Former Phoenix VA director Helman suing to overturn firing
KPHO News
By Phil Benson
By Jonathan Lowe
Updated: May 11, 2015
Sharon Helman, shown May 1, 2014, was fired soon after the passage last
year of the VA Accountability Act. She is now suing to get her job back.
(Source: KPHO/KTVK)
Despite being the most vilified person during the Phoenix VA scandal, former director Sharon Helman is suing the federal government. She wants her firing reversed.
Helman was fired soon after the passage last year of the VA Accountability Act. It allowed the VA Secretary to remove under-performing senior executives.
Those executives weren't given the right to an appeal, either. But an appeal is exactly what Helman said in her court filing that she deserves.
Helman's firing actually had nothing at all to do with the appointment and wait time scandal.
It was for, "accepting gifts and I think the term was 'conflict of interest,'" said David Lucier, president of the Arizona Veterans and Military Leadership Alliance.
Whatever the reason, paperwork obtained from the U.S. Court of Appeals reveals Helman is aiming to have her firing overturned.
"The first word that comes to mind is reprehensible," Lucier said. His organization has worked to improve veterans' medical care since Helman's exit. "The best, most immediate thing is that veterans are getting service faster."
Jeff Miller, chairman of the U.S. House Veteran Affairs Committee, has been an outspoken voice on accountability at the VA. In a statement, he said, "I think Sharon Helman's arguments will be about as successful in a court of law as they were in the court of public opinion." read more here
Lawsuit blames Phoenix VA hospital for veteran's suicide
AZ Centeral
Dennis Wagner, The Republic
May 9, 2015
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Gene Spencer killed himself after a VA doctor erroneously said his death from cancer was imminent.
A federal lawsuit was filed when the VA rejected a wrongful-death claim for $2.5 million in damages.
Spencer's widow says, "It just wasn't right; he deserved better than what they did to him."
Shirley Fobke holds a photo taken on the day she married Army veteran Gene Spencer in 1997.
Spencer battled cancer and received care from the Phoenix VA. He committed suicide in 2012.
(Photo: Tom Tingle/The Republic)
The lawsuit says U.S. Army veteran Gene Spencer was at the Phoenix VA Medical Center on Oct. 5, 2012, when a physician told him cancer had metastasized in his lungs and he should go home to prepare for the end.
Three days passed, according to the complaint, before the 67-year-old husband, writer, audiologist, building contractor and dog lover used a gun to take his own life.
One day after that, Spencer's wife, Shirley Fobke, says, she received a phone call from the hospital notifying her of good news: There was an error in the diagnosis, and Spencer was not about to die.
Those are the key allegations in a wrongful-death action filed April 30 with the U.S. District Court in Phoenix, seeking damages from the VA on behalf of Spencer's widow.
"As a result of the misdiagnosis," says the suit, "Shirley Fobke suffered and will continue to suffer emotional and economic injury, lost wages, lost opportunity for financial gain, future earning capacity, loss of consortium, loss of love and affection. ..." read more here
VFW, DAV Joint Legal Fight Against VA Over New Claims System
Military.com
by Bryant Jordan
May 08, 2015
Veterans groups, including the VFW and DAV, told the VA two years ago that any new system that eliminated the informal claims process would be opposed.
Two more veterans organizations are going to court against the Veterans Affairs Department over the agency's decision to end its historic informal claims process.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans say that a new claims system the VA adopted in March "severely undercuts the non-adversarial, pro-veteran principles upon which the veterans' benefits system was built. In particular, the VA alters decades-long pro-veterans practices under the guise of creating efficiencies within the VA."
The efficiencies include the use of standardized forms that veterans would have to download, fill out and file.
"The VFW doesn't oppose the use of standardized forms," VFW National Veterans Service Director William L. Bradshaw said. "Our opposition is to this all or nothing approach that VA is forcing on veterans -- changes, that if left in place, will guarantee in this year alone that tens of thousands of service-connected wounded, ill and injured veterans will be denied benefits they were entitled to before the change became effective."
The VFW and DAV are only the latest veterans' advocates to sue the VA over the new system.
Attorney Douglas J. Rosinski of Veterans Justice Group in Columbia, South Carolina, also filed a suit challenging the new system last November.
