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Tag: department of veterans affairs
Biden’s Rescue Plan Restores Veterans’ Aid Cut By Trump

Biden’s Rescue Plan Restores Veterans’ Aid Cut By Trump

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

The $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan signed into law by President Joe Biden on Thursday contains a number of provisions that will provide new help to veterans struggling due to the pandemic.

U.S. veterans have suffered enormously during the pandemic, experts say. A Wounded Warrior Project survey last spring found that more than half reported worse mental health since the establishment of social distancing measures, and, according to an NBC report, the VA's mental health crisis line received 15% more calls in 2020 than in the previous year.

They are also among those who have experienced unemployment, a housing crisis, and extreme food instability during the pandemic, with some areas seeing food bank demand doubled for the military community in 2020.

The American Rescue Plan will bring relief to veterans by allocating $17 billion to the VA, including $14.4 billion for physical and mental health care and $750 million for housing construction and repair.

The law will allocate $50 billion to housing and rental assistance and $400 million to a job training program for veterans.

The Veteran Rapid Retraining Program offers veterans 12 months of direct payments once they enroll in an approved job-training program. It also provides full tuition payments to their program at no cost to the veteran and a monthly basic housing allowance that equals that of a married, E-5 active-duty soldier.

The program aims to provide job training for more than 17,000 veterans.

The relief will fill gaps in support exacerbated by repeated moves by the Donald Trump administration to slash veterans' benefits and health care.

Throughout his time in office, Trump waged war on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Social Security, all heavily relied upon by veterans.

Nearly one in 10 veterans receives health care through Medicaid, according to the House Committee on the Budget, and more than half have insurance coverage under Medicare. More than 620,000 rely on Social Security benefits, and 1.3 million veteran households receive SNAP food stamp benefits.

In 2019, the Trump administration rolled out policy changes that would have imposed work requirements on SNAP recipients, which would have had a disastrous impact on low-income Americans, including veterans, during the pandemic if advocates hadn't effectively blocked them. They would have cut SNAP funding to at least 700,000 Americans.

The Trump Department of Agriculture fought a lengthy battle in federal court to prevent states from administering emergency food stamps to low-income Americans.

In February 2020, just before onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump released a $4.8 trillion budget proposal that contained sharp budget cuts across the board, particularly to Medicare and Medicaid. The House Committee on the Budget issued a statement days later on the harm it would cause veterans by decreasing funding for these crucial programs.

Trump also made repeated attempts to cut Social Security benefits. He signed an executiveorder in August 2020, during a peak in the pandemic, that established a temporary deferral through December of that year for employees under a certain income level of payment of the portion of the payroll tax that funds Social Security, and pledged to make them permanent if he was reelected.

Trump also exacerbated an enormous staffing crisis within the Department of Veteran Affairs, which provides physical and mental health services to veterans. He enacted hiring freezesimpacting the VA and also cut the Interim Staffing Program, which assigned physicians, nurse practitioners, and assistants to VA hospitals and health care centers when permanent staff went on leave or retired.

When David Shulkin, the first veteran affairs secretary under Trump, took office, he vowed to double the size of the staffing program. Instead, he was removed by Trump after objecting to efforts by the administration to privatize the program, which was shut down to be replaced with a telehealth program.

The Trump administration also hampered the VA's efforts to recruit and retain staff by slashing employee benefits and dismantling worker protections. The most common position left unfilled was that of psychiatrist.

Ted Blickwedel, a former VA counselor, told the American Prospect that the Department of Veterans Affairs under Trump "kept pushing the numbers, the numbers, the numbers," adding, "We had counselors taking leave, burning out, facing suicidal thoughts, or obtaining their own therapists."

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Trump Fails To Mobilize VA Hospital Resources For Covid-19 Emergency

Trump Fails To Mobilize VA Hospital Resources For Covid-19 Emergency

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

The Trump administration is leaving untapped reinforcements and supplies from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, even as many hospitals are struggling with a crush of coronavirus patients.

The VA serves nine million veterans through 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, but it’s also legally designated as the country’s backup health system in an emergency. As part of the National Disaster Medical System, the VA has deployed doctors and equipment to disasters and emergencies in recent instances such as Hurricane Maria and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The VA system has 13,000 acute care beds, including 1,800 intensive care unit beds.

