Sen. Kerry Visits W. Roxbury VA Hospital Sunday

[globalvillage]

Sen. Kerry Visits W. Roxbury VA Hospital Sunday
(WBZ) WEST ROXBURY Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry paid a visit to patients and staffers at the VA hospital in West Roxbury on Sunday.

Kerry has been visiting several VA facilities across the country, including Walter Reed, to check on conditions and the people.

"This place is terrific," said Kerry about the West Roxbury VA Hospital. "It does a good job, but like many places, they are strapped by funding, which we have been fighting for each of the last few years, and hopefully now, the administration will understand that this is a priority and they'll get the job done."

Just last week, Kerry said he spent some time at Walter Reed.

http://wbztv.com/local/local_story_070131353.html

[Island Blue]

1. OMG. We really do share a brain, don't we?

I'll delete mine.

[globalvillage]

2. I'm telling you.

You scare me.

[ProSense]

3. Excellent!

This issue and those affected by the admin's negligence need to remain in the forefront.

[ProSense]

4. Fascinating account of the Walter Reed scandal in the making:

So why all the attention now?

“People are seeing it as a conglomerate now — an accrued set of grievances,” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told Army Times in a March 1 interview.

He said he and his staff had heard anecdotes of problems but that no one seemed to know how widespread they were.

“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “It makes me very angry to see another generation coming through with the same fight we thought we had won.”

Kerry referred to the work veterans did after Vietnam to make sure soldiers were cared for physically and mentally.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Mike Parker also finds it frustrating. For at least two years, he has gathered thousands of pages of documents — which he shared with Army Times — and banged on doors trying to get the problems he saw fixed. He spends much of his free time trying to help soldiers through the process.

Parker also spent time alerting lawmakers and speaking before the Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission — which has heard testimony from doctors in the disability rating system who say much needs to be done to help soldiers.

In March 2006, Parker filed a complaint with the inspector general at Walter Reed, asking for an investigation of whether the medical evaluation boards were following the law, and another complaint with the Army’s Human Resources Command.

He said the Army is supposed to rate injuries according to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Schedule for Rating Disabilities but charged that Army officials wrote their own regulation in the mid-1990s that allows them to rate disabilities differently — and at lower percentages. No other service has such a regulation.

When Parker filed a complaint asking about the legality of that regulation, the Human Resources Command Inspector General’s Office sent him a reply stating that the issue was “not within our purview.”

“It took them 10 months ... to tell me there’s a regulation that says can do it,” Parker said, shaking his head and laughing. “No shit, Sherlock.”

Meanwhile, he said, he was told last spring that the Army inspector general was reviewing the whole system — which Army officials verified this week. The IG asked him to provide documentation from the cases he had looked at.

“I did,” he said. “But then they told me to stop, saying, ‘We’ve already talked to people — it’s not a problem.’”

He has letters documenting the responses.

Another complaint resulted in a “final response” that he hadn’t provided enough information for an investigation — even though Parker never appears anywhere without PowerPoint slides packed with information.

“I’ve hit them time after time,” he said. “I can show you back to March 1, 2006.”

So then he started hitting Congress, where the response was often disbelief.

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