Va Medical Work Note: Fill & Download for Free

There is no reason for any veterans to be homeless or pan handling. Period.The VA has plenty of good programs from all veterans and many for homeless veterans if the know about them.BTW: Some veterans refuse refuse programs from the VA and some refuse the drug and mental health services readily available in every state.The VA also can provide a stipend of about $1000 a month for veterans unwilling or unable to work, not a lot to live on but about 20% more than those on SSI would get, so in many areas it is an amount someone can live onI am a disabled Vietnam veteran, I worked as a career counselor and 100s of disabled veterans getting their life back with help from the VA.I realize a couple VA medical centers in the USA failed to help all the veterans who applied for services but the VA is a big agency with a lot of great programs and good people. Most centers are welcoming, competent and caring with medical treatment often as quickly as any regular medical center or doctors office (I don’t think any VA offers ER services).I have used the VA for 50 years, my father used the BA for nearly 70 and many of my friends are veterans and use the VA system. I have NEVER heard one of my friends complain about the VA.BTW: I have used the VA medical centers in Florida, Alabama but primary in Michigan.IF YOU want to help a homeless vet or any vet, OFFER TO TAKE them to a VA medical center or to see a vet rep at any American Legion or VFWwhere they can start receiving the help they need.NOTE: I doubt many of the pan handlers claiming to be veterans actually are.

Yes, if not worse."A man hit in Vietnam," LIFE noted, "has twice as good a chance of surviving as he did in Korea and World War II, as support hospitals perform miraculous repairs on injuries that tend to be more devastating than ever before. But having been saved by the best field medicine in history," one of every seven servicemen wounded in Vietnam entered the VA system—a landscape characterized by LIFE as a "medical slum."The VA hospital system . . . the biggest in the world . . . is disgracefully understaffed, with standards far below those of an average community hospital. Many wards remain closed for want of personnel and the rest are strained with overcrowding. . . . At Miami's VA hospital, while sophisticated new equipment sits idle, patients may wait hours for needed blood transfusions. At the VA's showplace hospital in Washington, D.C., a single registered nurse may minister to as many as 80 patients at a time. [Doctors in Los Angeles] describe conditions as "medieval" and "filthy."A five-month inquiry by a Senate subcommittee chaired by California's Alan Cranston has documented gross inadequacies and laid the blame directly on a series of cutbacks in the VA medical budget. This sum presently amounts to roughly $1.6 billion a year, somewhat less than the cost of one month's fighting in Vietnam.It's worth noting that the head of the VA at the time, a World War II veteran named Donald E. Johnson, eventually resigned under pressure from veterans' groups and members of Congress—in 1974, long after the LIFE article appeared—but that some in Washington felt he was simply a convenient scapegoat served up to the public by the thoroughly embattled Nixon administration.The pictures in the May 1970 LIFE article and in this gallery—powerfully illustrating the indignities faced by residents of the VA's "medical slum"—were made by Co Rentmeester, a Dutch photojournalist (and Olympic rower, and eventual LIFE staffer) who in May 1968 was himself wounded while covering the war in Vietnam. It's difficult, even all these years later, not to sense in Rentmeester's photos some of the indignation he must have felt in the presence of these wounded warriors subjected to such squalor, such neglect, such astounding disrespect. America's Appalling Veterans Affairs Scandal: The 1970 EditionAfter a Vietnamese rifle severed his spinal cord, Ron Kovic bounced around Vietnam field hospitals and eventually landed in a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in New York. Kovic found himself being treated in unbearable conditions by nurses and doctors who were often being overworked and unsupported. Kovic laid in his own filth at times while hospital staff could not make it to him to clean up his area or change his bedpan. Not only was the hospital run down and grossly understaffed but the nurses and doctors often had horrible attitudes towards the war and the veterans. Nurses even told Kovic how “nobody gives a crap about the war in Vietnam” while rats run around the filthy floors scavenging food. Meanwhile, the government failed to recognize severe problems in their VA hospitals.Throughout the 1960s and 1970s thousands of Vietnam veterans were coming home wounded from the war. Whether they came home with a bullet wound or missing a limb, they often spent time in VA hospitals across the nation. These hospitals often were kept in poor conditions mainly because of the lack of nurses and money that the government was spending on the war. Wounded veteran Kovic recalled that, "It never makes any sense to us how the government can keep asking for money for weapons and leave us lying in our own filth.” The government prioritized their spending more on the war effort and less on the veterans and their treatment after returning home.The conditions in these hospitals and treatment of patients were often made worse because of the nursing shortage that was occurring at the time. As Kara Dixon has noted, army nurses during World War Two often numbered around forty or fifty thousand. During the Vietnam War this number reached an all time low of less than five thousand army nurses. This shortage caused many issues in the dark days of the war in Vietnam when thousands of soldiers arrived home wounded and in need of assistance.Since the lack of Army nurses was growing during the Vietnam War this forced the hiring of many civilian nurses and doctors to work in VA hospitals. This often led to a lack of personal care from the nurses and an understaffing of many of the hospitals. It was not uncommon for civilian nurses to oppose the war and they would let veterans know about it often. Kovic remembers vividly the day when a hospital nurse came to him and said “You can take your Vietnam and shove it up your ass." A comment like this showed the overall attitude of some of the nurses and the poor conditions that many of these veterans would have to return home to after serving their country. History Engine: Tools for Collaborative Education and Research

No. Not at all. My social security and my VA checks both stayed the same.Actually, I quit working when I was 62 because of the disability and I applied for my social security. I was listed as 60% disabled by the VA for a bad back (50%), a seizure disability (40%), cognitive degeneration (20%) and PTSD (30%). Now, how that added up to 60% just amazes me, but that's how they did the math.Anyway, all I got from Social Security was REGULAR social security. I thought I should be getting 'disabled' social security, but that's not how it works.I saw an ad on TV where a guy was in a wheelchair, talking to his wife. The guy said, "I don't understand it; my doctor says I'm disabled, but social security says I'm not." Then the lawyer steps in and says "If you are having this problem, call us." ---I did.I explained my situation, and the lawyer took my case. It's simple: If he wins, he gets 20% of the first social security check. If we lose, he gets nothing.He sent me to a doctor for my back and got some X-rays, and he got hold of my records from VA. Next thing I know, we are seeing a judge for Social Security. He presents my medical records to the judge and argues that I am "unemployable" because of my disabilities; Basically, I can't do blue-collar work because of my back, and I can't do white collar work because of the cognitive degeneration, etc. The judge agrees, and declares me unemployable for the past 3 years. To make it simple, I got "back-pay" from Social Security, and the lawyer got 20% of that money.So, I asked the lawyer about the VA--what should I do about them? The lawyer said that being a case with the VA, I can't really use an attorney; it's against the rules. "However, as a person who likes to help vets, I'll tell you this: You will have a nice letter from a federal judge showing that he has pondered over all my VA medical records and the notes from the doctors, etc. and he has declared that I am "Unemployable". I should send that to the VA. They are, after all, the very same federal government. They will have to agree." ---I did, and they did.VA had to declare me unemployable on the same date that the judge did, so I got back-pay from them, too, and now they have me listed at 98% disabled, and 'unemployable'.