After a suitable amount of time to accumulate a body of emails that discussed their impressions of the brouhaha at the House hearing last Tuesday, I can say that it is apparent there is general consensus among Veterans at this site that all is not well in Hickeyville despite vA’s storied press releases to the contrary. This is not a personal attack on the Undersecretary, per se, but what she represents, says and who she represents.

Representative Bob Filner (D-CA.) is neither a Veteran nor a warhawk. Quite the contrary. He’s a liberal, level-headed fellow who believes the government should put its vA money where its mouth is. I applaud his candid assesment however pointed. I agree with one poster that he’d make a fine VASEC. After untold years of promising to fix a decidedly broken system, after several VASECs who promised they were “on it” and after hiring 12,000 new employees and boosting their budget from $95 Billion to $126 Billion, the problem has now metastasized into an even larger backlog that promises to delay Veterans’ claims for years. vA’s take on this (a la Honorable, Brig. General (ret.), Undersecretary for Veterans Benefits Allison A Hickey) was a decidedly rosier prognosis than what we have been reading about.

Ms. (Mrs.?) Hickey insists the problem is not of the vA’s making. vA apparently has been hit with, depending on what you believe, a) the perfect storm of claims; b) two completely unforeseen wars with their attendant casualties; c) an uncompromising Congress who heaped up 200,000 more Agent Orange claims on an already overburdened system and d) new initiatives that require retraining and revamping of vA adjudication procedures-including new gazillion-page DBQs for simplicity and speed.

In her labored testimony, continually interrupted by Rep. Filner, she appeared tempted to climb up on the table and demonstrate her prowess at moonwalking while giving her answers. Steadfastly clinging to the 125 days/2015 mantra which has become her trademark, she admirably resisted letting the dark side take over and say what was poised on her lips. You can generally see that wrinkle in the corner of woman’s mouth that presages a snarl. I commend her for her aplomb in the face of adversity attained from years in the military.

It is apparent that the culture of denial, both of our claims and their refusal to accept responsibility for this state of affairs, is getting us nowhere. Promising that success is just over the hill, around the next bend in the road or within sight is getting redundant. Much like the young man who cried wolf again and again, so too has Ms. Hickey exhausted her vast storehouse of excuses. This is sad on the one hand as it diminishes her credibility any time she opens her mouth and opines on matters vA.. Its sad from a personal perspective in that she has taken her thirty pieces of silver from VASEC and been his shill for the vA. Now, with egg on her face and 500-day claims becoming the norm, they send her up to Capitol Hill and expect her to assuage Filner and his merry krewe. Not. Some of those congressmen might have been born at night but their memory is longer than the proverbial elephant’s. They said as much and wanted new answers. They got none. I was hoping Allison would take Bob up on his bet that if she came back in a year to testify on this, that vA would still be up Paddle Creek with no water under the keel.

Most of the emails I received on this concluded that Ms. Hickey needs a new excuse book. She’s using the 2009 version which contains phrases which are no longer operable. Let’s look at some of the “new” repair orders she touted. STAR teams, vAOIG reports and two-year studies are good. Stakeholder input with positive, proven improvements designed to streamline the system-check.. Co-partnerships with VSOs to identify problem areas and facilitate Kumbaya-okay, I’ll buy. Polysyllabic word designed to smother and coat inefficiency or inertia and a professed desire to cope with the inability to change with the mission requirements-Whoa. Back the boat back up to the dock, Gilligan.

Do any of you remember an episode of the animated TV show called South Park? I refer to the one where two of the boys were theorizing on the underwear gnomes. Underwear was disappearing and there was no explanation for it. A side trip to the underwear gnomes’ warehouse revealed the complexity of the enterprise.  The three-step process was simple. On a grossly simplified flow chart it was no more than:

1) Steal underwear

2) ?

3) Get rich and take cash to bank.

Much like the underwear gnomes, UnderHickey advocates that we :

1) Sit tight and allow the new, paperless reforms to work their way through the system

2) ?

3) Enjoy the new 125-day, 98% accurate claims by 2015

The big problem the Honorable Mr. Filner pointed out was that there are only about ten pilot paperless VARO programs in place. Ruh oh, Rorge.

