VA now, Obamacare Next . . .

We have now seen what the bureaucrats have done to the Veterans Administration (VA).  Perhaps we can fix it, maybe not.  It simply reflects government run health care, and the limited resources allocated to that system.  It is reasonable to expect not all the money the VA wants it does it get.  That means things have to be managed.

But the model for management is run not by doctors for the most part but professional bureaucrats, civil servants.  And those managers have learned from Washington D.C. how to game the system.  Manipulation of numbers to make themselves look good and justify bonuses for themselves.

That needs to go.  We need personnel outside the VA to determine bonuses.  We need over site.  I can recall in the military we had wholesale overhauls of the evaluation system because of the abuse of the system.  The USAF maintained all the officers were not superior, that there is a bell curve of personnel.  And the promotion boards were having increasing problems rank ordering personnel for promotion.  The reporting system was radically changed.  And that worked for a few years, the creep started to flow into the system and gradually it to became unmanageable again.

So something has to be done with the overall management of the VA.  I am the first to say I do not know just what has to be done but there must be changes or it will simply morf on into the same problems.

Now comes Obamacare.  What makes you think it will be different.  The VA was held up as to the way to go.  Now the VA is besmirched in scandal.  Thus Obamacare will come next.  And it is much bigger than the VA has ever been.  Much more unwieldy. 

Disaster is coming.  Standby for ram!

Is He Still There ?????

Curtis Lemay, the crusty four star general that commanded the Strategic Air Command, now both deceased, was a tough leader.  He would often arrive at one of the SAC Air Force Bases to fire the wing commander on the spot.

He used to say, "He could not tell the difference between bad luck and bad management or leadership, the results were the same, unacceptable."  So if the results show poor performance the wing commander, the leader what's in charge, got the ax.  No if, ands or buts.  All the wing commanders knew what the standards were and understood the ground rules.

We had a basic rule, no surprises.  That mean no suppression of bad news.  We told all in our staff meetings daily.  That way the boss, the wing commander, could take action to prevent being blindsided by a Curtis Lemay type leader.   He would be armed and ready to defend his leadership and management skills.  Thus we too could expect to get the ax for poor performance or bad luck, which ever occurred.

The Veterans Administration (VA)Secretary, a retired four star g\General Eric Shinseki needs to go.  More and more crap is uncovered every day about the VA health system, region by region, state by state.  It is nothing more than a fore look at the coming Obamacare and what is going to happen to us as a nation.  What fools we are to let this charlatan lead us into this dismal situation.  It is much worse than Volstead Act (prohibition) and is a law, not a change to the Constitution like Prohibition was, so it is much easier to get rid of.  All the bad news falls into the no surprises category.  If the General he did not know about it before hand, then he is truly incompetent and needs to go.

What is even worse, is the use of regulatory law on the fly to change at a whim the meaning and words of the actual 2000 plus pages of the Affordable Care Act by the present administration.  That is unconscionable abuse of Presidential power.  Does he not know that the next Republican will do the same as he has?   And now we are off on a slippery slope of destruction of our Constitution.

Apparently in the Obama Administration there are no ground rules.  President Obama is no Curtis Lemay and is loath to fire anyone for any reason.  Lord knows he has had enough disasters that he should have taken action but rather he went golfing or campaigning, his forte.  The smart ones have already bailed out of the administration long ago.  The remaining team seems like they have tenure and can not be fired.  What a wimp the President turns out to be! No guts.  No vision.  No leadership.

No wonder the world thinks we are no longer a super power and are just wimps.

Texas VA Expose' . . .

 The Drudge Report had an expose' on the Texas VA system.  It did not surprise me that there were similar VA issues in Texas.

I had had a round with the Fort Worth VA Clinic, a new fine facility here in our area.  I live about 14 or so interstate miles from the Clinic.  So it is convenient to me.

But let me back first and say I am military retiree and have TRICARE for Life and since I am over 65 years of age we are covered by our primary medical care, Medicare.  TRICARE is our automatic secondary.  So we use a private physician and I only deal with the VA on issues only VA can or will deal with.  I might add that I get 10% medical care from the VA for all my service connected disabilities should I choose to use the VA.  I only selectively use the VA for obvious reasons, I get prompt on the spot care from my private physicians.

I did have around with the Fort Worth VA clinic over them regarding my hearing and an Auditory exam.  After refusal and a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense, I finally got the examination and now wear a fine pair of hearing aids.  But I had to do battle with them and won.

Most probably because I can write letters, know whom to write letters to and I am a Category I veteran, meaning I have a disability rating of 90%.  All veterans with 60% and greater ratings fall into that category.  That means we are suppose to be literally first in line for services.  It took prodding on my part but I got past the bureaucracy. 

