Trump didn't invite veterans to his first VA "listening session."

[Onamuji]

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/tr...-advocates

White House officials held their first listening session on problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday, but without inviting prominent members of the veterans community to the event.

Officials from the American Legion, Disabled American Veterans and the Veterans of Foreign Wars said they were not invited to the morning event and did not know about it until it was announced late Monday night, as part of the White House’s routine schedule outline.

Other prominent veterans groups were surprised Tuesday morning by news of the event, and unsure who was invited to take part in the discussion.

White House officials initially did not release any other details of the event, other than the meeting followed a similar listening session with President Trump and county sheriffs discussing local law enforcement issues. A press pool event to take pictures of the meeting was cancelled shortly before the veterans meeting began.

As news spread of the meeting, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said White House officials told him the meeting was with health care executives, and that veterans groups would be invited for a similar session later.

In the afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer released a statement saying the meeting included Tiffany Smiley, the wife of a veteran who was blinded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, Isaac Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and "health care experts" discussing "actions are necessary to improve health care access and quality for our heroic veterans."

(Emphasis added.)

New rumor: Disney is going to buy the VA.

[Lux Interior]

So the VA will become like the scene in Deadpool where all the guinea pigs are converted to mutants (or killed)?

[Speedy]

The VA is a good place for the Republicans to practice repeal and replace. Should be interesting to see how veterans react to that new reality.

[$tevie]

I have a feeling that they are going to change the eligibility. Right now you can be treated at the VA for anything as long as you served during an officially designated "war time". For example, the many old guys I see in there who are being treated for lung cancer caused by cigarettes and not by serving during the WWII- or Korean War-era. I bet they will change it to treating only service-related problems regardless of when one served. This would fill the bill of "improve health care access and quality for our heroic veterans" while allowing them to keep the federal hiring freeze in effect in the VA. Then we will have oodles of lawsuits as they try to sort out whether mental health issues are a result of PTSD or are unrelated mental health issues which they won't have to treat.

[Yoyodyne ArtWorks]

Just as Trump likes people who weren't captured, no doubt he prefers people who weren't wounded either.

[DeusxMac]

$tevie wrote:
Right now you can be treated at the VA for anything as long as you served during an officially designated "war time".

Gross oversimplification.
There is a hierarchy of what will, and will not be covered depending on a considerable number of individual factors.
https://www.va.gov/healthbenefits/resour...groups.asp

[$tevie]

My husband is being treated for his heart disease at the VA, solely on the basis of having served in Germany during the Vietnam era. His heart disease has NOTHING to do with working at HQ as a clerk. They supply all his primary health care, meds, flu shots, you name it.

I'm old enough to know a number of people who are being treated at the VA for no other reason than having served during the proscribed "Vietnam era".

[Dennis S]

Has Trump showed them his Purple Heart?

[Speedy]

$tevie wrote: allowing them to keep the federal hiring freeze in effect in the VA.

As soon as the freeze was announced they listed exemptions at the VA. The exemptions included most job classifications.

[$tevie]

Speedy wrote:
[quote=$tevie]allowing them to keep the federal hiring freeze in effect in the VA.

As soon as the freeze was announced they listed exemptions at the VA. The exemptions included most job classifications.
I missed that. Thank goodness, that would have been terrible.