Nearly 1 Million Veterans Have Pending Applications For Health Care At VA-- A Third May Already Be Dead

The continuing, enduring theme of this blog is that seniors, their families, and caregivers should plan their affairs, plan for for their care, and plan for the use and disposition of assets, consciously refusing to rely upon (or trust) the legal and government systems supposedly protecting them.  If the wisdom of planning privately and eschewing public support is lost upon anyone, s/he should read the Washington Post article, entitled, "Nearly 1 million veterans have pending applications for health care at VA — and a third may already be dead."  The only way one can read the first three paragraphs without wanting to scream, weep, or both, is to believe the government "get's it," and/or will soon "fix it."  Really?

The excellent article reads as follows (emphasis added):

"Despite promises for widespread reform, nearly 900,000 military veterans have pending applications to access health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the department’s inspector general said Wednesday in a scathing report which recommended a total overhaul of their record-keeping system that could take years.

One-third of those veterans are thought to be dead, but problems with the data makes it tough to know how many former troops were still struggling to get care, the report says. VA has said it has no way to purge the list of dead applicants.

Over half the applications listed as “pending,” as of last year do not even say when the applications were dated, and the Associated Press reported on Wednesday that investigators “could not reliably determine how many records were associated with actual applications for enrollment” in VA health care, the report said.

“Data limitations” [note: a  term selected because it suggests that programming engineers can't program a simple database, ignoring that no computer system could report information unavailable to the agency since the agency consciously refused to properly compile that information in order to protect performance incentives, and salaries, and political progress; in other words a term synonymous with "institutional corruption] prevent investigators from determining how many now-deceased veterans applied for health-care benefits or when.

Linda Halliday, the VA’s acting inspector general, told the AP that the agency’s Health Eligibility Center “has not effectively managed its business processes to ensure the consistent creation and maintenance of essential data.” [note: that's like an drunken alcoholic who intentionally climbs behind the wheel and drives through a school yard full of children claiming he did not "effectively manage" the automobile to ensure avoidance of the school zone].

The report also says VA workers incorrectly marked thousands of unprocessed health-care applications as completed. They may have deleted 10,000 or more electronic “transactions” over the past five years.

Whistleblowers have been warning that more than 200,000 veterans with pending applications for VA health care were likely deceased. The inspector general’s report substantiated those claims.

To read the entire article, go here.

To read a Summary of the Inspector General's Report, go here.

To read the Inspector General's Report, go here.