DONALD DROPS HIS IMPROV ACT
True VA fix easier said than Don
O N Wednesday, President Trump announced that his administration has fixed nearly everything that’s been wrong for decades with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Speaking to a group of veterans at the American Legion in Reno, Nev., he claimed:
“Already we have made incredible progress. We are publishing wait times online for every VA facility so you know what the wait is. We’ve opened the promised White House VA hotline. That’s a big deal.
“We’ve dramatically increased the number of veterans approved to see the doctor of their choice and signal[ed] legislation to continue that very important Choice Program.”
Finally, Trump declared that by passing VA-accountability legislation, no veteran will ever suffer direct or institutional mistreatment at the VA: “If somebody that works at the VA is bad to the people of the VA, disrespectful, not treating our fellow patriots well, we look at them and say, ‘ You’re fired.’ ”
How apt that Trump deployed his catchphrase from “The Apprentice,” because these claims bear as much resemblance to reality as reality TV. And like reality TV, unless you know what goes on behind closed doors, what’s said on camera is all too easy to believe.
About two weeks ago, I wrote about my father’s horrific experience with the VA after being diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Since then I’ve been deluged with calls and e-mails from veterans all over the country begging for help. One of them is 93 years old and says he’s been battling the VA since 1997.
Another, 85-year-old Frank Palughi of Carteret, NJ, wrote that he has cancer and was exposed to radiation from six nuclear bombs tested during World War II.
“Since 2003 I have filed for compensation and have been denied a number of times,” Palughi wrote in shaky longhand. “Maybe you can help me.”
More often, the veterans reaching out are younger but no less in agony. “Since 2004 I have never met one [VA] physician, clinician who knows anything about Gulf War syndrome,” 48-year-old Gulf War vet Ken Hiltz told me. Seeking care at his local VA, he said, is “like a part-time job. I will never, ever be healthy. I am doomed.”
I’ve also heard from people who have worked inside the VA as doctors and administrators, who agree that the system is too broken, too dysfunctional and too unwieldy to fix. One former head of human resources, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that he quit because “I just could not do it anymore. I just could not sleep at night.” He said he knew of everything from bribery to sex in VA offices to a veteran denied care by two nurses for being Muslim.
“It takes too much and too long to get rid of the people we need to get rid of,” he said. Much of this comes down to union dominance of VA staff. “We have doctors and nurses who are union stewards who do nothing with patients,” he said. “Their only job is to take care of union members.”
Now let’s look at Trump’s claims. I went online to check wait times at the Brooklyn VA and found an unnavigable system. The user is prompted to enter their state, distance they’re willing to travel, kind of care needed, and when you hit “search,” so many icons pop up, many are hidden under others. If you do manage to click on a facility, you see that hospital’s Web site — no wait times, no appointments.
When I clicked on the VA in the Hudson Valley, the home page ran this banner: “The phone system at the Montrose Campus is temporarily out of service . . . If you have a medical emergency, please call 9-1-1.”
Even if this software actually worked, far too many veterans have physical, economic or age-related limitations to online access. They need an easier, more direct solution — like a point person in charge of all their physical and administrative needs.
Next I called the VA hotline, open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time. Again, any veteran driven to call a hotline is likely in dire straits that aren’t limited to East Coast business hours.
I was promptly placed on hold and subjected to a rage-inducing facsimile of Kenny G jazz-pop for nearly 20 minutes. When I finally reached someone who ID’d himself as Jeff, I said I was a reporter trying to find wait times online at my local VA.
First he suggested I submit a Freedom of Information Act request. Then he suggested I call the Veterans Health Administration communications office before he said it might be a good idea to compare civilian hospitals’ wait times against those at VA hospitals.
I explained I was just trying to make an appointment the way any veteran would, like the president had just instructed. Jeff didn’t know anything about that.
This exchange is a small example of a system so deficient that any attempts to fix it actually create more problems, more bureaucracy, more confusion and more frustration. And while it’s good that Trump is bringing attention to the VA, it’s far too early to proclaim victory. Just ask a vet.
“The system’s designed to wear you out,” Hiltz, the Gulf War vet, told me, but “I’ll do this. I want to fight.”