memes

There was a HUGE difference from when I first applied a few years after my first tour and had issues (around 2010) versus when I recently applied. The first time was a whole stack of paper only. Electronic wasn't allowed. Must be in person to submit. If anything wasn't filled out correctly they wouldn't tell you, you just had to wait a month and get a letter telling you what page to resubmit. Then the appointments to evaluate you were scheduled with zero input from you. And occasionally they would do ghost bookings to boost numbers. Those are bookings where they would book it the day or two before, only give mail notice, and when you get it it was for an appointment that had now passed, and they make you rebook it with the strike against you for noshowing. It was a nightmare. Then the clinicians defaulted to just assuming you were there for money and if there was a shadow of doubt it was denied.

Then, if you did finally get a rating, good luck getting any treatment. I had a prescription of sertrilene, aka zoloft, literally the world's most prescribed pill, it ran out after I moved back from Chicago to Houston. But because records were only regional at the time and I was in a new region, I had to re-register for Healthcare. And even though I had the bottle with me, I could not use the pharmacy without a new prescription. So I had to go through the ER, as a triage level 0. I was in there at 11 am and waited ALL DAY until the standard ER closing time and they shifted to life threatening only (about 6 pm), and was not seen. Told to come back the next day. Was in there by 10, seen around 3 or 4. And the doc who saw me was shocked about the whole thing when i explained it to him.

With all that, it has come a long way and was so much easier when I did a pact act claim. It was all online, simplified, they worked with me, contracted out the appointments, it was great. World of change over the last 10+ years.

Anybody have any contradictory experiences?

Only gripes I have with the VA is their infrastructure is comically bad, parking capacity is about half what it needs to be, and the food in the cafeteria is apparently set at a price point geared toward milking their own doctors... my one and only time in the VA cafeteria, I did a lap around the different food stalls to find an affordable lunch......... and eventually decided fuck it - I'll just stay hungry.

As far as the actual healthcare I've gotten there; no complaints at all.

Pre recent PACT Act that Mr. Stewart shamed a certain party into finally getting on board with and passing, certain VA claims were difficult to get compensation or treatment for because there was no linking evidence to make it 'service connected'. You couldn't, for example, prove that the respiratory issues you have now was from huffing burning oil and other chemicals because you had no idea what chemicals you were ingesting and you didn't complain about it 20 years ago when you were still in. The primary catalyst behind the PACT Act that just passed a few months back is because Veterans were dying due to obvious military connected issues but simply had zero way to prove it. You can't just write a letter to some organization and be like "What was I exposed to while operating at FOB X, Y and Z. Also did you guys figure out if this could have caused this lung cancer I'm dying from?"

Or maybe for my predecessors "In the Gulf War I was on P-Tabs (pyridostigmine bromide if you don't know) every day for months. Do you think this has lead to my issues?" because even though the VA's Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses did in-fact find that it does and presented it along with other studies reinforcing this to the NAC (Gulf War and Health: Volume 8: Update of Health Effects of Serving in the Gulf War, 2010), in Chapter 8 they said

Although the Update committee did not assess the biological plausibility of the link between PB and pesticides and Gulf War illness ... A comprehensive assessment of all the evidence on PB and pesticides exposures in the Gulf War was beyond the Update committee’s formal scope of work. ... the Update committee found that human epidemiologic evidence was not sufficient to establish a causative relationship between any specific drug, toxin, plume, or other agent, either alone or in combination, and Gulf War illness.

and therefore, the VA's official stance is that although the VA itself found evidence that PB causes chronic multisymptom illness and presented all of it that

the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ... has determined that there is no basis to establish any new presumptions of service connection at this time for any of the diseases, illnesses, or health effects ...

(see this Federal Register notice)

in what could be a punchline to a joke about how the VA can determine that there is a problem in its initial study but that after presenting this to the NAC that did not itself conduct a study, the NAC and therefore the VA has found that there is not a problem and the veterans effected are screwed. But it's OK because everyone involved recommends that something in the ether ("the government" without attribution to an actual organization) should still monitor the situation.

I have my own shitty experiences that I don't really want to go into. I feel like I've been one of the lucky ones that haven't died painfully as an old man yelling at clouds...yet. And it's funny because I know veterans that are rated at 90% disabled as a desk jockey and combat vets that are rated 0% and neither have any idea why they are so high or so low.

Thankfully, my deployment finally got listed on the burn pit registry last year after 20 years and the PACT Act is going to give me a second chance....maybe...we'll see after my toxicology appointment one day I guess.

Ask a Vet still on Tricare after service what they have to do to get anything above Motrin to manage chronic pain. I am grateful that I do not have to rely on Tricare myself and also that I currently do not need to manage chronic pain above Motrin/Ibuprofen every so often.