In March, The American Legion, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the National Veterans Legal Services Program, AMVETS, and the Vietnam Veterans of America filed suit. read more here
These groups are fighting for all generations of veterans. That says something right there considering they have all been doing it for decades!
The VFW and the DAV are very dear to my heart. The VFW fights for all veterans no matter what generation they belong to.
My husband is a lifetime member of the VFW and DAV and I am a lifetime member of the DAV Auxiliary. My Dad (Korean veteran) was a lifetime member of the DAV, so in one way or another, I've known how hard they work all my life. They fight for all veterans to obtain what they are eligible for and compensated appropriately for their disabilities/wounds caused by serving this country.
While it may feel warm and fuzzy to think these politicians have the best interest of veterans in mind, the reality is they are like a rusty wheel making a lot of noise going in circles. Every year veterans don't even get excuses from them. They just spin their gears so they can point their fingers at whoever happens to sit in the seat as Secretary of the VA. Don't believe me. Just look up what they are supposed to be responsible for on the link above. Educate yourself so you know exactly what has been going on and why veterans blame congress!
Published on Apr 12, 2015
Saturday fed up veterans got into a dumpster to show how they feel. Congress has failed them and made them feel like they are disposable. Congress blames the VA only because they refuse to blame themselves! They write the rules, pass the budgets and are supposed to be in control over what the VA
The VFW and DAV earned your support and need your voice to fight for all generations of veterans.
How many more times will you end up supporting charities to provide "awareness" of what some veterans are going through when these groups have been fighting for all veterans to make sure they didn't have to go through it?
who served in the armed forces during a period of war or under conditions simulating war, and was wounded, disabled to any degree, or left with long-term illness as a result of military service, and was discharged or retired from military service under honorable conditions.
What does DAV do for you?
Helps returning veterans transition back to civilian life by linking them with services that address their physical, emotional, and financial needs.
Provides free, professional assistance to veterans of all generations in obtaining VA and other government benefits earned through service.
Fights for veterans’ rights on Capitol Hill.
Links veterans to job training and job assistance programs.
Funds rehabilitation programs for veterans with severe disabilities, such as blindness or amputation.
WASHINGTON — The national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States said the U.S. House of Representatives is set to penalize disabled veterans this week if it votes to reduce the Department of Veterans Affairs budget request by more than $1.5 billion.
“The nationwide crisis in care and confidence that erupted in the VA last year was caused in many ways by a lack of adequate resourcing that only Congress is authorized to provide,” said John W. Stroud, who leads the 1.9 million-member VFW and its Auxiliaries. “That’s why the VFW is demanding that the House amend this bill to appropriate a funding level that fully funds VA.”
In its current form, the fiscal year 2016 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Bill makes across-the-board cuts to all VA discretionary accounts, and drastically underfunds medical care, major construction and Information Technology accounts. Stroud said across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending is what Congress created back in 2011, but by another name, sequestration. Now the House wants to impose its own sequester on a federal department whose sole mission is to care for wounded, ill and injured veterans.
“The VA cannot fulfill its mission without proper funding, but the House for whatever reason now wants to ration care, eliminate infrastructure projects, and stop improving upon the programs and services that the VA was created to provide,” said the VFW national commander. “This bill is bad for veterans and any vote for it is unconscionable, which is why we want veterans and advocates everywhere to get involved by urging their elected officials to fully fund the VA.”
In 1970 the Guess Who recorded Don't Give Me No Hand Me Down World, but considering what has been happening to veterans, that is exactly what Congress kept giving them. Hand me down suffering because it has all been going on for far too long.
Great article on the New York Times about a Vietnam veteran filing a class action lawsuit over claims. The trouble is, it isn't new for any of our veterans.
This is part of the problem veterans have faced for decades!
“Justice delayed for these veterans is justice denied, unconscionably and unacceptably,” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, said in an interview Monday.
Blumenthal said he hears it all the time yet when you actually know what has been happening, how long it has been going on, then you'd know this is yet one more politician not being fact checked on anything. The rest of the article is below but here's some things that were left out of it.
VBA's pending compensation and claims backlog stood at 816,211 as of January 2008, up 188,781 since 2004, said Kerry Baker, associate legislative director of the Disabled Veterans of America, during a Wednesday hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.
From September 2007 to May 2008, GAO looked at four VBA regional offices, in Atlanta; Baltimore; Milwaukee; and Portland, Ore.
