse and No Marked Change in Politics as Usual
American Spectator: Imagine You Are a Doctor
Sister Toldjah: Canadian Med Assoc. prez: Let’s fix universal healthcare with … more universal healthcare
Clinging to G & G: A few simple facts
John C. Phillips, Big Hollywood: ObamaCare: From the People Who Brought You the Post Office
Nice Deb: OUT: Public Option IN: Health Care Co-ops (With Updates)
Liberty’s Army: Betsy McCaughey: Government-Run Health Care’s Assault on Seniors
New York Times: For Public, Obama Didn’t Fill in Health Blanks
Hot Air Green Room: Obamacare would already be law, if not for you stupid Americans
Senate GOP Doctors: Have a Better Plan for Health Care, Not Socialized
Frugal Café Blog Zone: “War on Senior Citizens”: Mark Levin Interviews Dr. Betsy McCaughey on ObamaCare Details and Billions, Trillions, and More: CBO Releases Appalling Dollar Amount for Crappy ObamaCare and Dems’ Sheep-herding Health Welfare Program Like Eastern Bloc: Reckless Disregard for Economic & Fiscal Reality and Audience Cracks Up When MO Rep. Carnahan Claims ObamaCare Will Save Money: “If It’s So Good, Why Doesn’t Congress Have to Be on It?” (video) and Rush Limbaugh: Obama on Edge as Magic Fades; DeMint Hits Nerve with “Waterloo”
About the author
I am a former forced injections and forced medical procedure victim of the LA VA Westwood. I was injected forcibly at the LA VA Westwood by what was most likely a federal agent in April of 2001. I was then held there for 10 days, forced more medical procedures, threatened with long term incarceration and told to stop all of my investigative journalistic work on my past employer, the FDIC.
I had been a bank examiner at FDIC San Francisco and Sacramento offices in 1999 and 2000 and in 2001 I was doing an investigation of the murder of the prior regional FDIC director in San Francisco. It was labeled suicide. I think it was murder due to my observation of the FDIC as a bank examiner and due to my tests which I ran to detect murderers at the FDIC San Francisco.
I can no longer get a job as an accountant. The injections from 2001 and the subsequent exile and further attacks against me have made me sick. I will not use VA Healthcare now. I will kill myself before I willingly allow any VA or government official to touch me.
I was told of the other veterans being used in experiments at LA VA Westwood when I was transported from that facility to LA County Jail. I was told by an inmate while we were riding in a jail bus to see legal professionals. My crime was that I had survived an attempt on my life after testing for murderers at FDIC. The FBI and Secret Service did not respond. I started carrying a gun in my vehicle. II had parked outside the LA VA gates and was to get a new rental the next day. I was homeless and frightened. I had also caught an Alabama Sheriff stealing inmate food funds and starving inmates.
I now urge my children and others to see the USA as a war criminal nation, and there are many. I encourage them to major in engineering or nursing or something not predatory and I urge them to beware of US and Canadian governments and to seek homes in more huimane nations. America is a living hell.