VA welcomes Student Vets to the hamster wheel.

Posted on September 2, 2012 by joeaveragevet

Just when we thought it could not get any worse, with the Veterans disability claim backlog approaching one million, the VA figures out another method to make it still worse for Vets.

It wasnt enough to turn disabled Vets world upside down by delaying benefits, so Student Vets are welcomed to the VA hamster wheel.

No, I did not think it could get worse, either, but leave it to the VA to figure out how to make things still harder for Vets.  Here is how they accomplished just that:   Instead of limiting the backlog to 1,000,000 disabled Veterans seeking benefits, the VA said, “Why stop there?”

Lets expand the backlog logjam to include Student Veterans, also.

And, the vA can ask the colleges to “cover for the VA” so that too many Vets won’t complain and put pressure on the President and Congress to ACTUALLY DO something about the backlog, other than make more unkept promises to reduce it.

Here is what Veterans think of the new government expansion program to logjam student Veterans also:

What? You mean you are delaying Student Vets benefits also? Who’s in charge of this outfit?

This Vet was not happy with an email explaining his student Vets benefits will be delayed either:

I can’t afford for my GI bill benefits to be delayed! I need my money now. I can’t call JG Wentworth.

The real tragedy, however, is if Vets get mad enough to do this:

Are the VA’s delays enough to make Vet’s THIS mad? It looks like the VA wants to find out the hard way.

Posted in Guest authors, VA BACKLOG | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

vA IN THE NEWS

Posted on September 1, 2012 by asknod

PETCO® stocks as well as Chicago Mercantile Exchange shares on livestock were up across the board 23 points on Dog and Pony futures of all breeds yesterday after a news release about the new Department of Veterans Affairs purchase contract.

The new contract, in addition to the 59 pairs, includes room and board at local petting zoos nearest the Regional Offices and the AMC. VA’s Central Office (VACO) ordered an additional ten pair due to heavy demand and to give the animals some respite from their anticipated heavy workload appearance schedule soon.

VA Under Secretary for Dog and Pony Shows Allison Hickey claims that this has been in the works for quite some time and is an important element in their plan to reduce the claims backlog. Speaking from prepared comments. She said ” VA and I feel this is an important element to aid in distracting Congress from what’s really going on. Hopefully it will be an important stakeholder tool to pacify VSOs and irritable Vets. Animals are quite soothing and help in the control of PT-er- personality disorders.”

An AFGE Union spokesman who wished to remain nameless was skeptical that this could help in any way but nevertheless said he’d take a “wait and see” approach. He insists AFGE has nothing personal against dogs and ponies and was quick to point out: ” Many of our members have dogs and ponies already-albeit in a private setting. We do not advocate their use in the VA claims process per se. However, in keeping with VA’s wishes, we will remain open-minded.”

 

In related news, the VAOIG is reputed to be investigating reports of recent dog and pony animal cruelty at the much-maligned Orlando Meet and Greet. Anonymous reports of inebriated VA VLJs playing Pin the Form 9 on the Pony are unsubstantiated as yet.

The Service Station Manager is worried about winter temperatures and opted for a facsimile pony

VA’s planned roll out  at the beleaguered LARO was more professional. It was orchestrated with the recent Homeless stand down and jobs fair for Vets. Handsome t shirts were handed out to all participants as well as well as job applications for Fortune 500 companies.  VA has also discovered a home for all those MR&Es with expired shelf life stickers.

News and film at Eleven!

Happy Labor Day.

Posted in All about Veterans, Humor | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

FREE CAPTION PHONES FOR HEARING-IMPAIRED VETS

Posted on September 1, 2012 by asknod

Member Shawn send us this. I always cringe when someone kicks in the word “Free!“. That usually means “Buy it and we’ll refund your $ in a year when (and if) you supply proof of hearing impairment that we’ll accept.” This usually involves an attorney down the road to get your $199.95 “deposit” back. Be careful. Don’t sign some service agreement saying “Sure. $39.95 a year for service.” Don’t sign anything that says “We’ll be sending you a new book on gardening every month, too. If you don’t want it, simply return it in the paper bag it came in and pay return postage and insurance.”

