The VA Didn’t Do the Right Thing, Congress Didn't Either

There are a lot of reports that get to me emotionally, more than others. This one about claims being stuffed in a file cabinet ranked toward the top.

The claims, which dated back as far as the mid-1990s, were discovered in 2012 as a national scandal erupted over the VA’s sloppy and slow handling of benefits, which outraged veterans.
San Francisco Gate, Oakland VA office botched benefits, forgot about claims

It hit me hard on several levels. The battle my husband and I fought was from 1982 when I was discovering what PTSD was from the local library. We didn't have the internet back then in case you don't remember those days. It took 8 more years to get him to be diagnosed by a private doctor. Three more years to get him to go to the Veterans Center and from there, to the VA hospital.

What I thought would save his life and our marriage turned into another 6 years of fighting the VA to treat him, honor his claim and fighting him to not give up. I thanked God he had great doctors at the VA working with me to help him while the claim denials were making things worse for him.

That nightmare hasn't changed for veterans even though we have the internet to find out what is going on from state to state and well aware of the struggles fought as much as we are aware that politicians never hold anyone accountable for any of this. Why should they when they've gotten away with all of this for decades?

We lived clear across the country from California yet time zones didn't matter.  Veterans were suffering from coast to coast.

Oakland VA files reveal heartbreak, delays
Santa Cruz Sentinel
By Mark Emmons
POSTED: 03/21/15

OAKLAND — There was nothing special about the metal, gray file cabinet.

But for Rustyann Brown, it represented heartbreak and shattered trust. Stuffed inside were the silent pleas of more than 13,000 veterans and surviving spouses, some dating back to the mid-1990s, begging for VA assistance — help she believes never came for an untold number of them.

Instead, those compensation and disability claims from Northern California veterans had been stashed away and forgotten at the Oakland regional benefits office, according to Brown and other whistle-blowers.

“The VA didn’t do the right thing,” said Brown, 61, of San Leandro. “It didn’t even try to do the right thing. So many of them died waiting. The thought of what happened to those veterans will keep me up at night the rest of my life.”
read more here

Nothing has changed. It never will as long as members of Congress actually remember their obligation to veterans if they sit on the Veterans Affairs Committee in the House, seated in 1946, or on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee since 1970. Until that happens they will just keep blaming the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, as they have since it was made into a cabinet position.

The VA was elevated to a cabinet-level executive department by President Ronald Reagan in October 1988

Oh but hey, why bother to actually learn any history of what went on and when? After all, if members of Congress actually had to do that, they'd also have to be aware folks are watching them too and planning on holding them accountable as well. It is so much easier to dismiss what was done and for how long they did it.