The Gay Veteran

Made my rotten leg trip to the VA hospital in Little Rock, AR on Tuesday, left Morrilton around 11:50 AM and got there a little after 1 PM and finally got back home at a little after 5 PM.  Had a appointment with my doctor and learned she had taken off for the week and would I like to wait and come back the next week.  Well that’s 50 miles one way, or 100 miles round trip.  What do these Assholes think I’m made of, fuck em all money?  Because all of the fuck em all money I got coming in is from a small Social Security Disability Check each month.  Not only do I not have fuck em all kinda money, I don’t even have fuck em all personal transportation to get there with.  On the occasions when I do have to go for medications renewal a family member provides transportation there and back.

I got to make a trip to the rotten leg VA Hospital on Tuesday and that’s tomorrow, and I’m not looking forward to it because its a two hour round trip ride.  Spend about another hour in the waiting room waiting to see the doctor for medications renewal and figure 4 and half hours all total.  Little Rock, AR is not a place I care to be any more.   It’s no smoking here, no smoking there and in a lot of the apartments you can’t even smoke in your own home anymore, even though you are paying all of the rent on it.  Most of the time in Morrilton is so dead there isn’t even anything to write about, because if there is any life in something Morrilton will suck it away in a cold New York minute.

As I’ve stated before all of my VA claims are dead and buried for all time and By God no one will ever go near those fucking God Damned claims again.  And at this late date in life I intend to finish my remaining time in poverty and as a God Damned forced Social Outcast.  All Morrilton gives is nothing but fucking blue funks that like the heat in Vietnam never goes away, it just goes into the background.   Morrilton bitterly either sucks away or destroys what few things that do come along that offer even a little happiness.

And try mentioning that in a conversation and these God Damned people go off the deep fucking end, and into a screaming match defending this God Damned cesspool nowhere town and state.   In Louisiana all my teeth were going to be pulled free of charge by the VA hospital in New Orleans, here I’m obliged to deal with a God Damned Dixie Mafia mentality and fucked up VA system that won’t even talk me about it.  In New Orleans I had my church group and dinner in the French Quarter following church service.  Here I don’t even have the fucking church or group.  In New Orleans, not only did I have the desire but felt like walking for hours on end, here I barely even go out of the house.   Going to the New Orleans VA hospital was at least less than traumatic, here its a two hour round trip.  There was PJ’s on Elks Place after words or Armstrong Park on North Rampart, or Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

For some fucking reason all the heat and humidity here does is zap the energy level whereas in New Orleans the heat and humidity seemed to have the opposite effect.  Asthma and allergies are constant here and congestion  is something that you have to cough your God Damned off just to get even little to break free, and the only way to have even a decent fucking shit every three or four days is to use God Damned laxatives.

Naturally you people here at CAVHS covered your own God Damned Asses in a response to the White House,. I don’t give a God Damned what any of you people here at McClellan or CAVHS say, because I know only to damned well that my sexual orientation (Bisexuality/Homosexuality) is a major contributing factor in my over all fucked up absolute minimum health care that can be provided and  denial of VA benefits and compensation.

So as it stands, I have no God Damned options other than to grit my fucking teeth and bear it like I did in the God Damned fucking military, but rest assured as it is with all things “This To Shall Pass” one God Damned fucking way or another it will end eventually.

Current trends and data tend to support overall feelings Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will be repealed either early this year or sometime this year permitting gays to serve openly in the military. If and when that does happen it’s my fondest wish that CAVHS (Central Arkansas Veterans Health Care) and The Department of Veterans Affairs in Little Rock/North Rock, be brought up on charges and/or a law suite, class action or otherwise because of their long standing unwritten policy of discrimination against both gay veterans and gays in the VA workforce. A lawsuit was filed in the recent past against The Department Of Veterans Affairs in Los Angles because of retaliation toward a gay worker and another woman that sided with her (Ex-VA employees await hearings on harassment, wrongful termination claims 9/12/2009).

Just recently the Department Of Defense made changes to the policy for discharging gays and soldiers brought up on charges under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. The individual service branches will have 30 days to change their regulations to conform to the new rules.

And on a different note, The Department of Veterans Affairs in Little Rock North/Little Rock will be one of 4 pilot locations to take part in a system to test electronic disability claims, the other three being Baltimore, Providence, R.I., and Pittsburgh. (Source The Department Of Veterans Affairs) Robert Graham, a claims processor who works for the VA in Winston-Salem, N.C., and was brought in for the review, said it typically takes him from six to 12 hours to do his part in processing claims from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. That time would be cut 70 percent under a new system, he said.

Also see:

http://www.2ndbattalion94thartillery.com/Chas/VAfailure.htm

VA system should start over, official says

By Rick Maze – Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 19, 2010 13:04:16 EDT

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/03/military_veterans_claims_031810w/

Baling wire and bandages can’t save the veterans disability claims process, the Veterans Affairs Department’s chief technology officer said Thursday at a roundtable discussion about ways to cut the growing backlog of claims and improve accuracy.