 

Check the back of the contract for “Dealer prep and destination fees extra. Does not include postage and handling of $169.95. Fuel surcharge not included. Offer is F.O.B. Bejing. Expect two year delay if ordering between March and December. Caption Call makes no express warranties that this will work with you equipment. Not responsible for any damage to you computer or peripherals. Caption Call is a corporation incorporated in Panama and is, as such, immune to lawsuits.”

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CHRONOLOGY TIMELINE

Posted on September 1, 2012 by asknod

As promised, I will continue to bore you to tears with the ongoing saga of attempting to summit Mt. CAVC.

The latest chapter is my attorney’s request to assemble a timeline of my life. You read that right. All the way from “I was born at University Hospital in Washington, D. C. on April 1, 1951.” That, incidentally is where they took President Reagan after his Meet and Greet with  Jodie Foster’s paramour, John Hinkley.

You may laugh but it is an arduous undertaking to retrieve 61 or so years of your life. The timeline is constructed in a simple format. What wasn’t mentioned was it was in some arcane format called Word Perfect. I promptly downloaded some free version and merrily proceeded to encode 4 days worth of ruminations, thoughts, memories and the twenty three year battle with the vA. Baaad idea. The download was a free thirty day version. Anything you created on it was locked up there if you did not back it up in another format like Microword. (I didn’t). When it came time to add the Record Before the Agency, or RBA,  page links, I discovered it would only cost me US $159.99 to bail it out. Fortunately member Shawn (who is Member Bob’s girl Friday) took her copy and converted it thus saving me from hunting down and killing the idiots who “gave away” the “free” downloads. The RBA is a complete and unabridged copy of your C-file. C-file stands for Claims file; unabridged is a metaphor for what is left after any close encounters of the shredder room kind.

My memory is still intact give or take a week or two on most of it. I had to dig out old funny papers of where I spent my summer vacation in 1970 to refresh some of it.

Muang Souy was one of those places that traded hands between us (the Hmong led by Gen. Vang Pao) and the Pathet Lao frequently. We owned it during the Monsoon and they promptly took it back in the dry, burning season. It was up at the top NW corner of the Plain of Jars  adjacent to Interstate 7 (or what passed for it) in rural Laos. This was the main east/west thoroughfare for all the gooks’ military traffic and a terrific place to blow things up.  Here’s another view.

This was Indian country. We weren’t there in the real sense of the word. Anything that happened there was like Las Vegas. And much like Las Vegas, if you got shot down there or killed, you stayed there. We’re still excavating and discovering some of our KIA-BNRs even now.  On the right side where Route 71 branches off from Interstate 7 ( the black and white dotted line) is where I had my date with HCV.  I got the tainted transfusion at the AirAm/USAID hospital down at Sam Thong (Lima Site 20).

Back to chronologies. I’m being tasked with remembering every nuance and detail of all this as well as the rest of my life. Every triumph, child birth, claims filing, and denial must be plotted on the graph to show the attorney. It’s no use to to keep referring to it in the abstract. Likewise, with the way vA sends it to you, its completely out of order or any logical context. I find dependency filings cheek and jowl with important back and hips medical charts. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Whether its a vast vA-style conspiracy to obfuscate or not is immaterial. What’s obvious is that recently, vA has started delivering these RBAs (Record Before the Agency) in haphazard, hopscotch format. Since time is of the essence in preparing a defense at the Court, everyone must scramble to unscramble this unholy mess. That is what I’ve been doing for the last three days which explains my absence here.