One thing we here at Asknod have been raising a ruckus about was the new batch of DBQs. Disability Benefits Questionnaires were supposed to be the panacea for speedy, accurate claims resolution. They were going to give wings to a broken system. Veterans could take these to their private physicians (or VHA PCPs) and have them filled out to take some of the evidentiary burden off the overworked vBA and the vAROs. One important consideration- the nexus-was completely ignored. The sine qua none of your claim-the most bedrock anchor to success-was glaringly absent. After eighteen years of insistence that Veterans supply three components (disease in service, current disease and nexus) following Caluza, suddenly our protectors provide us with a form that pointedly omits what we need to win. vA must think we’re mushrooms. Absent this nexus, vA can (and will) step into the void and provide their own for us. They do this anyway when we arrive without one, but this just formalizes the unfair practice. Mr. Richard Dumancas (from AMLEG) noted this discrepancy for the first time to the committee. We noted it about 30 seconds after the new website for the forms showed up. When cornered, Ms. Hickey allowed as that was an unfortunate side effect of an effort to get the document out there promptly to speed up adjudications. That’s akin to rolling out a new F-35 fighter with no engine and saying that you’re aware of it and working to improve it but that the important thing was to get the aircraft out of the hanger for all to see. Whether it flies or not is immaterial. This proves you’re hard at work and recognize the need for a new approach. It also proves you have no grasp of what you’re doing, too. A new concept complete with obvious flaws is not something your roll out half-baked. What of this talk of Stakeholder input? What, pray tell is a stakeholder? If VFW and its ilk are the stakeholders in question, why is it that they are now on record, in Washington, D.C. at least,  wondering why the DBQs are lacking a dialogue box for the nexus?  Gee. The next question to me is how come it took months for the VSOs to see this.

In summary, its obvious no one over at 810 Vermont Ave. NW is on the same page with the VSOs and vice versa. So much for Stakeholders. What’s more, Mr. Filner pointed out the obvious that we have been harping on for years. If there is no collusion between the vA and the 46 major VSOs, why does everyone smell like they’re wearing the same perfume/cologne and sharing quarters cheek and jowl with each other? Why is Hickey’s lipstick on  the VSOs’ collar? So many questions and so few cogent answers. If you really wanted to impress the committee with you independence and demonstrate that a wall exists between you and the vA, why is it that all the VSO arguments seemed to mirror Hickey’s chapter and verse?

My dad once said there were no conspiracies in America. What there were, though, were a shit ton of unexplained coincidences. I’d advance that one space on the Monopoly Board and say contrived coincidences or remarkable aberrations of what one might expect after all the effort and alphabet commissions enacted to solve this conundrum.

Amazing, isn’t it? Hand a claim to Allstate and presto- 3 weeks to a conclusion and check mailed out. Hand the same thing to a vARO and be mildly surprised if you see a  correct resolution in 16 months with the codicil that “the check’s in the mail”. I certainly do not fault vA employees. As one wrote us, when the raters can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, their hierarchy adds two more miles to it. Their hands are tied and more than half of them are Veterans just like you and me. The fact is they’re down in Charleston, S.C pitching a collective bitch in front of their VARO this weekend.

We have spoken as well of producing a correct decision. The vA poohbahs who dictate the process are no longer consumed (if they ever were) in getting it right. Two things impede this. First is most obvious. The culture, as long as I’ve been dealing with them , is pure denial that eventually works its way back to a grant after a long process that inevitably entails an appeal or two. Second, in the inevitable rush to churn out decisions in volume, error is endemic and immaterial. The number of claims completed is a measure of production output. If every car coming off the line in Detroit was missing a steering wheel, they’d have to send them back to the station where it was omitted and install it. The auto manufacturer wouldn’t then count it rolling off a second time as another new car. It’s quite simply a “reaccomplished ” car and does not swell the ranks of automobiles headed out to dealerships for sale. vA, in their own inimitable way, would consider this a whole new claim and chalk it up as a production figure. Every remanded appeal is given the same treatment, too. Only a government entity can get away with this sleight of hand. Mr. Filner does not share their enthusiasm or interpretation. Apparently, neither do the majority of you.

It is my not so considered opinion that Ms. Hickey lie low for several months and get a designated hitter out there for press and committee appearances. With her credibility in tatters, she needs a makeover. I say go back to the red hair. That blonde thing just provokes endless jokes which she can ill afford at this juncture. It’s just a polite suggestion. I’m not a sexist pig in spite of what many may be thinking.