America’s Heroes Didn’t Forget Us, Why Does the VA Forget/Neglect Them? –Image:Katy Mac & Ernie@Twitter (LA Register) Sarah La Brada was terrified and confused after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 4 yrs ago–she decided to leave her position as an Army Specialist and move with her husband to live with family near Long Beach, then 7 months pregnant and out of a job.
La Brada turned to the VA Long Beach Healthcare System but learned the hospital only has one Neurologist on staff–wait times took up to a month. La Brada, exited the VA (single payer) health care system which is free, opting instead for private health care.
“I have a 21.5 month old and I want to see my little boy grow up,” said La Brada, I want to be able to play with him.”
American Heroes who use the Los Angeles & Long Beach VA Hospitals say the wait time to see their primary care physicians can be as long as 90 days, forcing some of them to line up their own health care outside the federal system.
Appointments with Specialists can take as long as 8 mos Veterans say.
Is this what Americans can expect from ObamaCare?
Yesterday I wrote here about Donald Douglass delayed treatment to remove a cancerous growth on his forehead at the Seattle VA in September 2011 which resulted in his death.
- Navy Veteran Allen Hoffman aged 74 of Woodland Hills says that months of delays at the Los Angeles VA nearly cost him his life. In January 2013 a doctor noticed that his prostate specific antigen marker for cancer was elevated. “They ignored it and pushed around follow up appointments,” Hoffman said.
In November, Hoffman’s kidneys failed and he was rushed to the VA Emergency Dept, at that point his PSA score had skyrocketed to 700, doctors diagnosed him with prostate cancer but said that it had been caught too late and that he wan’t expected to live past June–his wife began looking at funeral/burial options.
- Don Rico of Huntington Beach served in the Navy from 1957 to 1960 and volunteers at the VA Long Beach directing patients around the sprawling hospital complex but he like La Brada, also goes elsewhere for his own health care. “The wait to see your primary care doctor–the standard is 90 days,” said Rico. “That’s the general, I don’t know what it would be if I had a specialty situation…I’m covered off site, I see my own doctor.”
- Mike Escarcido a Vietnam era Marine from Huntington Beach is being treated for glaucoma, diabetes and PTSD at the Long Beach VA, he said getting an appointment at a specialty clinic can take up to 8 months. “It takes so long to be seen—7 to 8 months down the line…You need to be seen with more frequency than every 6 months,” Escarcido said.
As soon as this latest Obama scandal broke Democrats and many of the Liberal Lefty dinosaur media blamed Republicans for budget shortfalls as the reason for the delays in treatment at the Veterans Administration.
Sen Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virgina, argued that the main cause of the delay is money, “If the VA doesn’t have enough doctors to see these patients, then these problems are a result of a lack of funding.”
NBC News Jim Miklaszewski argued the same point on Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press’ saying, “You have a VA that is overwhelmed and under-resourced…There’s just not enough money right now in the federal government to fix it.”
“That may sound good and it would seem to make sense,” writes Investors Business Daily “but its far from true.”
The VA’s budget has been exploding even as the number of Veterans, steadily declines–from 2000 to 2013 outlays nearly tripled while the population of Veterans declined by 4.3 million.
When is Obama finally going to put on some big boy pants and begin accepting responsibility for his failures?
How much longer will the dinosaur media continue to run cover for Obama before they finally do their job and expose the malfeasance and lack of accountability of Obama and his administration?
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