Most CAVC attorneys send these out to specialized firms to organize at great expense. Each piece of paper must be collated chronologically in order. My file contains three thousand seven hundred fifteen pages. Each one must be analyzed and a determination of what it is in reference to (which claim) must be made. Then the document page number must be attached to the cute little map of your life that I mentioned above. Thus, you get:

1994

153.   3/31– File for PCT as a residual of Hepatitis or A/O with AMVETS as VSO. Service rep. is Rick Talbott (may he rot in the used-car salesman part of Hell).(RBA pg 3395-3415)

154.   11/7–VARO denial for all issues. VA recharacterizes the filing as residuals of hepatitis and PCT due to AO only. No adjudication based on PCT as a residual of hepatitis. VA fails to associate VAMC American Lake AO test/examination from 9/21/93 with 1994 claim.(RBA pg 3392-3394 ;submitted for first time at Board hearing)

155.    12/2– File NOD with N&M evidence (See RBA pg. 868 showing receipt of N&M Evidence)

156.  12/7– VA posts N&M evidence into C-file. (RBA pg 3385-3391)  

What will interest readers is what happens all too frequently at Regional Offices across America when paper files are involved. Yep. Your shit ends up in another Vet’s file and vice-versa. Thus it came as no surprise to find Brian M. __________’s information co-located where it will never be found- in mine.

Scary, huh? Vets wonder why they can’t win at this game. Here’s living proof of why. Imagine a new paperless system out on the horizon. Does anyone think this is going to improve with the adoption of it? We’ll simply come up with a term like “paperless misfiling” to describe the phenomenon. Then there’s the merely humorous:

This might seem innocuous, but a newsflash is in order. I have no VSO. I represent myself. So what is some gomer from DAV or the American Legion doing roaming through my file? Why? Who gave him/her access to it? Doesn’t this bother any of you? Frankly, it makes my hair stand on end. Knowing that the VSOs are co-located in ROs throughout America, it would be easy for these service officers to roam up to, say,  the unsecured sixth floor of the Winston Salem cigarette RO and peruse your files at their leisure. One hopes they would return them to the same alphabetical file pile!

On a more humorous note, I found this in the RBA. I had forgotten about it but it will make good fodder for a future CUE. When I escaped from the VAMC the first time for about ten days, I realized I was in deep doo-doo medically speaking. It wasn’t the constant nausea or the colostomy bag leaking that led me to this conclusion. I was toast.

Getting ready to go play golf.

So I filed for Aid and Attendance or Housebound. Either one was fair game. Here’s what the good doctor down at va had to say about it.

And do you know what? Those funny guys down at the RO thought I was pulling their leg. I guess they had an VAOIG airplane out flying around and confused me with some other guy at the golf course. Well, they pulled the plug on this one lickity spit.

I was still learning how to do this back then so you’ll have to excuse me. I was also about a half bubble off when I was filing this so I might have forgotten to use the magic word.

If any of you have had occasion to ask beg for congressional intervention, you might find it humorous how they treat us. I read several entries from the Congressional Interests Section chief at the Seattle RO (Danial E. Kutchler). He must play golf or do happy hours with Senator Sneaker’s congressional liaison, Kim Brown. They do everything but high-five on their emails. We are considered an unavoidable issue in the course of their work.  As in, “We already paid him in excess of $38 K last week.” Not. The date of that one was 7/08/2008 and I didn’t get the check until August 12th.  When I said that a Dial-a-prayer “technician” called me up and said they dropped the ball on my PCT claim (again), ol’ Daniel replied that they never “drop the ball” and that some claims are horribly complicated and require a lot of development. Oddly, the claim was rated three days after they dropped the round object that resembled a spherically-shaped orb.  Hand-written on the Form 119 Report of Contact was “MYOFB” which I have been led to believe in the past stands for Mind your own F business.” What do I know of such lofty vA abbreviations?  C-files are fun. You get to see all the neat little forms they use and what they have in their arsenal about you to deny with.

The chronology has been assembled and the extraneous files have been duly noted for expungement. This is good because the mere presence of them in the file will make the General Counsel look like a bunch of goombahs. I apologize for my neglect of this site in the interim. Happy Labor Day Weekend and where did the summer go?

Posted in C-Files and RBAs, vA news, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Newest VA backlog reduction program: Shreddergate 2

Posted on September 1, 2012 by joeaveragevet

The pressure was enormous.  The election is fast approaching, and the millions of Veterans waiting endlessly on their benefits and appeals, after an administration promise to reduce the backlog, has actually been made much worse.

