Overall the
VA health care delivery and claims process has been screwed up for years. Out of all fairness the VA in NH is probably
one of the better ones. A number of
years ago some of the veterans groups worked with some of the NH Legislators to
take a look at what was wrong with the program.
As information came in as to what the problems were the Manchester VA
made attempts to correct them.
What they
could not correct was the underlying lever of bureaucratic level of
mismanagement and incompetency that comes with any federal program screaming
for good management. We had veterans who
lived in Colebrook or Berlin that would have to drive, or get a ride, at 0230
to go to the Boston area for medical issues.
The Western part of the state usually goes to White River Jct, VT.
Manchester
never impressed me or the clinic at Pease and I have been serviced by both, and
that is why I use my private insurance.
One of the
options we discussed was to lay off the majority of VA Staff and give ID cards
for all Veterans involved in services and let them go to private providers and
charge the VA. I understand that some of
that has been adopted and hopefully will become the wave of the future.
What the
director of the VA program didn’t realize is that they set up their own programs
for failure. When you set goals of reducing
waiting lists, etc, and giving pay bonuses when those goals get met, the
easiest way to reduce the lists to get your bonus is to burn the lists; ok, now
we have met that goal is there any other area that you want us to increase efficiency
in?
We are
getting into an election year and it looks good to scream about how our
veterans are not being serviced properly.
The bottom line is where were these watch dogs of our sick, aging and
disabled military a year or two ago?
I would not
remove the director of the VA at this point.
He has been burned and burned badly by his own managers; I don’t think
he will allow that again.
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