WASILLA — U.S. Veterans Affairs secretary Robert McDonald faced pointed questions and raised voices from irate veterans at a town hall forum at the Menard Center on Thursday.
McDonald's only public town hall forum in Alaska — an earlier meeting in Anchorage was not open to the public — drew hundreds of veterans generally upset with the quality of care and veterans' health issues ranging from suicide to homelessness to care availability. The town hall meeting had originally been planned to last an hour, but stretched 30 minutes longer as dozens of veterans lined up to air grievances about the department.
McDonald's opening remarks seemed to anticipate the level of concern about federal officials' ability to meet increasing demands placed on the VA as veterans of the 15-year Iraq and Afghanistan wars return home, swelling the numbers of veterans eligible for disability even as the total number of veterans reliant on the agency for healthcare is decreasing. That's at least in part because veterans are 10 times more likely to survive a battlefield injury than they were in past conflicts, McDonald said.
"The number of veterans is going down," he said. "The number of claims is going up."
The department would work to increase the number of healthcare providers available, McDonald said.
The town hall forum comes as the department's inspector general found that the absence of a full-time physician from May to October 2014 at the Wasilla outpatient clinic had negatively impacted care.
The at-times raucous meeting took on a confrontational tone. McDonald frequently directed veterans to the back of the room, where service providers had gathered to offer and collect information about available programs.
"If you have unusual issues, it's better that you go talk to somebody who can solve them than make it a public issue," he said, after a woman complained that an educational grant had had been revoked.
Several veterans shouted out "They won't listen!" and "Nobody listens!" in response. Numerous veterans complained about the Veterans Choice program, which is designed to allow veterans to seek help from private doctors in order to reduce wait times and travel distances for healthcare.
Michael Lindbeck, who made the nearly hour-long drive from Anchorage for the meeting, said he'd had years of accumulated positive experience with the VA until he found out about the program.
"You're in it, and if you're not in it, I was told that I could pay for it myself, that was my choice," he said. "Just yesterday I got my care. It took three months."
Ultimately, a VA officer made a phone call lasting over an hour, Lindbeck said.
Other veterans said frustrations with the program had reached a boiling point. Joe Oswald, an Army veteran from Wasilla, drew applause and shouts when he said the VA's poor service had potentially fatal consequences. The issue is a sensitive one locally: the inspector general's report did not validate security concerns allegedly arising from the suicide of veteran Russell K. Butts, who died in 2011 in the parking lot of the Wasilla clinic. Veteran suicide rates are also much higher than the general population
"VA is part of the reason some veterans commit suicide, because they suggest suicide," Oswald said.
That comment was an apparent reference to a July 31 incident that lit up blogs and social media when a VA psychiatrist at a Philadelphia clinic suggested an opponent in a Facebook gun rights debate "off himself." The psychiatrist later said he regretted the remarks.
When his disability payments were reduced on the recommendation of a physician's assistant at the Wasilla clinic, Oswald said VA officials suggested he go on food stamps – or beg. Usually, nonprofit veterans organizations can provide guidance or help navigating the VA's services, but so-called service organizations have been unwilling to help, Oswald said.
"Nobody is addressing it, sir," he told McDonald. "Everybody's just passing the buck, and if you call the Anchorage office, what they do is pass you to every phone number you have in the hope that you go away."
McDonald agreed that customer service is something that needs to improve at the VA.
"Improve it?" Oswald shot back. "You need to fire everybody and re-hire 'em because they ain't doing their jobs. … They give us second-rate health care, they treat us like garbage, and then act like we should be going out there kissing their feet for everything we receive."
Other veterans said their experience with the VA had been generally positive, though they also said they understood frustration with the administration. Tyler Hall, a disabled veteran, said it was more important to demonstrate that veterans were engaged in the issues. He's had to make trips to Seattle for care in the past, which was challenging, but ultimately he was able to get the care he needed.
"I will say that you definitely have to deal with the bureaucracy when you're dealing with stuff," he said.
Contact reporter Brian O'Connor at brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, 352-2269, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.
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