Program after VA program has failed to reduce the backlog.

Something has to be done!

Shreddergate TWO to the rescue!

You will recall, in shreddergate ONE when the backlog got too large, the VA simply took mostly Veterans with multiple claims and “converted” them into single issue claims by shredding.  It failed.  Vets are not as stupid as the VA would like us to beleive.

So, with at least one shredder bin inspection habitual now, what to do?  The VA needed to think up more of these, and quick:

Placing one Veterans file, in another Vets file produces much lost time and money.
However, it does make the backlog appear smaller.

Simply place one Veterans file in anothers, and it will “disappear”.  The Vet will be quickly denied due to lack of evidence, and it will be a long time until the “error” is discovered.

One well known Vet, has indicated that is precisely what happened to him.

He indicated that “somewhere” buried in his some 3000 pages of evidence, was another Veterans C file.

While it is clear the politicians want to “look good” especially now, I am not sure that is what happened.

Posted in Guest authors, SHREDDERGATE, VA BACKLOG | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The carcinogen, HCV

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Laura

The U. S Department of Health and Human Services publishes fat books listing human carcinogens.   The Hepatitis C Virus “known to be a human carcinogen,” was first listed in the Eleventh Report on Carcinogens in 2004 (pg 216-218).

Public health officials knew and wrote the following:

“Individuals with chronic hepatitis C are the source for all new infections and are at increased risk for chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and liver cancer.”

Think about it.  They knew that millions of people with HCV (aware or unaware) were the source for all new infections, and they choose not to put out public service announcements or use other means to get this critical information out.

Is the CDC educating us now with the new birth cohort testing recommendation?  Not really. For example, information on the transmission of the virus is still somewhat fuzzy in the ROC.

“The major route of HCV transmission is through contaminated blood.”

If contaminated blood is the major route, what then are the minor routes? They list sexual, perinatal, familial etc…but are mum on details.   We don’t need hints.  We need to understand the situation in no-nonsense terms.   What else do we need to know about the transmission routes of HCV?

 

Posted in Guest authors, HCV Health, Medical News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Lance Armstrong and a different rigged system (updated 1/18/13)

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Laura

As you know, Lance has been stripped of his titles and banned from cycling for his lifetime by a partially government-funded agency.  There is no physical evidence that he ever used performance-enhancing drugs.  But some people have said that he did, and therefore, his career has been ended.  He says he’s innocent but tired of fighting his accusers and the system.

Sally Jenkins has written two books with Armstrong.  I read the first, It’s Not About the Bike (2000), earlier this summer.   This is the memoir of a much younger man but even so,  the doping allegations don’t jive with the tenor of this first book.

Jenkins writes in the Washington Post:

“I have so many problems with USADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) — which is supposed to be where athletes can appeal, only they never, ever win — that it’s hard to know where to begin. American athletes have lost 58 of 60 cases before the CAS. Would you want to go before that court?

Anyone who thinks an athlete has a fair shot in front of CAS should review the Alberto Contador case. Contador was found to have a minuscule, insignificant amount of clenbuterol in his urine during the 2010 Tour de France. After hearing 4,000 pages of testimony and debate, CAS acknowledged that the substance was too small to have been performance-enhancing and that its ingestion was almost certainly unintentional.

Therefore he was guilty. He received a two-year ban.

CAS’s rationale? “There is no reason to exonerate the athlete so the ban is two years,” one member of the panel said. Would you want to go before that court?

The decision was so appalling that even the Tour runner-up, Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, couldn’t swallow it and refused to accept the title of winner…

When are people going to grow sick enough of these astonishing overreaches and abuses to do something about it?…How does an agency that is supposed to regulate drug testing strip a guy of seven titles without a single positive drug test? Whether Armstrong is innocent or guilty, that question should give all of us pause. How is it that an American agency can decide to invalidate somebody’s results achieved in Europe, in a sport it doesn’t control? Better question, how is it that an American taxpayer-funded organization can participate in an adjudication system in which you get a two-year ban because “there is no reason to exonerate” you? At what point is such an organization shut down and defunded?”

