Non-VA Emergency Care

to see non-VA emergency care ( just click link below)


https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B11axbziSq-EY2dra19ZZmtwRHc/edit?usp=sharing

VVA punxsy Pa.

This is Vietnam veterans  that died in Nam from my home town

A group of as Nam vets had this build for our friends

VVA 17 Nellis Retiree Appreciation Day

Nellis will be holding it's annual Retiree Appreciation Day September 14th.  It will run from 0800 - 1300 with free lunch for attendees who sign in.  Place is the Thunderbirds Hangar.

I have been a volunteer at the Nellis RAO Office since 1996.  I have seen several organizations recruit new members from an information table with literature from the organization.  I had a table last year and brought in two new members for one organization and three for another. 

I reserved a table for the Vietnam Veterans of America but on second thought may do one for Henderson, NV Veteran organizations or any others in the Valley looking for military retirees to join.   - sort of a combined effort.  All I would need from your organization or activity would be a stack of flyers or brochures with organization information and contact information such as meeting place, time, date and a POC.  National military organizations are always represented like AUSA, AFA, and several other fraternal and veteran service organizations usually have a table. 

Commercial activities can also request tables.  If you are interested in recruiting for your organization, send me an email.  If you want a table, hurry and call Jean Putney, RAO Director at 898-1888 as there are only a few left.

There will be medical and dental screenings, TRICARE info, base activities info and similar areas.

Lou

check this out

You can be Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Independent or Libertarian and I bet this will hit a nerve. Our country is in real trouble.

This gentleman is obviously quite smarter than the two senators he sent it to.

All I can say is amen to everything he said.  A very articulate letter sent to the two U.S. Senators from Washington State.

April 3, 2013

Senator Patty Murray
Senator Maria Cantwell
Washington , DC , 20510

Dear Senator:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a
Command Sergeant Major , U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses
shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those
virtues he felt important - honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the
laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country,
paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of
money, time and artifacts.

Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look
at my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few
things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I
have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my
entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year!
Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the
Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts
and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated 1.4 $billion on himself
and his family. The vice president spends $millions on hotels. They
have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of
Representatives and Senate have become America 's answer to the Saudi
royal family. You have become the "perfumed princes and princesses" of
our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care
Act, a.k.a. "Obama Care," a bill which no more than a handful of
senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed
it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it
substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care
insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one
percenters," consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while
making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up
nothing while you (as well as the president and veep) ask us to
sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course, you plan to
blame the Republicans, anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know - (1) How
to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with
the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated
with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the
greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and
non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote ) who are looking for a
handout rather than a job. Your so-called "safety net" has become a
hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on
food stamps - pretty much all Democrat voters - and the program is
absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight?

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is
the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed
yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires
you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you
have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it
appears that the second oldest profession (politics), bears a
remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.

As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 -
1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated,
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great
men are almost always bad men." I'm only guessing that this applies to
the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in
this country than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government
becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and
ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us
(just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must
purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can
drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we must buy. Countless
thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the
consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my
government tell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you,
Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government
officials and their families will get the best possible health care on
our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also
enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you
voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your
staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter
response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied,
hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has
heard us and actually cares. This letter will, however, go on line
where many others will have the chance to read one person's opinion,
rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its
senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for
all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for
which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $17
trillion national debt for which your children and ours, and your
grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up
the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost
his or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and
continue to destroy this country I deeply love and put it so far in
debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the
minute, because of your power. For you, Senator, will never stand up
to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American
people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and
the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term
limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden
eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.

Sincerely,

Bill Schoonover
3096 Angela Lane
Oak Harbor , WA 98277 

VA to Issue New Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses Task Force Report

(91outcomes.com) - The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is set to publish its latest Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses Task Force report.

According to a senior VA official, veterans, organizations, and individuals will be able to submit comments and feedback to VA regarding the report through an online "UserVoice" collection site.  Public comments and feedback will also be possible through the Federal Register website.

The website for the Federal Register notice for the report, which will be updated as necessary, is:  

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/05/14/2013-11384/gulf-war-veterans-illnesses-task-force

Previous Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses Task Force reports are available here:  http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/reports/gwvi-taskforce.asp

-Anthony Hardie

91outcomes.com

Compensation and the VA ... Is enough being done?

Compensation and the VA ... Is enough being done?
January 14, 2007
By Tony Bucaro

January, a month that all disabled veterans look forward to. Why you ask, because every January the government gives disabled veterans an increase in their disability payments.

This year the government passed a 3.3% raise to take effect starting on January 1, 2007. That’s a great start but the VA needs to step up and start taking better care of our veterans. What I mean by this is the time it takes to process claims for compensation. 

