Vet Finally Gets VA Doctor’s Appointment – 2 Years After He Died

The vet had a brain tumor and waited to get an appointment at their local VA. Well he died and they finally gave him an appointment 22 months later.. Nothing earth shattering just a small example of mismanagement and one vets/wife's sorrow.

Suzanne Chase was denied funeral benefits for her husband because he was never treated at a VA hospital, even though he died after waiting four months for an appointment. (WBZ-TV)

boston.cbslocal.com...

These are real people who served and were promised certain things for their service. The V.A. is hit and miss.. Some are quite good and some are worse than terrible IMO.

a reply to: 727Sky

That is weird? Funeral benefits are available for everyone who honorably served their country in the military. I does not have to do with VA treatment.

Mrs. Chase should consider a lawsuit against the VA.

a reply to: 727Sky

The VA has hit my family head-on. When I returned from Vietnam the last time I wanted to visit a friend wounded about three months prior my return home. I knew he was discharged by the nature of his wounds and was being treated by the Detroit VA through a letter he had sent me about a month prior. About a week or so after getting home I gave Don a call just to get his wife. She floored me with the news my friend had passed away from a infection undetected by the VA.

Fast forward to 2011 when my son returned from Afghanistan with a sever case of PTSD and drug addiction. After his discharge I took him to the local VA hospital for treatment and met with a reams of paperwork. After that was finished he was scheduled for see a doctor in 6 weeks. In the interim, my son started experiencing chest pains at 23 years old. My wife who is a nurse though he was having a heart attack so we took him to the ER at the VA. They keep him for 7 hours just to send him home with another appointment 6 weeks out. When the first appointment arrived they were at a loss as to who he was and they reschedule another appointment in 3 weeks. On the second appointment for his heart problem they said he didn't show for his initial appointment and they couldn't see him. To make a long long story short, he was eventually treated after a year of lost forms and doctors not showing for treatments. Three years into his experience he is now well treated but the road was long! I have serious doubt that he could have navigated the bureaucracy with his PTSD without my wife's intervention.

a reply to: buddah6

Thanks for the story and I feel for you and your family. Done that been there - disabled vet myself. I see that you served and your son. Thank you for your service and your son's.

I convinced my children to not serve in any military. As a U.S. American with children born abroad (makes the children U.S.) I never went to the U.S. embassy to report their births - instead they received citizenship from Germany. My sons were never drafted into any military service. Thank God.

It is my opinion if the U.S. wants war then give OBAMA and the politicians guns and let them fight it to the death with the enemy. The U.S. is not here to police the world and they should stay home and take care of their own issues first.

a reply to: 727Sky

If 0bama had a Govt run Healthcare system, it would look like the VA.


Oh wait........it is starting to already.

Illegal immigrants are treated better than our Vets...so goddamn sad.

a reply to: HardHead

Hardhead, unfortunately we can't get the spineless politicians to do what they were elected to do let alone fight for this country. Our government has become a oligarchy with a ruling class. They are only going to enrich themselves while in office and become lobbyists afterwards. Thank GOD for us in the warrior class...lol.

I did try to convince my children to serve in other ways but it didn't work on the youngest son. It's my fault for taking him along on some of my reserve reunions. When he finished high school he announced that he was joining the army much to my dismay. Both my wife and I made many suggestions as to his job selection but he was determined to go into the infantry. Well, you know the outcome.

Wish I could say I was surprised been reading about this happening over seas for years... now we have it happening here with the Vets... and guess what folks... its coming soon to a hospital near you civilian folks.

originally posted by: macman
a reply to: 727Sky

If 0bama had a Govt run Healthcare system, it would look like the VA.


Oh wait........it is starting to already.

Hey!!!

I have a great idea!

Let's blame all of the VA shortcomings from THE PAST FORTY years (according to anecdotal reports from vets since Nam) on a president!

Nice try...system was broke even during St. Reagan's time...everyone knew it.
Why is it now just becoming news?

Its becoming news now because for over a decade everybody knew we would have more people surviving than ever from horrific war injuries and sever mental stress... and the VA, Congress, and 2 presidents did squat to get ready for everyone coming home.

10+ years of war... this problem has been here for some time, its just now they can no longer hide it, to many people asking questions that even main stream media cant pretend it doesn't exist anymore.

originally posted by: buddah6
a reply to: 727Sky

The VA has hit my family head-on. When I returned from Vietnam the last time I wanted to visit a friend wounded about three months prior my return home. I knew he was discharged by the nature of his wounds and was being treated by the Detroit VA through a letter he had sent me about a month prior. About a week or so after getting home I gave Don a call just to get his wife. She floored me with the news my friend had passed away from a infection undetected by the VA.