The French are happy with the Armstrong decision.  I, for one, am not.  Had he tested positive, I’d say justice was done.  But that’s not the case.  In the meantime, his foundation is fighting cancer and making the world a better place.  Donations are up, not down.  No one can take that away from him.

Kangaroo courts, say Merriam-Webster, pervert and disregard the principles of law and justice.  There are disturbing similarities between the courts veterans have to deal with and those that athletes must.  Most veterans give up fighting when they lose their claims.

__________________________________

Update:  January 18, 2013.  Well, Lance Armstrong has confessed to doping, lying and cheating about it–for 13 years–during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.  As a representative of the United States in the endurance sport of cycling, he’s let us all down in a very big way.  The anti-doping agencies however need to be reformed from what I’ve read.  In this case, they were spot on.

Editor’s note:

Speaking of Kangaroo Courts, I received this from the Bobmeister in Mosquitoville the other day. It’s disturbing to see the focus of vA’s animosity directed towards the small players in the game. While I certainly don’t condone stealing from the government, and abhor the idea of padding the mileage for travel pay, I feel they are losing sight of the bigger picture. The longer the backlog festers, the worse the accuracy statistics will become. It’s axiomatic that haste makes waste. Turning the claims process into an assembly-line procedure has yielded little in volume. Considering the much-quoted figure of a 60% error rate based on remands, things will get more Kangaroo before they get Wallaby.

Posted in Guest authors, vA news, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

PRICELESS FACEBOOK

Posted on August 31, 2012 by asknod

This took a Phonics expert to put together.

Sound it out.

Posted in Humor | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

STARDUST RADIO APPEARANCE SUNDAY @ 1900 HRS CDT

Posted on August 31, 2012 by asknod

Rick Townsend at Firebase Adrian on Stardust Radio has graciously allowed me to return for an hour of claims discussion on my new book on Sunday. The kickoff is 1900 Central or 1600 on the Left Coast. That’s 8 PM for all you down in St. Pete if you have your power back yet. Call in to the show if you have a question!

 

 

Posted in ASKNOD BOOK, NEW BOOK, Stardust Radio | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

VA solves backlog problem before election

Posted on August 29, 2012 by joeaveragevet

Yep.  They did it, after all.   The VA now has an answer to how to solve the backlog problem.

No long analysis needed.  It works.

So, how do you get a quicker wait time?   One word.

MOVE

That’s it.  Problem solved..or is it?  Did they read the manual below?   What if “too many Vets” move from Oakland, Los Angeles, or one of the other busy RO’s to South Dakota?   Won’t that RO then be behind?

But wait..there’s more!

Doesn’t the VA already “farm out” claims to regional offices with less backlog?   Why is that not working?  Oh, I forgot.  The VA hasn’t figured out how to manage 58 multiple Regional Offices at the same time.  

Perhaps, if we review “the VA executive compensation guide”, pictured below,  we can find out why.

This guide, while created for VA executives to justify their bonuses, could be useful to others at times.

Hmmmm..

Sounds like the VA never thought of that!

Editor’s note:

The attachment on Move above has a lovely interactive map further down in the post such that you can put your cursor on it and drag it around to expose your specific state. Then place your cursor over the circle to see how many days wait to expect and what kind of increase (or decrease) your local RO is experiencing. If you have heart trouble, I suggest letting your spouse do it and gently break the news to you.

I find it interesting that Seattle shows a 37.9% decline in claims. How can that be? They’re transshipping them sideways out to Salt Lick City!  But SLC shows an increase of 54.3%. So does the increase represent the overflow from SEA RO making it (SLC) a net importer of claims? (Hint. Use vA math).

This resembles “Which of these 3 walnut shell is the VA claim hiding underneath? Watch closely. The RO is quicker than the Vet’s eye.

I’d dearly like to file this in humor but it is sadly true.

Nod

P.S. Attached is a really nice version of the same map.

Posted in Guest authors, VA BACKLOG | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment