VA chips away at health care applications — eligibility backlog still above 500K

I should pontificate to pretend I know something.

Here is my two cents. Information is like water and the network is aquatic structures. The water seeks low ground but their will impediments to its travel and it becomes a trickle. Right now they see a dam with 560,000 cases because they can't keep up with the volume. These packets go through a slow process, fast process, now its building up. Water coming in is faster than it going out.

I understand this is a daunting task, but how many "improvements" can we get that lead to nowhere fast. The numbers aren't going down at the rate these "improvements" are going in? If this was a company in the Army, the CO and 1SG would've been relieved 15x's over. It would've gone up the chain and all of them would've been relieved for cause too. So how is it that an Academy grad, a vet himself, and having the knowledge of running one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world cannot turn VA around? I know a good chunk of it if politics, and regulations made decades ago to help government workers now coming to roost where you want to get rid of them, they take you to court, get their job back, and the VA looses no matter what. You have a congress who has some oversight, but isn't interested being this is a election year, and they have other priorities, like, doing nothing at all. You have a President who put this leader in place, so there's not much more he can do but make demands and listen to more excuses. He cannot fire the man if he's making a honest effort, but regulations and back alley friendships are making him and the President look like fools. So what do we have in the end? Nothing. What will a new President bring in? Nothing. He or She WILL fire the incumbent secretary, and bring in their own "guru" who will promise us the world, in 90 days. Three years into the next Presidency, you will see the same worn look by the next President that the current one has. You will see that the claims process on paper looks like it's flying by compared to what no one knows. But in the end, a constant will remain: There will be a backlog. VA will still continue to downgrade percentages on injuries that are blatantly obvious, continue to be a system where it's adversarial vs. friendly, little to no accountability, and those pesky laws and regulations will continue to dog the next President and the one after that.