• pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    This is from 2015, it’s waaaaay worse now:

    The Shameful Way America Treats Its Veterans

    The number of homeless Vietnam veterans today is greater than the number of soldiers who died during the war

    Last year a CNN report showed that at least 40 veterans had died waiting for care at VA facilities in the Phoenix area; the scandal mushroomed when an internal audit found more than 120,000 veterans across the country were left waiting or never got care, even as VA employees were trained to manipulate wait time numbers internally. It’s a scandal that continues to sting. A report published Wednesday shows the VA doled out $142 million in performance bonuses in 2014, the same year it was being investigated for manipulating data. And last month Hillary Clinton came under fire for telling Rachel Maddow the problem has “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be.” (Her remarks stood in contrast to those made by former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki when he resigned last May: “I said when this situation began weeks to months ago that I thought the problem was limited and isolated because I believed that. I no longer believe it. It is systemic.”)

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-shameful-way-america-treats-its-veterans-52825/

    • DaGeek247@fedia.io
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      1 day ago

      Specifically, because of the past six months. 2024 va was unimaginably better than 2015 va. 2025 va is falling apart at the seams due to Elon and Trump doing goddamn best to destroy the va and federal government in general.

        • DaGeek247@fedia.io
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          1 day ago

          By miles, frankly. It had been on upward trend for a hot minute, actually. 2024 va had actually managed to change most of their issues into things that only sometimes happened, rather than things that were expected to happen most of the time.

          I can’t speak for every va hospital, but the ones I went to actually had reasonable wait times for providers (compared to the average private hospital, they were better) and for compensation it was miles ahead of of where it was in 2015, which was also miles ahead of where it was in 2005.

    • Zwiebel@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      Isn’t the number of veteran suicides after the war higher than the deaths during?