Jerkoff of the Month - US Department of Veteran’s Affairs

Jesus Christ, how many times do we have to go over this?

What we need to happen, and I mean right Goddamned now, is for every government bean counter to be rounded up, slapped into a uniform, and dropped into the Sunni Triangle for six months with a weapon supplied by the lowest bidder and a box of paper assholes for armor.

These little pencil pushing bastards need a wakeup call.

Meet Erik Roberts, US Army (Ret).

On 25 April, 2006, while on patrol in western Baghdad, a roadside IED exploded next to the hummer he was riding in. The explosion ripped through the vehicle and, despite supposed battle hardening, the Humvee caught on fire. The fire filled the interior with dense black smoke and caused the vehicle’s ammo stores to cook off, i.e. explode from the heat.

Roberts, A.J. Jefferson and Luke Murphy, already badly injured and disorientated from the explosion, were hit by flying shrapnel. They jumped from the burning wreckage and lay bleeding and helpless and exposed on the ground in hostile territory while their own transport burned and exploded above them.

The rest of the squad rushed to their aid, coming through the fire and flying metal at great risk to their own lives, and managed to pull Roberts, Jefferson, and Murphy to cover and safety. The team medic managed to stabilize their wounds long enough for evac.

All three were severely wounded. Murphy would loose his leg immediately and Robert’s right side was shredded. Roberts was medivacced back to the states, ironically the flight out was on Robert’s 23rd birthday. Once home, he underwent a series of surgeries to save his life, including twelve separate operations to save his mangled right leg. The doctors had to insert a steel rod into his thigh in order to provide supporting structure for the shattered femur to knit back together around.

Robert’s recovery was long and painful. In 2007 he was medically retired from the Army, lucky to still have a leg, lucky to still be able to walk on it, but his days of jumping with the 101st Airborne were over. He enrolled in college on the GI Bill, majoring in Finance and economics at Youngstown State University. And transferred his medical care to the Veteran’s Administration.

His leg would never be right again, of course. He’d always feel pain and discomfort from his wounds. But he wasn’t complaining. Like hundreds of thousands of other Vets injured in the line of their profession, yours truly included, he simply lived with the pain and went on with his life.

Then in December of 2008, he noticed a lump, golf-ball sized, in his wounded leg. Painful, and growing larger. And certainly not normal.

He went to the VA. The doctors told him not to worry about it.

Some of you readers are doctors, but you don’t have to have to be an M.D. to figure out immediately that a painful golf ball sized lump in a recently healed shattered bone caused by a catastrophic invasive injury, following 12 major surgeries and the insertion of surgical supports, is something that you probably ought to fucking worry about.

Roberts left the VA hospital untreated.

Several days later the pain became so severe that Roberts went to the local civilian emergency room. The leg, as it turned out – and as any first year intern could have told Roberts at first glance – was badly infected. Immediate surgery and treatment were required, or Roberts would lose the leg after all. The doctors there couldn’t do it, the best they could do would be to amputate. Robert’s mom contacted the Army surgeon who had saved her son’s leg two years before, and he referred them to Dr. William Obremskey, an Air Force veteran and surgeon at Vanderbilt Orthopedics in Nashville, Tennessee. Obremskey saved the leg, but it wasn’t easy, and the outcome was in doubt for a while and it wasn’t cheap. $147,000 it cost, so far, including $90,000 for six weeks of intravenous antibiotics -which Roberts administered himself, rather than spend two months in a nursing home.

The $57,000 surgery bill is still outstanding.

Now Roberts has private insurance, and they picked up the majority of the $90,000, leaving $3000 for the VA. This is how it normally works, if you have civilian insurance, and you op for care outside the VA, the civilian insurance is your primary, and the VA is your secondary. Simple, I do it all the time.

Except in this case, the VA said basically, Fuck You. After being told that there was nothing to worry about, you went outside the system. As such, you can pick up the remainder, all $3000. We’re not paying.

And then there’s that surgery bill.

Somebody contacted CNN.

CNN contacted a U.S. Senator. That Senator contacted the VA and demanded answers. Oddly, the VA has now decided to pay the $3000. Fucking gracious of them, wouldn’t you say?

But there’s still the matter of that surgery bill.

Roberts has put his education on hold, wondering if he’s going to have to come up with the money.

You know, it’s a hell of a thing when the US Department of Veteran’s Affairs -the government organization specifically chartered with the care of veterans - forces a decorated recipient of the Purple Heart, a combat vet who was wounded in line of duty in a hostile land while fighting for his country, to choose between his education and his fucking leg!

Those at the VA should be damned glad that I’m not in charge. Because I’d Court Martial VA Secretary Eric Shinseki right the hell now for utter dereliction of duty, for actions which bring discredit upon the service, and for failure of leadership. Shinseki is a wounded combat veteran himself, there is absolutely no excuse, whatsoever, for this travesty.

Now, the only mitigating circumstance I can accept for this abject failure of leadership is that Shinseki has only been Secretary of Veteran’s Affair since January. But, he assumed office in the middle of war, with thousands of returning combat wounded vets. He knows what that is like, he was wounded in Vietnam – he better than anybody knows what is needed here, that’s why he was put in the job in the first goddamned place. He needs to take charge, forcefully, now, and issue an immediate order to everybody in his Department that this bullshit will NOT be tolerated. Period and no exceptions. He needs to issue an immediate apology to all veterans for the failure of his department to execute their mission promptly and in full, and he needs to issue a personal apology to Eric Roberts – and that apology should be made in person, if Shinseki remembers what honor is. And he needs to formally request that charges be brought against that fucking bean counting Bush Loving bastard James Peake for failing to turn over the department in good order.

And finally, Shinseki needs to make it goddamned clear that the next VA bureaucrat who denies the medical care, coverage, or support to veterans in or out of a VA facility, especially vets with injuries received in combat, will be immediately and publically fired. No excuses, get your shit and get out.

Now, personally, I’ve had good luck with the VA – but it shouldn’t be a matter of luck.

This nation owes a debt to its veterans.

And it’s time to pay up.