But for the coronavirus pandemic, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie told lawmakers this week that the agency won’t spring into action on its own. Instead of responding to pleas for help from states and cities, Wilkie said he’s waiting for direction from the Department of Health and Human Services or the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

And those calls, for the most part, haven’t come. HHS hasn’t asked the VA for significant help with the coronavirus pandemic. FEMA did not take a leading role in the government’s response until last Friday, and it has yet to involve the VA either.

“VA stands ready to support civilian health care systems in the event those systems encounter capacity issues,” press secretary Christina Mandreucci said. “At this time, VA has not received specific requests from FEMA for assistance.”

The White House referred questions to the VA. The VA referred a question about taking directions from HHS and FEMA to those agencies. HHS referred questions to FEMA, and FEMA referred questions to the VA.

The VA has fielded a handful of limited tasks. It asked 12 health technicians and nursing assistants to volunteer to help HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with coronavirus screenings for two weeks in February. The agency sent 14 medical technicians to help HHS with screenings at an Air Force base in California where evacuees from the Diamond Princess cruise ship were being quarantined. And a spokeswoman for CalVet, the state’s veterans agency, told ProPublica that the VA emergency manager in the region has helped provide supplies such as N95 masks.

Lawmakers are frustrated to see the VA largely sitting on its hands as the crisis escalates.

“It is unconscionable that HHS has not utilized every tool it has to address the real suffering of individuals in this nation and called upon VA,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs committee, said in a March 25 letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “States, communities and patients are already suffering as a result of HHS’s inaction. Get them help now.”

According to the VA’s pandemic plan released on Friday, the agency’s role in the governmentwide response may include helping emergency responders with protective gear, screening and training; helping to staff FEMA’s operations teams; dispatching advisers to state and local public health authorities; supplying medicines and equipment; and helping with burials.

The stimulus deal that the Senate passed late Wednesday includes $27 billion for HHS to reimburse the VA for providing care to the general public. That’s on top of $20 billion to help the VA care for veterans.

Just a month ago, at a House budget hearing, Wilkie declined additional funding. “Right now I don’t see a need for us,” he said. “We are set.”

The VA held its first planning meeting on the coronavirus on Jan. 22, the day after the first case was confirmed in the U.S., according to the agency’s response to an inspector general report released Thursday. But the department did not implement measures until two days after the World Health Organization formally declared a pandemic, on March 11. The VA did not issue guidance on screening patients until March 16.

Wilkie abruptly fired his deputy last month and is under investigation by the VA’s inspector general for allegedly seeking damaging information about a congressional staffer who said she was sexually assaulted at a VA hospital. (He denies doing so.) Wilkie took time off in recent weeks and has taken a back seat at White House task force meetings. Since joining the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force on March 2, Wilkie has spoken publicly only once, on March 18. (Mandreucci said Wilkie has attended 20 task force meetings.) At that time, Wilkie said the VA was preparing to join the disaster response but had not yet engaged.

“We are the buttress force in case that FEMA or HHS calls upon us to deploy medical professionals across the country to meet crises,” Wilkie said. “We plan for that every day. We are gaming out emergency preparedness scenarios. And we stand ready, when the president needs us, to expand our mission.”

Wilkie told Politico the VA was preparing to deploy 3,000 doctors, nurses and other emergency workers but had no timeline.

The VA’s role as the country’s emergency medical backup was first established by Congress in 1982 and is known as the agency’s “Fourth Mission.” (The first three missions are sometimes identified as care, training and research, and other times as health, benefits and memorials.) This month, a description of this Fourth Mission was suddenly scrubbed from the website of the VA’s Office of Emergency Management. Mandreucci noted it appeared on a different page.

The VA’s ability to support FEMA could be limited by demands from its own patients, who are largely older and part of the demographic that’s most vulnerable to the coronavirus. As of Friday, the VA had 571 patients who tested positive and nine who have died.