VA officials said it takes at least two years to properly train disability claims employees, and they must complete 80 hours of training a year. New employees have three weeks of intense classroom training before they begin several months of on-the-job training at their home offices.
Report: 8,763 vets died waiting for benefits reported by William McMichael for Army Times on July 15, 2008 but as this shows, it was worse because of who else was waiting for, and being denied, what other politicians promised when they said they'd take care of our disabled veterans.
It’s estimated there are 600,000 to 800,000 unresolved claims and appeals with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, according to veterans’ advocates.
“We have claims that have been pending for a decade, two decades and some that date back more than 50 years. We have appeals from World War II,” said David E. Autry, a spokesman for the Disabled American Veterans in Washington D.C., which represents veterans and advocates and helps them obtain their benefits.
But it was even worse considering they found many unopened claims.
“Veterans have lost trust in VA,” Michael Walcoff, VA’s under secretary for benefits, said at a hearing Tuesday. “That loss of trust is understandable, and winning back that trust will not be easy.”
And after more hearings, promises, pointing finger by members of congress, this was the result of all of that a year later.
The VA's claims backlog, which includes all benefits claims and all appeals at the Veterans Benefits Administration and the Board of Veterans Appeals at VA, was 803,000 on Jan. 5, 2009. The backlog hit 915,000 on May 4, 2009, a staggering 14 percent increase in four months.
There have been too many Congressional hearings without members of congress actually listening to what veterans and families have been going through. Far too many suffering for far too long. In the 90's it took 6 years for my husband's claim to finally be approved.
Maybe now someone will finally ask members of Congress why they are still trying to kill the VA instead of fixing it? But based on the article, it doesn't look as if reporters even fact check what they write so unlikely that will ever happen.
Vietnam Veteran Files Class-Action Lawsuit Over Delayed Appeals on Disability Benefits
New York Times
By DAVE PHILIPPS
APRIL 6, 2015
A Vietnam veteran who has waited years for disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs for claims of post-traumatic stress disorder and exposure to toxic chemicals filed a class-action lawsuit on Monday, seeking to force the department to expedite a growing backlog of benefits claims appeals, including his own.
The case is the first class action filed in the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. The lead plaintiff is Conley Monk Jr., a Marine Corps veteran in Connecticut who said he came under fire in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 and was exposed to Agent Orange, an herbicide used in the war. After receiving diagnoses in 2011 of PTSD and diabetes, which is sometimes associated with exposure to Agent Orange, Mr. Monk applied for disability compensation from the V.A. and was denied. He appealed in 2013.
Now, 20 months later, the department has yet to respond to the appeal, said the veteran, who recently had a stroke and is living in subsidized housing.
“It’s frustrating to be stuck in limbo,” Mr. Monk, 66, said in a phone interview on Monday. “It’s been hard to make ends meet. And we Vietnam veterans are getting older. We can’t wait forever.”
The backlog of benefits claims at the V.A. started rising sharply in 2009, driven by a growing number of claims by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and expanded eligibility for Vietnam veterans with diabetes and PTSD. The backlog peaked in 2013 with more than 600,000 claims.
Determined to clear the backlog, the Obama administration focused staff members on new claims. Since then the number has declined nearly 70 percent. But the number of appeals — claims resubmitted because veterans say they were improperly handled by the V.A. — has risen 17 percent to an all-time high of nearly 300,000, according to the V.A., and the time it takes to reach a decision has grown. read more here
Veteran's family sues the Fayetteville VA Medical Center over his suicide
FayObserver
By Greg Barnes Staff writer
December 19, 2014
The family of Paul Wade Adams Sr. of Lumberton has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the Fayetteville Veterans Affairs Medical Center failed to provide proper care and follow-up treatment before Adams killed his wife and then himself on July 18, 2012.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, seeks $40 million for the deaths of Adams, an Army veteran, and his wife, Cathy. The lawsuit names the U.S. government as the defendant. The couple had been married 38 years. He was 62. She was 56.
According to the lawsuit, Paul Adams went to the Fayetteville VA on June 15, 2012, complaining of having suicidal thoughts. He was prescribed the anti-depressant Zoloft, the lawsuit says.
On July 4, the lawsuit alleges, Adams tried to shoot himself but was left with only a flash burn on his head.
