You made our way of life possible. 
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from one vet to another, tell him I said Thank You!
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I will…
He is at the VA this morning attempting yet again to get medical services for injuries. It breaks my heart that these young men get the run around and wait months to be told they have to wait even longer. NO treatment for 3 years now.
Shameful.
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Well that’s typical… for the last 6 decades… (mostly because the ppl who push the paperwork are not Veterans, alot of doctor’s are not Veterans as well… So they really don’t give a sh*t about the common G.I. or Veterans… sorry to hear he has to go through that…
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Put them on Medicare at least… It’s so sad. I get so Angry…I went with him once but I am not welcome there again unless I am willing to take a ride in a cruiser. Thank you for commiserating with me.
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I understand that, I’ve never used the VA because of their b.s., I alway’s go to reg hospital if I’m in need of something serious. With the VA you go in with your wounds and come out with different disease’s then what you went in for… I’ve heard alot of ‘war stories’ from vets that use the VA… and it’s sickening the way they treat our vets…
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My marine vet is only 28.
He doesn’t really know how to advocate for himself when it comes to medical issues. He is getting married next year and she is in a medical field so I am ever hopeful .
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If he don’t like the personal working with him, he can alway’s tell someone, because they work for him, not him working for them… I’ve heard many vets getting their doctor’s changed and so forth on ground’s like that 
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I need to remember to tell his Fiance about that…She won’t have any problems getting in their faces.
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I can’t speak for all of them, but as a former VA doc for 15 years (both primary care and inpatient), we cared deeply about the vets (cause we sure weren’t in it for the money!). The system just isn’t set up for efficient care (and the press to outsource everything just makes it worse), but as far as primary care goes, the preventative care at the VA is better than almost any private care system (even my fancy Harvard teaching hospital).
One big problem is that the management is of course appointed by the current administration, which means that any administrator knows at most he is in office for 4 years. Which makes long term strategy pointless, since you’re gone before anything happens. And of course every year you have to go to congress hat in hand. No private hospitals rotate their CEOs this often and can’t do multiyear budgeting. Also the scale of healthcare at the VA is the size of many countries, I mean no private healthcare organization could handle 21m patients. Especially as private payers and states have radically slashed mental health budgets the way they have.
Anyway, thank him for his service, and I hope he overcomes the obstacles.
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Maybe it’s worse here in OKC. Healthcare all around is disturbing to me these days.
My son checked himself in about six months after he came home. They doped him up - made him an appointment for a month later with a therapist and kicked him out within 48 hours. He was suicidal at the time. He didn’t make it to the appointment. Thankfully he lived but it was not thanks to them.
My Grandfather went to the VA for everything and lived to 94…but it was different then.
Maybe they think these younger men are just malingering.
I had my kids on a Air Force Base…The doctors were great.
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Have him look into the Veteran’s Choice program – it allows vets to see providers in the community when there are not enough available VA options.
It can still be frustrating – there’s a lot of paperwork for the provider, and I’ve had them deny every treatment I attempted to try on a vet I saw through the program, until she contacted the patient advocacy people and they went to bat for her and got the approvals we needed pushed through.
Tricare, on the other hand, has been surprisingly good to work with, so if that’s an option for him, tell him to GO FOR IT!
It really upsets me that our vets go through so much and can’t get help when they need it.
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We will try that. Right now they say if they can get to him within 6 months he has to wait for them and is not eligible to go elsewhere.
We used tricare all the time and never has a problem but that was the 80’s.
He has been out for 6 years.
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Although mental health is just as bad in the community as at the VA. There are no beds anymore for community hospitals as all the funding has gone away. All the insurance plans suck for mental health, although Medicaid actually works best I’ve found. The va at least has their own mental health facilities so hat like 10x better access.
I was diagnosed with MS in 1999…Most of my doctors bailed on me. I still find it incredibly hard to get physicians to listen to me and for the most part they just send me to other doctors who send me to other doctors. Medicare was actually the best thing to happen to me when it became active…because I spent so much time going from doctor to doctor. When I had lesions on my frontal lobes I had some mental issues - it was scary. No one could look at the whole picture and I feel like that happens to my son. When the VA docs are all there …why can’t they coordinate and for his safety and the safety of others …get it together.
When it comes down to it I guess we won’t get anywhere complaining about it. We have clients and friends that are Doctors and Nurses …they do their jobs and they care. It’s like you said earlier the pencil pushers and numbers people are the people who need to come to Jesus so to speak.
It was Doctors and Nurses who saved me from certain death a few times. I don’t know where I would be without them.
So Thank YOU Docs and Nurses!
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It’s not great here, community resources are limited as they are everywhere…but even so the community resources are better than the local VA, which doesn’t have an inpatient unit, and can’t handle the outpatient mental health needs of the local vet population. I try to take some via the Veteran’s Choice program when I can, but they still make it as difficult as possible for me to do anything for them when I do. It’s incredibly frustrating. 