Shooting Yourself In The Foot

August 25, 2009 — The VA has gone and done it again. This time some computer was coded wrong, which means someone did not do their job correctly and there apparently was no quality control in place, and letters that were suppose to tell more than 1800 Gulf War veterans that have Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) about disability benefits available to them ended up telling some of them that they had the fatal disease. The VA stated the letters were not intended to deliver a medical diagnosis. Really? You can read about this here if you'd like http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-24-vets-disease_N.htm.

Now lets see, the VA in the not to distant past has lost personal medical information because of stolen laptop computers, used non-sterile equipment in colonoscopy examinations causing hepatitis infections, and the list seems to never end. It has had a reputation in the past for not providing veterans the care they deserve and are owed because of their service to their country. Some of the problems have been caused by poor funding from the Congress. But that has been improving over the last several years. The medical staff and administrative personnel have been working hard to improve their care and their image. But somewhere...something...is still rotten. Oh, and how can the VA explain rationally that they can pay bonuses to employees and still have such a tremendous backlog of unpaid veterans claims? The answer to that question is they can't! The veterans of this country deserve an explanation and full accounting of these issues. They also deserve to know just how the VA intends to prevent things like this from happening in the future. The individual/s involved in the computer coding error need to be held accountable and probably dismissed or at the very minimum placed under close supervision. That accountability needs to be explained and provided to the veterans in this country.

Now as you know I am a veteran. I use the VA system for some of my medical care. I do not blindly place myself in any one's care for my health issues. But how am I to continue to have faith in the VA when things like this latest incident keep cropping up? Just how much trust can I put in the VA. It seems that the answer to that is that I need to be very vigilant in what is going on. I do not want to lose my confidence in the VA. I believe in their system and what they are trying to do. But how much more should I take? How do I know that when I go out to have my blood drawn tomorrow that it will be done with sterile equipment in a sterile environment? I have to have faith and I will for now...it's what really matters!