The Long Wait Time For Medical Treatment

A multitude of investigations were conducted in response to the 2014 VA Scandal with reports and audits showing manipulation of records, long wait times, delays in treatment and overwhelmed caseload by VA practitioners (Wikipedia, n.d., para. 3-7). There are also concerns about the VA’s lack of accountability once

The New York Times article, “Wait Lists Grow as Many More Veterans Seek Care and Funding Falls Far Short” says the Department of Veterans Affairs agency has a new crisis they’re facing. The wait list of Veteran’s is more than 50% higher than it was last year, departments say. They are also facing nearly a $3 billion budget short, which could very well affect the care of our veterans.

They claimed Iraq and Afghanistan veteran polls have been taken, it shows that whatever improvements and actions being were taken were not enough. Fifty-nine percent of the people rated the job the government was doing to help was good, while fifty-six percent rated it as them doing poorly. In an article by CNN news nineteen veterans have died because of delays for medical treatments from the Veterans Affair. Those nineteen veterans were only a small proportion of that group. A number of eight-two veterans who have died because of delays for medical treatments like colonoscopies or endoscopies. Some people like my father (Jason McLain), who is a retired veteran, believes that some doctors have their own personal bias toward veterans. Jason McLain stated, “When I go to the VA they do not help me as soon as I need their help. Although when I go to any other civilian doctor’s office they help me right away with any of their help”. A website by the name of Free Grants Community stated that success and failures of the Departments of Veterans Affair are frequently the subjects of political promises and debates. There are many places that can help with benefits or homelessness, simply anything veteran(active/retired) need. A six-year veteran stated that there are places to help but emphasizes that you have to pursue yourself. After you are done with the military to go back to school and to keep getting educated. Besides the fact the regular ordinary citizens complain that veterans are not getting enough help, there have been complaints against all employers for discrimination has blames the economic crisis and ballooning deficits for the inability to provide for more

Over the past 15 years, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has seen a dramatic increase in the average degree of disability, growth in the number of compensation recipients, a rise in the number of medical issues claimed and an increased level of complexity of claimed issues. To illustrate this point, prior to the September 2011 terrorist attacks, 333,700 Veterans received compensation at the 70-100 percent level; however, these figures rose to over 1.1 million by the end of 2013. Additionally, since 2009, VA’s disability compensation workload rose 132 percent. This is in large part due to an unprecedented demand resulting from over a decade of war, military downsizing, economic issues, increased outreach, the addition of presumptive conditions and an aging Veteran population.

The main research questions in this study are: 1) is veteran healthcare equal to private healthcare; 2) do veterans have to wait longer for treatment options; and 3) do veterans have limited treatment options? It is hypothesized that veterans receive inferior healthcare services compared to private healthcare and the community is unaware of the disparities.

The Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) has been tasked with providing support and benefits to Veterans after they have completed their service. However, many Veterans are reporting difficulty accessing care due to systematic barriers within the VA’s Veterans Health Administration (Oliver, 2007). Complex eligibility requirements, long wait lists and lack of providers are a few of the issues Veterans are faced with when trying to access health and mental health care. Additionally, studies indicate that veterans, predominantly those from the recent wars in Iran and Iraq, have disproportionately high amounts of mental illness (Shim & Rust, 2013). These same veterans are experiencing difficulty accessing mental health care due to issues around a backlog of healthcare eligibility applications and a shortage of mental health providers through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which operates the Nation’s largest, integrated health care delivery system (APA, 2014). In 2014, at the request of the Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) evaluated the merit of the allegations of mismanagement at the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) and the Health Eligibility Center (HEC).

In the past few years there has been increasing discussion about how to provide adequate care for the increasing number of veterasn who are eligible for care through the Veterans’ healthcare administration (VHA). There are concerns is that the VHA is not providing the level of access, efficiency, and quality of care that veterans expect. Lee & Begley, (2016) suggest access to care for the veteran population may be resulting in poor health outcomes. In response to these concerns, the Veterans ' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act (VACAA) of 2014, also known as the Veterans Choice Act, was created to improve Veterans’ healthcare. The VACAA proposed to do this by expanding the number of options veterans have for receiving healthcare, by providing access for healthcare at non-VA care centers as well as providing for an increase in staffing at VA facilities (U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2016).