En route to the hearing aids I got a further disability for Tinnitus (the new service connected disability did not change my overall 90% rating).  That does mean because I now have a hearing Service Connected disability, I get free service from the Audiology clinic.  I will still have to beg an appointment but everybody needs to schedule their work both inside and outside the VA.  I can not just barge in and get care, I must go through the line first.  That is fair, nothing wrong with that kind of service.

But I do not have to deal with the VA like non-military retirees do.  While we pay for Medicare, we do not have to pay for TRICARE for Life, nor do I have to pay for service connected disability care if I so choose to use the VA.  Indigent veterans must deal with the VA for their medical care.  Believe me I am not going to ever use the VA with any regularity, only when I have to like getting hearing aids..

Secretary Eric Shinseki Must Go . . .

General Shinseki, titular head of the Veterans Administration, decorated war hero, disabled American Veteran, yada, yada, yada.  That's the man.  It sounds great, good man for the job, right?

He sounds incompetent.  He got Iraq wrong but was in agreement with President Obama.  So he has sat on his you know what for six years, knew about the problems and did little about it.  That is admitted incompetence.   He is not stupid, he has worked hard in the past.  He might be a good if not great military expert.  But as an administrator is a bumbling incompetent.

Either he did not know what to do,  was lazy, or did not want to upset the apple cart. 
Well the apple cart is upset and it makes the coming Obamacare look really bad.  Government medicine is not efficient and leads to all the bureaucratic problems of institutionalized processes. 

General or Secretary Shinseki is a glaring failure.  Failure to lead, failure to recognize seriousness of problems or just plain old failure to act, it does not matter.  He is a failed bureaucrat!

Time to go Secretary Shinseki.

Is Obama Cratering?

He used the same words when the IRS scandal broke as he did yesterday on the VA scandal.  Nothing new, same old crap, promises unkept are coming.  Does he think the American public are stupid?

Now that the people have seen what government run medical care has done to the veterans, do they believe Obamacare is going to be better.  Do not bet on it.  You now have a bit of insight into what is coming.

And there is yet great problems with the vaunted sign up.  People go to use their new insurance to find that they are not covered.  People who are covered find they can not find a doctor to see them within a 50 mile radius.  And we learn that the administration has reserved funds to bail out the insurance companies.  That bespeaks that the administration is aware of the problems and guarantees the insurance companies income to cover their losses.

What a mess.  Still pending is the Supreme Court case regarding forcing religious objections to birth control.  That is a toss up but I suspect the Supreme Court is going to come down on the side of suitors.  If that happens then there will be more people claiming the same issue.

I think the incompetence of the administration is on the rise.  They can not deal with foreign policy and Russia in particular.  The have big problems yet with held care.  Now the VA issues are rising.  And the IRS mess is not yet solved.  The Attorney General has proven not to be the peoples man but the man of the President.  Even the off shore oil mess has not be completely resolved.  The XL Pipeline is still in the wings. 

I am guessing I am going on a NSA list, ya think?

I believe it will get worse not better.  I sense the people are beginning to get it.  The poor blacks had such great expectations and got nothing if only to have conditions worsen for them.

The Veterans Administration Under Fire . . .

I admit it, I am a disabled American Veteran.  And yes, I have had my battles with the Veterans Administration (VA) or more correctly the Department of Veteran Affairs.  The hoopla surrounding the VA is at once understandable and dismaying at the same time.

When you overwhelm a system or program, underfund it or in general bad mouth its constituents, then you are going to have some severe lapses.  Is this right, no.  Is it preventable, I am not sure it is in this case.

There are really two groups of Veterans.  Those that are destitute and totally dependent on the VA for care and the rest of us.  So the VA has a vast group to contend with.  They do a pretty good job of containing the drunks, the down and outs and those that do not have any other resources.  They even pay then a pension, paltry that it is.

The group I fall into is a bit different.  I am a military retiree and have TRICARE for Life coverage, basically an 80/20 insurance plan.  I can use any physician I want (and that will accept me).  Now that I am on Medicare, TRICARE is my automatic second payer.  Works pretty good and I do have a private physician (he is now a member of an association but they take Medicare patients).  I had this doctor when I had medical coverage with Lockheed-Martin and we just continue on with our doctor/patient relationship.

But I am disabled, I have bum knees from jogging them away while on active duty.  I have
Gout that showed up about the time I retired from the military.  Those two issues resulted in a 30% disability rating and earned me a compensation from the VA.  It is not a pension, it is compensation for Service Connected disabilities.  The VA is my military disability insurance!

