In effort to fix woes in VA care, Moulton taps own experience. Does He Realize How The VA Operates Now?

2015-06-06T19:22:54-04:00

Read The Entire Story: He Had To Wait Hours...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/06/04/representative-seth-moulton-ordeal-veterans-administration-health-system-spurs-his-first-legislation/O30mN70YGgeKNEhL9BMeXI/story.html?s_campaign=8315

Representative Seth Moulton’s ordeal in the Veterans Administration health system spurs his first...

Representative Seth Moulton, an Iraq War veteran, wanted to see how the Veterans Health Administration treated its patients, so he went to the VA hospital in Washington with a hernia. His experience crystallized his legislative priorities.

Response by LTC Gavin Heater made Jun 6 at 2015 8:09 PM

2015-06-06T20:09:56-04:00

I am not convinced that Rep Moulton is the most experienced Legislator to push this reform. Yes he is a Veteran. Yes he deployed 4 times as a Marine. I do not believe that he really knows the score or the solution with regards to VA reform. Maybe I am just being a bit harsh.

Response by Sgt Spencer Sikder made Jun 7 at 2015 9:43 AM

2015-06-07T09:43:57-04:00

Unfortunately that one experience is only a simple snap shot into one event. I haven't read his legislation, but hope that it was well thought through and based on broader experience from others as well.

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 10 at 2015 8:44 PM

2015-06-10T20:44:10-04:00

UPDATE ON SETH MOULTON
Seth Moulton has written his experiences about his trip to the VA. Come to find out, he has health insurance. As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't give a crap about us. Not when he has personal health coverage, and tries to get free treatment at the VA, which he is supposed to be overhauling.

Seth Moulton is a former marine with combat experience in Iraq over four tours there. He got a hernia lifting weights, and so he went to the VA. That might not seem out of the orginary, but Seth doesn’t have to go, because his day job provides health care coverage. In fact, he’s a Freshman Member of Congress from Massachusetts. So he went to the VA in DC. To phrase it charitably, it did not go well:

“I went to the VA, showed up and checked in at the front desk, and about 30 minutes later, they told me that they had no record of me. They couldn’t prove that I was a veteran. But they would consider taking me as a humanitarian case,” he said.

Well, the seemless transition isn’t going well, but let’s see how he did after that….

He said he did not identify himself as a member of Congress, since he was just going there as a veteran. Moulton said he didn’t have his VA card on him, but had his license and social security number.

“More than enough things to put into their computer system, supposedly the world-renowned VA computerized medical records system,” he said.

Moulton suggested that the front desk employees call the VA hospital in Boston, where he had previously received care. After eventually getting through, the Boston VA said it would fax something down.

He said employees in D.C. then questioned aloud whether their fax machine even worked. In addition, he said veterans in the waiting room next to him had been waiting there for “hours.”

After a surgery, he was prescribed the powerful painkiller Percocet, as well as Advil. However, after he was sent home with medication, he discovered he had just been given Advil.

“And so I opened up the bottle and took a pill. And sometime later, it was still hurting an awful lot, and so I went back for a second one and realized that I didn’t have Percocet. I just had ordinary Advil. Of course, the pharmacy was closed at that point, so I was out of luck,” he said.

He added, “If that’s the care they’re giving to a United States congressman, you can imagine what the average veteran is getting at many of the VA facilities across the country.”

I’ve also been to the VA in DC. It was horrible. I could barely walk, so I went there for an MRI for herniated discs, which I already knew I had. This wasn’t years after service, it was literally 3 days after coming off terminal leave. I still remember the date, September 2. After an interminable wait the lady finally said that yes, I needed an “emergency MRI” and that she could schedule that for me……on October 23. Literally 7 weeks. Again, I could not walk. Later they pulled the secret waiting list game on me, where she said I would have to call back in a week to try to schedule, because the next 30 days were booked solid, and they had to see OEF people in 30 days or they got in trouble. Exasperated I told her that was fine, that I had the VA Secretaries phone number in my cell from when I met him overseas, and I would call him and see what he thought. Miraculously a spot opened up.

After that I never went back to that VA again.

Then I moved to Indiana. I’ve gone to the VA probably 10 times here. The longest wait I have had for a visit to be scheduled was 72 hours. Either this is the best VA in the country, or the VA just isn’t allocating resources properly to match where the need is.

So today I find this letter essentially blaming Moulton:

While I have no reason to doubt Representative Seth Moulton’s story (“In effort to fix woes in VA care, Moulton taps own experience,” Page A1, June 5), his comments would hold more weight if he also addressed the performance of Congress. It is, after all, Congress that authorized two wars and then expanded eligibility for VA health care without providing the corresponding funds. Perhaps the new congressman could offer his critique of the do-nothing Congress in as public a forum as he offers his critique of the Veterans Affairs health system.

Only when Moulton mentions the failures of Congress to provide funding for increased veteran services can he be seen as an objective observer. Until then he is a part of the problem.

Devote time to improving the VA, but acknowledge that it will happen only as Congress cleans up its act.

William F. O’Brien, Eastham

The writer is a retired chief of VA mental health services in Dayton, Ohio.
Seth Moulton has been in office just over 6 months. VA budgets are done a year in advance. Just how exactly should he be held accountable? Second of all, how exactly would increased funding fix someone putting Advil in a Percoset bottle?

I’ve been to VA funding hearings. Hell, I’ve even testified in VA funding hearings (both appropriations and authorizations.) The VA comes in with a budget request, and then Congress tweaks it. But I VIVIDLY remember hearings in like 2004 or 2005 when then-House Chairman Steve Buyer (not my favorite person) absolutely laid into the VA people because they had used numbers from 2000 to figure out how many patients would enter the VA that year. They used figures from before the war, to determine how many people would show up. The VA got every dime they asked for, and then came back and had supplemental requests when they realized their budget was off by monumental amounts.

Blaming Congress is easy, almost as easy as blaming the VA. And I’m no huge defender of the Congress. But if someone comes to you and says I need $100 for a hotel room, and then comes back 2 days later to say it cost $456, do you blame the person who gave you what you asked for? Or the person who didn’t bother to figure out the actual cost? Look at the Denver VA. The Congress didn’t solicit the bids for building the facllity, the VA did that. And we’re at almost 3x the projected cost. How can you blame Congress for actually showing deference to the budget request of the people who are supposed to be the subject matter experts?

A friend of mine who is a subject matter expert adds this:

FY 2001 – year the war start $48.6 million

FY 2015 – $158 million

The budget has more than tripled in the last decade and a half. Yes the load on the system has increased, but especially since 2006 (the year under Buyer they had to go back and ask for a supplemental because they almost ran out of money) VA has gotten generous budget increases every year, even as the rest of the government faced sequestration cuts and reductions to operations.

A better question to ask VA is why their Central Office numbers of executives in Washington, DC have grown exponentially while actual caregivers in the field have seen a more deliberate and slow increase. VA is spending their large budgets on a team of people to argue for why they need more money, not on people to treat the ones who have been injured in service.

https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22897.pdf