Current funding for veteran healthcare care is low and insufficient because of the large number of veterans, who are being discharged from the military as the country transitions to a democratic President. According to Dr. Rachel Nardin in her article about veteran healthcare, “Soldiers get excellent acute care when injured on active duty, but as revelations of poor conditions for soldiers receiving ongoing outpatient care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center highlighted, service members often have trouble getting the care they need once active duty ends” (Nardin 1)

Veterans are being cheated out of their time, money, and resources while waiting for benefits from claims that are waiting to be processed. In the article, "Veterans Face Long Delays for Disability Claims" it states, "while veterans waited longer than ever in recent time for their wartime disability compensation, the Department of Veterans Affairs gave its workers millions

Prior to the affordable care act, The Veterans health administration was an organizational based health care system. There were resources enough at that point to afford the benefits veterans had rightly accrued with their service and sacrifice. Veterans who receive care at the VA fit into two categories. They either are disabled from Service or they are means tested in. With the growing increase of the Disabled population in the veteran community from the Gulf Wars, the budget has taken a strangle hold on the VA Administration. In an effort to still operate, Senior Officials have chosen to break federal law because there has never been any real accountability in the bureaucracy that is the VA.

According to Druzin, the Department of Veterans Affairs failed to contact tens of thousands of veterans, who had applications for health benefits pending, before they died (Druzin, 2016). Moreover, over 288,000 deceased veterans currently have pending cases within

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a government-run military veteran benefit system that provides essential financial and medical assistance to veterans and their families that are located all over the world. (www.va.gov) As the country and the military’s needs change, the VA needs to continue to evolve and grow. With this thought in mind, it is necessary to understand how the department is coping with the many different challenges that they are currently facing to effectively address the current issues and policy pitfalls. The most critical issues presently facing the VA, is the concern over long increasing wait-times and backlogs for services, which have emerged since 9/11 and are primarily the result of the growing

This year has not been kind to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). News in April that several VA facilities were causing veterans to wait months for health care, and some VA officials forced employees to keep fake records to conceal the delays. Gregg Zoroya notes that there were also allegations that the deaths of 40 veterans were caused by the delays at the Phoenix VA hospital, although the VA contends that they were not “conclusively” linked. Nonetheless, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned less than a month later because of the scandal, and in July, the U.S. Senate appointed former Proctor & Gamble CEO Robert A. McDonald as the new secretary. Now that McDonald is in charge of the government’s second-largest agency, he faces significant challenges in righting the massive ship that is the VA—most important of which is the revitalization of the malfunctioning health care system. The issues with the health care system must be addressed in order for veterans to get the medical services they need. As a functional solution, the Department of Veterans Affairs should expand benefits to cover private health care.

Veteran affairs health care programs were established in 1930 to provide ongoing care and rehabilitation to veterans injured during wartime service. Today, the VA provides for a wider range of inpatient, outpatient, and long-term care services to veterans. The VA is now giving treatment to those veterans who have low-income and medical conditions unrelated to military service. Though veterans who have served our country are valued higher than many, there are still many veterans who are not insured and do not have proper access to healthcare. “In fact, just 8.9 million out of the 22 million veterans in the U.S. are enrolled in VA health benefits, which are reserved for those who have been disabled through military service or are very low-income.

As a disabled veteran I have had many experiences with the ever “infamous” Department of Veterans Affairs. Many people complain about the VA medical, and VA benefits about there slow response to veterans and dependents needs. Though it did take the VA a full calendar year and an extra 3 months to get my percentages prepared for my medical discharge following my Medical Evaluation Board, I had no issue with this considering I never wanted to get out of the military in the first place. My issues with the VA have always come when a situation arises that I need to speak with a VA representative. Whether it is calling the VA to check on the status of a monthly benefit payment or a general question regarding benefits I have always been put on hold for at minimum 30 minutes.