The VA’s inspector general said in a report on Thursday that health center leaders reported concerns about running out of medicines and protective gear. Leaders at the VA hospitals in Durham, North Carolina, and Detroit said they needed more ventilators. The inspector general’s report said 43% of the facility leaders surveyed planned to share ICU beds or protective gear with local providers.

“That assistance is dependent upon the availability of resources and funding, and consistency with VA’s mission to provide priority services to veterans,” Wilkie said in a March 23 letter to lawmakers.

Cure To Some VA Waits Creates New Ills

Cure To Some VA Waits Creates New Ills

We who oppose calls to privatize the work of the Veterans Affairs Department are sorely tested at times. Complaints two years ago of unreasonably long waits for care at VA health facilities led to “reforms” in several VA programs.

In 2013, applications for VA disability benefits were piling up, with some claims languishing for over a year. The remedy — streamlining the process for judging disability claims — was not done carefully.

The new computerized system demanded less evidence to prove disability. Examiners were given less time to spend with the applicants, forcing them to make rushed evaluations. It was inevitable that some veterans would exploit these weaknesses to obtain unwarranted disability payments or pad their checks.

As a result, the plan to unclog the pipeline for disability claims has ended up re-clogging it with fraudulent ones. Veterans with great needs are bumped out of appointments by fakers. And money that could go to those too disabled to work a regular job gets diverted to the well-bodied.

Veterans themselves are complaining about the scams. Here are two stories as reported in The Wall Street Journal:

Brian Jacobson spent more than year on roadside patrol in Iraq’s Diyala province. He justly receives disability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

But when he was applying for the benefit, a clinic staffer advised him thus: Act “like you have a screw loose in your head. Wear clothes with holes that haven’t been washed in a while. And act like you’ve been homeless.” Jacobson knew he was fully qualified for disability compensation, but the coaching, he said, made him “feel dishonest.”

Another veteran of the Iraq War, Jack Murphy, said he was told to say that he had “horrible nightmares” and was “too shellshocked to do anything.” He was to add that he’s impotent, even as his wife was expecting. As for his pregnant wife, the friends reportedly said, “They don’t know anything.”

Adding to the problem has been an easing of standards for obtaining disability payments. For example, proof of a traumatizing event in war was once required for claiming PTSD. Now it isn’t, which helps explain why PTSD claims nearly doubled from 2011 to 2015.

One wishes these applicants, though a minority of veterans, would refuse to lie their way to benefits that could go to their suffering comrades. But human nature being such, it’s obvious that if you open a path to receiving a monthly check with lies, some people will try to take it. This applies to all government programs.

Veterans’ disability payments have soared from about $15 billion in 2000 to over $60 billion last year. Such discussions must also note the very good reasons for rocketing disability costs, unrelated to fraud.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn American troops into very dangerous and stressful missions, creating a growing population of injured and sick veterans. Improvements in battlefield medicine are saving the lives of many grievously injured troops who would otherwise not have survived. They return home with broken bodies.

Those wounded in service to their country are entitled to the best of care. If their injuries impede their ability to work, then a monthly disability check is their due. But though all veterans deserve thanks for their service, they are not entitled to commit fraud.

The solution for long waits — whether for decisions on disability claims or receiving medical attention — should be more staff to do the work. Opening opportunities for cheating serves neither taxpayers nor veterans stuck in the resulting gridlock. It creates unfairness all around.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.

 

Photo: Adam Fagen via Flickr

Why Trump’s Success With Vets In Polls Is Misleading

Why Trump’s Success With Vets In Polls Is Misleading

Donald Trump is polling better than Hillary Clinton among voters who have served in the military, according to a survey conducted between May 13-24 by Morning Consult. Sixty-eight percent of respondents — like most voters, generally speaking — say the country is on the wrong track.

Neither candidate is exceptionally popular with veterans, but 2016 has been a year for politicizing armed service — perhaps driven by Donald Trump’s militarism, or perhaps by the swelling ranks of veterans in the United States: There were 22 million veterans in the U.S. in 2014, according to the Census Bureau, and millions more eligible voters currently serving in the military.

Campaign trail promises have left their mark on this group. It’s been over two years since the V.A. scandal broke, and vets still face long waits for government care — with some never getting the help they deserve and need — while veteran homelessness and suicide rates rise, the war against ISIS escalates, and a large population of servicemen and women have returned home to life in a jobless purgatory.

