Pros And Cons Of The VA Scandal

Failed internal issues at VA facilities have resulted in harm and even in the deaths of veterans. According to a report by the Office Of Inspector General (2014), “17 deaths had occurred while waiting for VHA treatment in the Phoenix VA system, and on June 5, 2014 the Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Sloan Gibson, reported that the VA had identified 18 additional deaths” (as cited in Wikipedia, n.d.).

Dictionary.com’s definition of the Department of Veterans Affairs is, “The second-largest cabinet department, the VA coordinates the distribution of benefits for veterans of the American armed forces and their dependents. The benefits include compensation for disabilities, the management of veterans' hospitals, and various insurance programs.” My sister, Keara Torkelson, is a retired US Army Veteran. Every time she takes a trip to the VA’s office, she only comes out less and less satisfied. However, the VA’s office isn’t the only place Veterans are neglected.

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

The VA System needs a complete over all we are doing a terrible disservices to our veteran’s.

The veteran population is a highly diverse and prominent population group within the United States. Over time their specific healthcare needs have been at the forefront of political discussion and legislation. Due to their disparities of healthcare that continue to grow and change overtime, recent reforms have been set in place to continue to provide healthcare to veterans. This paper will discuss a brief summary of recent reforms of the Veteran Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 (H.R. 3230) and the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act of 2014 (Clay Hunt SAV Act). From this summary it will then be appropriated how these reforms adhere to the social justice framework presented by John Rawls in the Rawlsian “Justice as Fairness” liberal theory and promote the path towards social justice by providing ways for veterans to overcome their healthcare disparities. This paper aims to examine how these healthcare reforms continue to serve veterans in having equal access and fair quality of healthcare within their population group and as a product of societal obligation to provide care for them.

These incidents are not isolated. Federal funding for Veteran's Affairs has been under pressure for years. There was talk during the election campaigning that Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan's budget cut the VA budget a further 24%, though the actual GOP proposed budget endorsed by Governor Romney did not contain such cuts. There has been no proposal recently, however, that would increase VA funding. This comes despite the fact that the number of veterans in the United States has ballooned in the past decade as a consequence of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that there is greater awareness of PTSD and other veteran-specific conditions now than there has been in the past.

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).

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.

One of the most serious problems facing all veterans today is the lack of proper healthcare. Soldiers, sailors and airmen are leaving active duty without having proper healthcare to cover their physical or mental injuries. The department responsible for veteran’s healthcare is the Department of Veterans Affairs. (VA) According to The department of Veterans Affairs website, “The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is responsible for administering programs of veterans’ benefits for veterans, their families, and survivors. The benefits provided include disability compensation, pension, education, home loans, life insurance, vocational

Are Veterans receiving the same response by United States after reaching home? Thousands of wounded troops are coming home and they really need medical care. In past the government of United States was obliged these veterans with great medical care and benefits to them and their dependents. But lately it’s more important to look- whether Iraq War veterans are getting the same benefits and medical treatments as they deserve or cheated?

The American Nation was stunned after learning that over 40 Veterans died; while waiting to receive an appointment at Phoenix’s Veterans Affairs Health Care System (Bronstein & Griffin, 2014). Internal emails retrieved by CNN investigators confirmed that Phoenix’s Veteran Affair’s Manager failed to ensure that more than 1,400 Veteran receive health care services.

The Veterans Administration Medical Center hospital system has been in the national headlines for many years. This has generally not been in a positive way. Many issues have tarnished the reputation of the VA system including, in the distant past questions of sterilization issues reportedly resulting in veterans contracting Hepatitis C from a colonoscope (Tasker, 2011), to more current issues with access and timeliness of care for veterans ("Memo shows VA gaming appointments system to hide wait times", 2014; "Nearly 100 patients died waiting for care from los angeles VA", 2017). Our local Veterans Administration Medical Center is no different and has recently been in the spotlight for similar reasons including wait lists and delay in

In the United States, soldiers are currently returning home from war broken and scarred. While some physical wounds are clearly visible others are often hidden/invisible to the naked eye, but men and women proudly wear these wounds as a badge of courage and honor for protecting our nation. These men and women come home rightfully expecting help, assistance and care and get hit with the reality of poor care from the Veteran Health Administration and Department of Defense.