I have also Agent Orange issues.  Agent Orange was a defoliant sprayed on the jungles in Viet Nam.  The airplanes and bases that did the spraying were the same ones I was stationed at.  I was literally awash in the stuff.  The bad ingredient was Dioxin which collects and stays in your liver.  It took years for this to effect me but it did and the result is that I am a Diabetic, Type II.  Along with Diabetes comes additional issues, like Peripheral Neuropathy (in both feet and left hand), Cataracts and Radii Colopathy (basically a collapsed disc in my neck) which effects my right hand and sometimes causes shooting pains in my right arm and across my chest (that is nerve damage from the collapsed disc).

This all adds up to a total man disability rating of 90%.  And I receive monthly compensation for these Service Connected disabilities at the 90% rate.  That compensation is tax free, no state or federal taxes can be assessed against that compensation.  On the other hand, I would rather not be so compensed if I did not have the Service Connected disabilities.  I now know my life span will be foreshortened by these disabilities.  It is a fact and I live with it.

Recently I had a run if with the local VA administrator over a hearing examination.  He had dictated that no one receive a hearing examination unless there were referred by one of his doctors.  I had my Medicare/TRICARE physician refer me to an ENT physician for a hearing examination.  And yes, I had hearing losses.

The VA will provide a veteran with a hearing aid and hearing aid supplies but first you must have a
VA examination.  That to me is reasonable requirement. 

So I set about getting an appointment for the hearing examination.  I was informed I had to get a VA physician referral to get the appointment.  So I said, "Okay, I'll do that."  When I went to sign up for an appointment I was told I must have a blood test first and the results have to be sent to the physician.  I balked.  A blood test was totally unnecessary, what does a blood test have to do with my hearing?  No one could answer that.  In fact, no one on the staff wanted to answer that question and I was referred the Fort Worth VA Clinic "Executive."  That would be the guy in charge, not a doctor but a civil servant, a paper pusher.

So I went to see the chap in his office area.  I did not get into his office, he came over to the spot where I was waiting.  I said my piece and he said his.  His was, "No referral to audio clinic with out a physicians referral.  Period."  I responded I was sorry to hear that and that it would lead to me complaining by letter to the various offices in the VA and Congress as to what is going on.

So I went home and wrote the letters to my Congress person, the VA Inspector General and the Chielf VA Administrator for Texas down in Waco, TX.  About six weeks later, I receive a phone call asking if I was available next Friday for an Audiology appointment with the Fort Worth VA Clinic.  I said yes.  The rest is history, I have my hearing aids, and I did not have a VA Physician referral.

It seems a Veteran with a 90% disability rating does not need such a referral.  I did not make the executive eat crow face to face.   But why did I have to go through the gauntlet of letter writing to get the action taken care of?

I believe it is built into the  bureaucracy of the institution.  The executive clearly was trying to build up his medical business ~ force the veterans to use his doctors, ergo more production (at least more statistics on paper).  Is he evil, no.  He is trying to get more for his population of patients, maybe.  To show utilization in the new clinic he has to show more through put.  Perhaps, he was challenged to do so.  I do not know but I take it as typical of the VA everywhere.

The institution is under funded with the vast influx of the Desert Storm and Afghanistan veterans demanding needed attention.  The military services shove their beat up troops off on the VA.  And the VA has no choice but accept them.  Go to a VA hospital and it is a bee hive of activity. 
There is maybe 10 acres of parking outside the Dallas VA hospital and it is all full every week day.

It will take extraordinary management skills to clear the back logs the VA faces.  It will take more money, money the present administration wishes to use to buy votes.  And everybody knows those military types do not vote for Democrats.  So the VA reclines in a benign neglect position.

I think General Shinskie must go.  But the President has yet to fire an incompetent, so why start now.

The beat goes on...

Curb Appeal . . .

At Judie's suggestion we added new metal edging to the south front flower bed.  She said all the mulch washed out into the yard and we needed to raise the height of the edging.  So we simply installed new edging along the old metal edging and that raised it about three inches or so.  Just what she wanted.

And it did make the yard look a little better.  She has since mulched that side of the yard.  She also planted some special Zinnia's that are said to be deer resistant.  I am not to worried about the deer, they have plenty to eat right now and have stayed away from us.  But along with the deer is a Barbados Goat. 

The goat was introduced in south Texas as a game animal.  It is about the size of deer, same coloring etc.  The difference being that the goat has floppy ears and deer have ears to stand up.  Goat's ears never stand up.  The other difference is a damn goat will eat anything, and does so.  I fear Judie's special Zinnia's are just gonna be salad for the goat.

Peaches are developing well this year.  And that means we will get a lot of deer visiting looking for the peaches.  I will have to spray the peaches again to prevent insect infestation and worms.  But that is no deterrent for deer or goats.  I have even seen Foxes carrying off peaches to take to their dens.  So it is popular food.

The oaks have greened up.  The two Shumarc oaks (a red oak variety) in the front yard are now rather large trees.  Roots are beginning to show around the trunks, a typical oak characteristic.  Soon they will be on top of the ground.  But they do provide great late afternoon shade for the house.  We also have a volunteer Barkley in the side yard and it is developing quite well.  We did have one spring where the bucks rubbed up against them but now it is big enough that they will not fool with it.