For example, I put in a claim back in August 2006 for an existing disability which is both my knees. Now, this is not a new claim because I have been receiving compensation for my knee’s since 1998. But because my VA doctor said that I could no long work in nursing because of my condition, I submitted a claim to have my compensation increased. It has been almost 6 months now and they are still sitting on it. What is the reason for this? I have been told that the rating specialists have up to 60 days to hold a claim and then a decision has to be made on it. I have also been told that that’s a lie. So what is one to think? I can say this to you that my claim has been sitting with the rating specialist for well over 60 days now and as of today....nothing. 

I was watching the evening news a couple of nights ago and they were interviewing a soldier who just came back from Iraq. He had spent many months in and out of hospitals and rehab centers because he lost one of his legs by an IED. He stated that from the time he was hit in Iraq to his last day in the hospital before going home everyone was just great with him. He didn’t have a bad word to say about the treatment he received by the Army or by the VA. What he did say was that he couldn’t believe that he has been waiting over 6 months to receive word on his claim for compensation from the VA. He stated that he needed that money to help support himself and his family because he is still in physical therapy (PT) and can’t work just yet. 

What’s the deal with this? Why is it taking so long to review a claim and decide if a person will receive compensation or not? I understand that it takes time to review each claim but, that sounds like a personal problem and not one that I or any other veteran can help with. But yet, we are the ones suffering for it.

In my opinion the VA needs to step it up on processing claims. 

What is your opinion on this? Tell me all about it ………

House Panel claims VA Not Doing Enough for Iraq Vets

Associated Press | March 14, 2007
WASHINGTON - The Veterans Affairs' system for handling disability claims is strained to its limit, and the Bush administration's current efforts to relieve backlogs won't be enough to serve veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, investigators said Tuesday.

In testimony to a House panel, the Government Accountability Office and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes detailed their study into the VA's claims system in light of growing demands created by wars. They found a system on the verge of crisis due to backlogs, cumbersome paperwork and ballooning costs.

The House hearing is the latest to review the quality of care for wounded troops returning from Iraq - from emergency medical care at military hospitals, to long-term rehabilitation at VA clinics and eventual transition to civilian life with VA disability payments.

According to their findings, the VA:

-Took between 127 to 177 days to process an initial claim and an average of 657 days to process an appeal, resulting in significant hardship to veterans. In contrast, the private sector industry takes about 89.5 days to process a claim.

-Had a claims backlog of roughly 600,000.

-Will see 638,000 new first-time claims in the next five years due to the Iraq war - 400,000 by the end of 2009 alone - creating added costs of between $70 billion and $150 billion.

-Maintained a system for determining a veteran's disability that was complex and applied inconsistently across regional centers. Results varied; for example, Salt Lake City took 99 days to process a claim, while Honolulu spent 237 days.

-Had antiquated technology for processing claims, such as unreliable old fax machines.

The findings drew fire from House members. Rep. John Hall, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on disability assistance, floated the possibility that the Veterans Affairs Department should be merged into the Defense Department.
"When our Soldiers and military personnel return home and need help, they should get the assistance they have earned without delay," said Hall, D-N.Y.

Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn, the panel's top Republican, said the overstressed claims system was courting a "financial and potentially emotional disaster."

Bilmes, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who co-authored a paper on the war's economic costs with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, described a failed system that could have been prevented after years of warnings. She urged simplifying the disability ratings system, reducing time VA staffers spend documenting disabilities, and conducting random audits instead.

"The veterans returning from Iraq are suffering from the same problem that has plagued many other aspects of the war, namely a failure to plan ahead," she said.
Responding, Ronald Aument, deputy under secretary for benefits at the VA, told the House panel that the department was working to shorten delays. The VA also was consolidating some processing operations, and planned to add 400 new employees by the end of June.

"Expediting the claims process is critical to assisting veterans in their transition from combat operations back to civilian life," Aument said.

The hearing follows disclosures of roach-infested conditions and shoddy outpatient care at Walter Reed Medical Center, one of the nation's premier military hospitals. Since the disclosures by the Washington Post, three high-level Pentagon officials have been forced to step down. President Bush has also appointed a commission led by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, a Democrat, to conduct a broad review on veteran and troop care.

"If anything the recent Walter Reed expose has taught us is that trying to treat and care for Soldiers and veterans on a limited budget and limited oversight only has one logical conclusion, poor care," said Patrick Campbell, legislative director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Daniel Bertoni, an acting director at the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, said the VA system has been riddled with problems for years. "After more than a decade of research, we have determined that federal disability programs are in urgent need of attention and transformation," he said.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said what was needed was to create specialized case workers known as "navigators" who could make sure Soldiers don't fall through the cracks after leaving military service and before they enter the VA system.

Menendez planned to introduce legislation Wednesday to create a pilot program with $25 million in grants over the next five years. The navigators would focus on helping new veterans who are members of the National Guard, women or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The Veteran Navigators, who will not be part of the government system, will be better able to advocate for veterans to make sure they are treated fairly," Menendez said.