To quote a famous blogger - heh.
From Business Week.
Months after a politically embarrassing $1 billion shortfall that put veterans' health care in peril, Veterans Affairs officials involved in the foul-up got hefty bonuses ranging up to $33,000.The list of bonuses to senior career officials at the Veterans Affairs Department in 2006, obtained by The Associated Press, documents a generous package of more than $3.8 million in payments by a financially strapped agency straining to help care for thousands of injured veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon here in DC in the office of SWWBO and I's Representative, Nancy Boyda, (D, Kansas 2). We got two hours of Ms. Boyda and her staff's time - covering a wide rang of topics. Prior to our appointment, SWWBO and I were chatting with Shanan Guinn, Boyda's Chief of Staff, and Doug Matties, her Legislative Director. During that "getting to know you and what your pet rocks are" phase, the VA came up and Shanan and Doug passed me the AP article on the bonuses. Shanan commented that the VA had managed to reduce their backlog by three days, to which my response was... "I sure wish the people I worked with would give me 10K a day for weak performance like that."
Which isn't true - if they did, they'd run the company into the ground, giving out bonuses to business units that were under-performing *and* had budget issues.
I know, from talking to Ms. Boyda, that the Democratic Caucus raised it's collective eyebrows and will quite probably be digging into Secretary Nicholson's business. I would assume, from the spluttering tones of outrage filling my email inbox from my mostly staunchly conservative friends who are users of VA services, that the Republican Caucus would do well to raise their eyebrows as well.
One thing Ms. Boyda did in our give and take about the VA - she made a distinction between VA service delivery in her district (for which the feedback is pretty good, really, matching my personal experience) vice the administration side of things - especially as concerns claims processing, where the feedback is pretty negative, *also* mirroring my personal experience.
I told her the problem was chronic, bi-partisan, and actually generational in scope. My father's interaction with the VA was so negative when he retired from the Army in 1975 that even though he has service connected disabilities that have gotten worse, he simply refuses to even consider going back for a re-evaluation. Fortunately for him, his personal situation allows him that luxury - not so for the less well off veterans.
With a string of broken promises made by Congresses and Presidents going back to the Revolution, through the repudiation of wartime promises made during the Civil War, to Mac Arthur's routing of the "Bonus Army" through the chronic underfunding of PTSD and TBI treatment today - the VA carries the stain of a legacy of near-venal neglect of our veteran's that is almost a hallmark of the American political process, for good reasons and bad.
And it's too bad that all those hard-working VA employees who do provide competent and caring care for the broken and battered of our wars are saddled with the burden of governmental history - that transcends party - and with a series of Congress' and Executives who have thus far, over the last two decades, been unable to do much more than band-aid the system.
This at a time when the WWII-Korea generation is rushing through the system with their age-aggravated ailments and the GWOT, with it's unique wounded-to-KIA ratios producing more seriously wounded soldiers on the VA doorstep. And the Vietnam bubble is waiting in the wings.
And soldiers talk. We do. Amongst ourselves, and our children. The GWOT is a generational war, and one we really don't want to fight with a draftee army. Which means, in a very real sense - that the VA matters in both recruiting and retention. And if word of mouth is one of the most effective selling techinques... well, customer satisfaction with fully half of the VA mission is not very good, especially in my neck of the woods. And while delivery of care when you get it may be good - there are some glaring gaps in that care.
Which VA may not need to develop and deliver - it may be more efficient for much of the physical rehab to perhaps be outsourced with VA as the billpayer - which would leave them more resources to develop and deliver the services needed by the PTSD and TBI patients. Just saying the box can be examined from without - it doesn't have to be examined solely from within.
There is truth in the fact that the VA has made positive changes, and substantive ones, and is undertaking a study of the rating system preparatory to an overhaul.
To quote Michael Ledeen, albeit out of context, "Faster, please."
That said - it will be up to Congress to perform its oversight role, and ensure that the VA doesn't use the study of the ratings system as a convenient way to shed itself of inconvenient veterans.
And that means more than just looking over Secretary Nicholson's shoulder.
It means ponying up the money, too.
And no, it won't be simple.
But that's why all of you guys in DC get paid. On both sides of the aisle, and in both branches of the government.
Just sayin'.
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