And we will add metal edging to the north side of the front flower bed.  There is no edging now, so it will be new.  It will follow the sidewalk around towards the back.

That is the next yard task and transplanting Irises.

My Lucky DAy . . .

Monday, had my appointment with the Cardiologist.  He gave me a clean bill of health heart wise.  I have CT scan, for calcium, and they found a lot of it in my heart and the vascular areas around the heart.  Turns out it was a number but the Nuclear Stress Test confirmed I did not have any occlusions or blockages.  All was normal.

Then we had a spring yesterday fail in the garage door system.  The torsion spring counterbalances the door which is pretty heavy by itself.  So it assists in open and closing the garage door.  With a spring broken, it is hard to open.  Made a call to the garage door people, said the earliest appointment was Thursday.

Nope got a call from their man and he said he could do it this AM.  I said, "Come on down."  It seems he had a cancellation and was in the area.  So got the spring replaced, actually replaced the broken spring and the other spring at the same time.  He also replaced all the rollers and generally tuned up the door.  Runs like a champ now.

Then called USAA about a rock chip in the windshield.  They turned me over to SafeLite.  That was at 11:30.  I received a call from a SafeLite person about 12:00 and she was here about 1:00 PM.  Did the repair in 30 or so minutes and left. 

So today was my lucky day!

Old Fritz is Gone . . .

It is warm enough, and the lizards are out.  We have seen a couple on the front stoop, one  is large one and others are medium sized.

But in the back, on Old Fritz's turf, we have not seen any lizards.  So we must lament Old Fritz's passing.  She reigned Queen of the patio for several years.  She had her private stack of wood to look out from.  Judie's yard shoes were available as a safe place to spend the night and even stay warm.  The shoes were black shinny rubber, so they held heat a long time.  The  baker's rack was here domain, she often overnighted in the flower pots that rested there.

But no Fritz to be seen.  The other large Fritz has been seen out front and on the side yard but not on the patio.  And I must admit the patio is devoid of their favorite food, crickets.  I am guessing they have hunted the out of existence in the back.  That is not a bad thing, just means there is no attraction to return to the patio to spend the summer.

We are pretty sure those Fritzs out front are the progeny of Old Fritz.    So in a manner of speaking she lives on in her brood that wander the front flower beds looking for insect prey.

So her passing is yet another milestone in the life at 1106 Willow Wood Drive.  She provided us with a lot of entertainment over the last couple of years.

Scottish Festival . . .

I received a letter out of the blue from a Clan Morrison fellow.  His name is Jim Morrison and he is the local whizz for clan doings in this region.  He lives way the hell out in Hobbs, New Mexico.  So he really claims New Mexico and Western Texas (which is a lot of territory).  Any way he sent the letter.  Jim has the clan title of "Convener" meaning local big wig in the clan.

Basically, it said that there was a Scottish Festival in North Texas at the University of Texas, Arlington.  It was held at their football stadium.  UTA as it is locally known, no longer plays intercollegiate football.  So there are not training conflicts and it is a place that is ringed by a high chain link fence, has ticket booths and a place to let folk (with tickets) to go in and out.

One area of the facility had all the tents for the different clans, I counted about 30 or so tents.  Ironically, the Morrison tent by design I guess, was the largest one of them all.  So it was a little off to the side nestled back in a corner with plenty of room.  Other clan tents adjoined each other in long lines but the Morrison tent was all by itself in the corner.

It was interesting to chat with Jim Morrison, a retired cop from the City of Hobbs.  He was complete with kilt on.  He gave me a pin representing the Scotch, a shot glass with Clan Morrison on it (appropriate, eh). 

They knew little or nothing about the Pointe Coupee Morrisons.  I guess I will write a piece and give it to the Clan Morrison folks.  To much family history to be ignored.

I ate lunch there.  I walked over to the food court, located behind the east side of the stadium.  I do not go for Haggis and such, so I selected Fish and Chips, close enough I figured.  And I had a draft beer, that set me back $14 for both.  For a good cause I figured.

There were large tents with bagpipe playing, folk songs, speaker, etc.  There were also Scottish games, throwing a humongous weight.  Naturally, all the contestants work kilts.  There was even a Scottie Dog tent.  Lots of merchants peddling plaids, and all kinds of do dads ala Scotch.  No repeat no Scotch Whiskey.

I also met Dr. Morrison from Scotland, he is the titular head of the clan.  He met and married a lass from Connecticut and now eschews Scotland for his brides home state.  Seems it is a bit more climatically acceptable and I do not think she was receptive to living in Scotland.  He had to go off and give a talk (about the Morrison Clan no less).