VA Suicide Hotline: "Your Call Is Very Important To Us..."
Horrifyingly, some of vets' suicide hotline calls went to voicemail. With the predictable tragic consequences.
Yes, vets, we care about you -- just not enough to give you timely or adequate medical care or to do what it takes to have a human being present on the suicide hotline when you call.
Here's the CBS report:
A suicide hotline operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs allowed crisis calls to go into voicemail, and callers did not always receive immediate assistance, according to a report by the agency's internal watchdog.The report by the VA's office of inspector general says calls to the suicide hotline have increased dramatically in recent years, as veterans increasingly seek services following prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the aging of Vietnam-era veterans.
The crisis hotline -- the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary -- received more than 450,000 calls in 2014, a 40 percent increase over the previous year.
About in 1 in 6 calls are redirected to backup centers when the crisis line is overloaded, the report said. Calls went to voicemail at some backup centers, including least one where staffers apparently were unaware there was a voicemail system, the report said.
"Unaware"? Not acceptable. And that's on the VA's part -- because it is their job to see that those they farm care out to are doing an adequate (or, ideally, better than adequate) job.
On a more positive note, at least the VA's service is consistent -- consistently substandard and a consistent slap in the face to veterans.
And really -- put yourself in the shoes of somebody who feels they have nothing left to live for, and suspects they should or could feel differently, and does the enormous thing (for a depressed person), of finding a phone number, dialing a phone and asking for help.
And then...
"Your call is very important to us..."
No. Just no.
Not a surprise.
Some people are clamoring for term limits, thinking that elected officials entrenched in their jobs are the problem.
Nope.
It's the legions of public-sector employees, with no metrics to gauge their performance, protected by this and that program. Nope, aptitude or proficiency testing can't be done - the "wrong" people might pass those. Duke Power suit.
I bet you didn't know this: if your contractor is afraid to fire a minority (even if they actually are NOT one in the region of employment) due to racial sensitivity, they can't fire anybody else for fear of the reverse-discrimination suit.
Your AA activists might not want to think about that.
Radwaste at February 18, 2016 2:27 AM
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Saw this today and just knew I'd be able to use it.)
Bob in Texas at February 18, 2016 5:48 AM
Every person in a leadership position at the VA should be lined up in front of a firing squad and shot on live tv. Or, slightly more realistically, charged with murder for every patient who has died waiting for treatment or waiting for someone to return a call. Then, and only then-when people are held accountable for their actions in organizations-will things change.
momof4 at February 18, 2016 6:26 AM
I sure don't understand how VA people in charge or in any positions of power sleep nights. This is just such a terrible betrayal -- as are so many instances of substandard care we are providing vets.
Amy Alkon at February 18, 2016 6:41 AM
They sleep just fine Amy. The answer is after a while those aren't people to them. They are just numbers on a spreadsheet. As Stalin said "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."
Ben at February 18, 2016 6:50 AM
Yeah, to them it's just a job. One with good pay, cushy benefits, and guaranteed job security.
Y'know, the Veterans Administration used to be under the DoD. It was a Vietnam-era "reform" to make it its own Cabinet-level department. Part of the argument there was allegations that the VA was doing a poor job (a lot of which was true), and that there would be more accountability if it were Cabinet-level and reporting directly to the President. The other part of it, though, was the Left's vendetta against the U.S. military. They saw veterans as a group that they could carve off and convert to the government-dependent attitude.
Well, we can see how well all that worked; if the VA was bad before, it's almost certainly much worse now. Further, expectations for standards of care in medicine in general have increased since 1975, and the VA has not kept up. And the Left, after realizing that they weren't going to convert veterans to a reliable Democratic bloc vote, decided that they didn't care anymore. Add to that that we're on the eighth year of a President who has had the least engagement with the Cabinet departments since the 19th century, plus the general attitude of non-accountability that permeates the federal government these days, and here we are.
Cousin Dave at February 18, 2016 7:16 AM
Oh, momof4, that's so...so...charming.
I'm not criticizing, I love it when people suggest the old classics: firing squad; pitch forks, chicken feathers, tar and rails (some assembly required); a fair trial and a fine hanging, etc.
You're aware that the people who were dismissed have all been reinstated, with back pay? and to add insult to injury in the case of the excruciatingly slow medical treatment, they used their fake numbers of patients served to justify bonuses and promotions.
That should be criminal charges relating to fraud, or perhaps theft by conversion or some such. But no, not going to happen. I doubt they'll be demoted back down, and/or made to repay the bonuses.
Remember: the laws and the perp walk are for little people, like us.
I R A Darth Aggie at February 18, 2016 7:59 AM
Not just public employees, but unionized public employees.
Government agencies have no competition and no objective measurement of success. No competitor to which customers could take their money if dissatisfied with the performance at the organization in question. If a veteran doesn't like how the VA treats him, he can't take his VA funding to Kaiser. If he wants government-funded treatment, he must go to the VA. If he goes to Kaiser, he must pay for it himself and the VA keeps the money that would have paid for that treatment anyway.
Same thing with schools. Individual schools may be funded by a body-count, but overall, the government keeps the money it collects and simply spends it on another failing program.
If Ford fails to satisfy customers, it loses money. If the government fails, it keeps the money. The specific government agency may lose some budget money, but its government overlords won't lose a dime ... and will probably pass a law forbidding the private sector from providing the same service as that agency, thus securing a monopoly for itself.
Vouchers, whether healthcare or school, would be an interesting fix to this. Take the money and spend it wherever you will get satisfaction. If a vet can't get what he needs at the VA, the can take his voucher to Kaiser or to the local witch doctor and the VA, formerly funded with unlimited tax money, will now have to scramble to get more customers and earn its money back. Government managers will learn the economics lessons that private sector managers learned long ago: always be running.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.
Conan the Grammarian at February 18, 2016 9:23 AM
In reality, both the lion and the gazelle only have to outrun the slowest gazelle.
Conan the Grammarian at February 18, 2016 9:27 AM
Don't think I've ever been accused of trying to be charming. At some point, people need to fear that their actions will have an actual impact on their life, besides a *possible* loss of job. Otherwise, why *wouldn't* they cheat to make more money? If there's no skin off their back when they do so? Some people may be moral enough they never would, consequences or no, but the people who Aren't, are the ones going for those jobs.
momof4 at February 18, 2016 2:07 PM
I would like our veterans ... not to be veterans in the first place. I would like to stop sending them overseas to be shot at.
Pirate Jo at February 18, 2016 4:20 PM
"I would like our veterans ... not to be veterans in the first place"
I'm with you, but... the choices are rapidly coming down to being shot at over there, or being nuked here.
Cousin Dave at February 19, 2016 7:41 AM
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