Fast forward to 2011 when my son returned from Afghanistan with a sever case of PTSD and drug addiction. After his discharge I took him to the local VA hospital for treatment and met with a reams of paperwork. After that was finished he was scheduled for see a doctor in 6 weeks. In the interim, my son started experiencing chest pains at 23 years old. My wife who is a nurse though he was having a heart attack so we took him to the ER at the VA. They keep him for 7 hours just to send him home with another appointment 6 weeks out. When the first appointment arrived they were at a loss as to who he was and they reschedule another appointment in 3 weeks. On the second appointment for his heart problem they said he didn't show for his initial appointment and they couldn't see him. To make a long long story short, he was eventually treated after a year of lost forms and doctors not showing for treatments. Three years into his experience he is now well treated but the road was long! I have serious doubt that he could have navigated the bureaucracy with his PTSD without my wife's intervention.

That is exactly why i refuse to use the VA. In my experience they are completely useless for medical care of any kind and when they do finally decide to treat you, all they want to do is offer you some therapy from some half wit who has never seen a battlefield and force feed you huge doses of pharmaceuticals

a reply to: the owlbear

Hey!!!! Who is in charge now???/


Oh....And who has been running the VA for a long time as well?

Let's thank those wonderful Union driven Federal Govt workers. What leanings do they have again???? I don't recall.

a reply to: Irishhaf

I agree that it's happening and happening for a long time to the VA. The truly sad part is that it's happening to not only the VA but our school system, retirement system and most government organizations. The politicians have not been good stewards of our country for many years regardless of political party. The President continues to do things that taxes an already strained government to the point of intentionally making it fail.

Sadly, from my perspective, the group that is in power today are the same people who were spitting on our returning veterans in the 1960's and 70's. Many of those veterans were draftees and had little choice but to serve and had no power to change national policies.

In the 2008 elections, Obama campaigned on the disgrace of the Veteran Administration but 6 years later it's as bad as ever. Not to put the problem completely on Obama, in my time the issue of Agent Orange took 10 years before the VA recognized it's effect on the guys that I served with. This allowed the worst cases to die before treatment. After the first Gulf War was the issue of breathing spent uranium from our ammunition and PTSD. PTSD has been around since our first war! It's name has been changed several time but it was all PTSD. Combat fatigue, war weary, thousand yard stare and shell shocked were names for PTSD. Now, returning vets who served in Iraq and Afghanistan having inhaled very fine dust caused by IEDs and bombing causing syllidisis (sp).

Maybe, the politicians will discover that there are serious results from sending young men and women to war. They are usually out of office before the true effects of their actions can be seen and if not the results are hidden by the VA. If there is true justice, the children of the politicians would be the first to serve in future wars then there wouldn't be a need for the VA.

a reply to: EyesOpenMouthShut

I agree with you! I was fortunate enough to have student and later employer paid insurance so I avoided the VA. I had other motivations to avoid the VA like trying to stay on flight status in the NG and in civilian life.

My son tells me the care at the VA is by foreign medical staff that have English as a second language and education that prevent them from get more responsible employment. He can't adequately convey his issues to them without much delay. Many times they are so arrogant, they are very late or no-shows for appointment just to blame the veteran.

What i don't understand is why these veterans never went to the VA hospitals urgent care clinics.

If i have something that needs treatment now and i don't have a appointment i go to urgent care clinic.

Somehow,this is unbelievable!


hotair.com...



"In another indicator of how low a priority veterans have with this administration, a whistleblower in Atlanta has revealed that VA employees were switched from processing VA applications to those of the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare."

originally posted by: Sunwolf
Somehow,this is unbelievable!


hotair.com...



"In another indicator of how low a priority veterans have with this administration, a whistleblower in Atlanta has revealed that VA employees were switched from processing VA applications to those of the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare."

From your link:

He later appeared on the Neil Cavuto show and claimed that 17,000 applications for VA Healthcare were destroyed. He also said they’re “also looking into a backlog of over 600,000 pending applications for VA Healthcare.” Davis said the applications were purged as a way to deal with pressure from Washington D.C.

originally posted by: ANNED


What i don't understand is why these veterans never went to the VA hospitals urgent care clinics.

If I have something that needs treatment now and i don't have a appointment i go to urgent care clinic. [
We did go to the ER at the VA when we thought our son was having a heart attack. We sat in the waiting room for nearly seven hours just to receive an appointment to see a cardiologist in three weeks. When we returned for his appointment he was told he didn't attend his initial appointment though he had but wasn't seen because an administration error. This wasn't including the ER visit.

His first visit to the cardiologist was useless due to the language barrier...We couldn't understand her and I don't think she could understand us. She did schedule my son for tests. We did eventually request a change of doctors but not until he was being treated. The outcome was that the drugs he was taking in Afghanistan had been cut with talcum powder which affected his lungs and heart but it took a year to discover.

edit on 4-7-2014 by buddah6 because: (no reason given)