“In my judgment, it cannot be fixed,” said Peter Levin. “We need to build a new system, and that is exactly what we are going to do.”

Levin’s comments came at a meeting organized by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to toss around ideas for repairing a system that has a backlog of about 1.1 million claims awaiting decisions and an error rate of 17 percent to 25 percent, depending on who is counting.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., the committee chairman, described the system as an “insult to veterans” who wait an average of six months for a initial decision on benefits and can wait for years if the decision is appealed.

“It looks like we are going backwards rather than forward,” Filner said. “No matter how much we raise the budget, no matter how many people we hire, the backlog seems to get bigger. People die before their claim is adjudicated. They lose their home. They lose their car.”

Overhauling the disability claims process is the top priority of veterans groups and the Obama administration, but there is no agreement on exactly what to do.

The short-term solution proposed by the administration is what VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has called the “brute force” option: hiring more people to process claims. But because fully training new workers takes two years or longer, and the total number of claims received by VA is increasing, hiring more people is not expected to improve the process for three to five years, said Dan Bertoni, director of disability issues for the Government Accountability Office.

VA is working on a number of pilot projects that might lead to a new way to process claims, by reducing steps and moving to a fully electronic record system. But the system remains so complex that an easy fix is elusive — which is why Levin talked about starting over.

Veterans group, however, are not ready to blow up the system and start over. In a joint letter dated March 17 to veterans’ committee members, major veterans groups say they are unaware of any “magic bullet” solution or alternative system to the current problems, but they support changes to the current system.

They are pushing the idea of providing quick disability benefits — in 60 days or less — to veterans with disabilities that can be “easily or quickly resolved,” which would include those scientifically linked to military service, orthopedic conditions and hearing loss.

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"Keep on, Keepin' on"
Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL "Colonel Dan"
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Once again the VA has forgotten me, (Didn’t even think enough of me to send me a 10-10EZR Health Benefits Renewal Form and That’s What The VA Regional Office And CAVHS In Arkansas Thinks Of The Queer Veterans In Arkansas, At Least Some Of Us Anyway). Whether it was due to forgetfulness or oversight on the part of the VA, intentional interception or misdirected through the postal service the result is the same, I never got it and the pattern is starting up all over again. It’s a known fact that a great deal of my mail goes to dumps rats about 6 miles to the east of me who either keep it or throw it away and what little mail does get through is mail with tracking numbers.

Rest assured that kind of garbage would not have happened in New Orleans, nor did the New Orleans VA hospital ever fail to notify me of a medical appointment, nor did any of the doctors in NO ever demand lab work in exchange for medications other than meds requiring lab work. The doctors at McClellan apparently feel they are doing the veteran some almighty favor by even being at hospital and if a veteran doesn’t give them what want well it’s hit the door chief there’s other veterans who do.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will come under a great deal of debate this year and should it be repealed (and most likely will be) it is my fondest wish The VA Regional Office in Arkansas will be slapped right down on the hot seat with extreme prejudice because of it’s incompetence and utter discriminatory practices, and even though suspicion only for turning a blind eye to lily livered cowards that draw VA compensation through fraudulent means and false identities.

VA Regional In Arkansas Doesn’t Give a Damned About Complaints All they will do In VA Regional In Arkansas Is Just Toss Them In The Trash Or Shred Them, But At Least Someone Will Have To Read a Complaint To Do It, That Is If There is anyone Left In The VA Regional Office In Arkansas Who Even Knows How To Read.
Complaint Against, The VA Regional Office Little Rock/North Little Rock.
Complaint Against The Doctors At McClellan Hospital, Little Rock, Arkansas.
Complaint Against CAVHS, (Central Arkansas Veterans Health Care Little Rock/North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Problems faced by gay veterans In Arkansas:

Posted 11/27/2009 11:05 AM CST on TodaysTHV.com

I’ve tried the contact page at the White House web site to contact President Obama on three different occasions and not once did I even receive a confirmation let alone a follow-up reply.

Openly gay veterans have never been and never will be welcome in the VA on any level especially so in Arkansas, in fact openly gay people are harassed on all levels of the work force in the VA.  With the number of claims topping 1 million on the backlog books, unless you know high-ranking VA officials, or have a lover that graduated from Harvard Law School at the top of the class, or courting and/or smooching up to the right people in the VA or have around 10 thousand dollars to drop on an attorney’s desk it isn’t going to happen.

The VA is full of slimy, nasty, greedy thieves who think it is their duty to deny vets rightful benefits so richly deserved by serving their country and nowhere is that more obvious or prevalent than at CAVHS and The VA Regional Office in Little Rock/N Little Rock, AR.  I’ve been through the mill on more than one occasion up to and including a personal hearing through closed circuit television with the VA in Washington, DC and the most recent denial being in early 2003.

Not only was the attorney’s right to represent challenged by the VA legal coach for a full thirty minutes at the hearing, but also the VA had even thrown away the power of attorney submitted by the attorney.   Straight veterans aren’t keen on associating with or assisting openly gay veterans and the number one reason being, their guilty of being gay by association excluding those who feel gays are sick and perverted.

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