Two days later, the lawsuit alleges, his daughter, Jennifer Nichole Fairfax, took him to the VA's emergency department. A nursing triage note on that day says Adams admitted having had suicidal thoughts for the previous two months.
According to the lawsuit, Adams was admitted directly into the VA's psychiatric unit, where records indicate that he suffered "suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation," indicating he had thoughts or plans to kill other people.
The lawsuit says Adams spent four days in the psychiatric ward. In that time, it says, VA did not take steps to warn his family or make sure that Adams did not have access to guns after his release.
According to the lawsuit, VA switched Adams' medication from Zoloft to another antidepressant, Wellbutrin. Records show that Adams was to gradually increase the dosage and that maximum benefits would be reached in three to four weeks.
The lawsuit says the VA did not keep Adams in the hospital long enough to test or observe whether the new medication was working and released him while he was still at high risk of committing homicide or suicide.
VA initiated Adams' release - not the family - and left him outside the hospital until his wife picked him up, the lawsuit says. read more here
VA settles suit by its police officers at Young VA for nearly $1 million
Tampa Bay Times
William R. Levesque
Times Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2014
The Department of Veterans Affairs has formally settled a federal lawsuit filed by eight agency police officers who worked at the C.W. Bill Young VA Medical Center for $960,000, according to court documents filed Monday.
With recent settlements to three other VA police officers at the Pinellas facility, the total payout by the VA is $1.3 million.
Such settlements are usually confidential, and the public rarely sees confirmation of cash paid out. But in a highly unusual move, the officers' attorney, Ward Meythaler, and the VA asked a federal judge in Tampa to enforce the terms of the settlement. The court file does not show why they made the request.
As a result, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Scriven ordered the settlement to be filed and made part of the public record.
Meythaler and a VA spokesman declined to comment. In the settlement, the VA acknowledged no wrongdoing.
A trial would have offered a potentially embarrassing glimpse into the Young VA's small police force and its operations. Police leadership and officers have long been at odds over allegations that include sexual harassment, racial discrimination, physical altercations among officers and even disputes concerning policing strategies. read more here
Veterans were asking for help but ended up taking their own lives instead of healing. The headline is not from this year, but from 7 years ago!
Injured Iraq War Veterans Sue VA Head
The Associated Press
By HOPE YEN
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Frustrated by delays in health care, injured Iraq war veterans accused VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in a lawsuit of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.
The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad changes in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on numerous fronts. It contends the VA failed to provide prompt disability benefits, failed to add staff to reduce wait times for medical care and failed to boost services for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.
"When one of our combat veterans walks into a VA hospital, then they must see a doctor that day," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, which filed the lawsuit. "When a war veteran needs disability benefits because he or she can't work, then they must get a disability check in a few weeks."
"The VA has betrayed our veterans," Sullivan said.
"Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system," the complaint says.
"The performance of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs has contributed substantially to our sense of national shame," the opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals read.
Nicholson abruptly announced last week he would step down by Oct. 1 to return to the private sector. He has repeatedly defended the agency during his 2 1/2-year tenure while acknowledging there was room for improvement.
More recently, following high-profile suicide incidents in which families of veterans say the VA did not provide adequate care, Nicholson pledged to add mental health services and hire more suicide-prevention coordinators.
Yet, the lawsuit says, Nicholson and other officials still insisted on a budget in 2005 that fell $1 billion short, and they made "a mockery of the rule of law" by awarding senior officials $3.8 million in bonuses despite their role in the budget foul-up.
Today, the VA's backlog of disability payments is between 400,000 and 600,000, with delays of up to 177 days to process an initial claim and an average of 657 days to process an appeal. Several congressional committees and a presidential commission are now studying ways to improve care.
read more here
The case was tossed out. The outcome was more veterans suffering a lot more years than they needed to because Congress was more interested in saving their own jobs than actually doing what was necessary.
They took the easy way out, pulled out the checkbook and started to fund programs that were not proven. When they failed, they just tossed more money at these "efforts" expecting a different outcome or worse, not even caring if things changed.
We heard their speeches all these years. The most interesting thing of all is, none of them have ever apologized to veterans for what they went through. They just blamed someone else.
If you are an average American, you probably don't take any of this personally but if you happen to be a veteran or family member, you don't get to just forget and move onto something else. This is our lives. This is our past pains and the erosion of hope for a better future.