Despite the unique set of issues that affect this group, veterans’ support for political candidates seems largely divided along party lines.

When asked about a two-way race between the presumptive GOP nominee and Hillary Clinton, 51 percent of veterans said they planned on voting for Trump, 36 percent said the former Secretary of State. Although Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical Democratic primary, he did better than her when pinned against Trump.

The billionaire also beat the former First Lady in a survey from Military Times, which determined that among active-duty troops, reservists and National Guardsmen, Trump wins 54 percent to 25 percent.

Dan Caldwell, vice president for Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative group linked to the Koch brothers, told Stars and Stripes that veterans “are frustrated just like a lot of other people.”

Though his group has not endorsed the presumptive GOP nominee, Caldwell said that many voters are looking for a new kind of candidate, and that Trump and Sanders are probably polling better than Clinton among veterans because they reflect a drastic shift from the Obama administration, which he said mismanaged the Department of Defense while grappling with the V.A. scandal.

Trump’s particular popularity with veterans is, historically speaking, lower than it should be. Compared to polls of previous GOP presidential candidates in the summer months preceding an election, the Morning Consult survey shows that Trump’s candidacy has split the usual Republican advantage in half.

According to Gallup, in August 2008, Sen. John McCain led then-Sen. Barack Obama by over twenty points, 56 percent to 34 percent, among veteran voters, and in 2012 former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney also beat Obama by 22 percent. 

Jon Soltz, who served as an Army officer before leading the group VoteVets, told Stars and Stripes it’s “absolutely good news.”

“I don’t think there has been a time in modern history where a GOP candidate had such a gap in support among veterans,” he said.

Trump’s shortfall could be due to his complete inability to discuss military issues in any sort of coherent way, but it could also be his shameless politicization of the group, which has led to an outcry from veterans outraged by his use of their service as a campaign prop.

In an email to The National Memo, Rick Hegdahl, a veteran of the Navy and director of outreach for VoteVets, said, “Veterans are always used to politicians talking about us,” but “Donald Trump has taken things to a new low.”

Hegdahl cited Trump’s duplicitous handling of his own pro-troop fundraising efforts: As reported by the Washington Post in January, Trump claimed to have raised $6 million for veterans’ groups when he had only raised $4.5 million. Trump also claimed to have given $1 million of his own money, but didn’t actually donate any of it until pressed by various media outlets in late May.

“His event was a complete sham,” said Hegdahl. “[Trump] hid behind us because he didn’t want to face Megyn Kelly, and in the process tried to pretend he raised money that he hadn’t raised. This after he smeared P.O.W.’s and tried to get disabled veterans kicked out from in front of Trump Tower.”

Hegdahl thinks Trump’s brash dialogue has dangerously influenced this election, and the platforms of other Republican politicians, and he said veterans in his network have expressed similar sentiments about the “complete horror at what they’ve heard out of most of the GOP campaigns, which have been built on anti-Islam, anti-immigrant, saber rattling.”

“We haven’t seen positions this extreme in a long, long time,” he said.

When asked what they’d like to hear from the candidates, Hegdahl said “first and foremost, a foreign policy that doesn’t put our troops in harm’s way, unless as a last resort.”

“Second, support for policies that strengthen our relationships around the world, and help our military form the relationships of trust that they need, especially with Muslims, to effectively fight against extremism.”

And “strengthening the V.A. — not privatizing it, as many Republicans suggested they would do, and as Donald Trump has hinted at.”

“Privatization of the V.A. is the single biggest concern from veterans that we hear about,” he added.

Concerned Veterans for America didn’t respond to a similar request for comment.

Polls aren’t the only way to gauge support, if this campaign finance-obsessed election has taught us anything: Here again, Trump falls behind, drastically out-fundraised by Sanders and Clinton.

According to OpenSecrets.org, a project of the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics dedicated to tracking money in politics, people employed by the military or the U.S. Department of Defense and individuals who identified as retired service members have contributed $374,600 to the Sanders campaign and $247,649 to the Clinton campaign. As of Friday, Trump had only received $15,502.