College Veterans Benefits Not Being Paid Still!

Veterans haven't received GI Bill benefits for months due to ongoing IT issues at VA

NBC News 
By Phil McCausland 
November 11, 2018

"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless. I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."

U.S. War veterans salute during the Veterans Day parade in New York on Nov. 11, 2017.Eduardo Munoz / Reuters file

Shelley Roundtree departed the U.S. Army in 2013 after seeing friends and fellow soldiers die in combat during his tour in Afghanistan. He was committed to transitioning to civilian life, and one of his first steps was to enroll in college with tuition and housing benefits he'd earned under the GI Bill.

Roundtree, 29, began studying marketing at Berkeley College in Midtown Manhattan. He dreams of working in the fashion industry, and he's close to graduating — but now there's a serious obstacle.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or — in the case of Roundtree — never be delivered.

"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless," Roundtree said. "I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."

Without the GI Bill's housing stipend, Roundtree was kicked out of his apartment and is now living on his sister's couch, miles from school, where he feels like a burden on his family. The new living situation required him to move all his belongings into a storage container, which he can no longer afford. Now all of his possessions are in danger of being auctioned off by the storage facility.

"It’s just confusing," said Roundtree. "Who is there for us? Who is representing us? Who is helping us? Who is doing what they need to do to better the situation for veterans?"
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USA Today has some explaining to do!

USA Today has some explaining to do!

"Veterans sacrificed enough: USA TODAY investigations of VA health care help our heroes"

That was their headline, but if they are referring to reports like this, they need to explain what the rest of the story was and why they did not report it!

"In Phoenix, reporter Dennis Wagner's coverage of the VA crisis led to nationwide investigations and major changes in veterans' health care, as well as in the administration's accountability and transparency. Internal VA investigations verified that patients were dying while awaiting care and documented widespread mismanagement and reprisals against whistleblowers."

"The VA secretary was forced out. Congress approved a $15 billion emergency fund and launched the Veterans Choice program giving VA patients a private-care option."

Reporters keep doing that! Patting themselves on the back for only telling part of a story the rest of us live with...and if you read Wounded Times, read all the time too.

Here are some other headlines on this topic.

Veterans call program to get health care with civilian doctors 'a disaster,' broken

Veterans from around the state expressed frustration over the Veterans Choice program, meant to increase access to health care, during a listening session in Helena on Monday night.

Independent Record reported that on 10/24/2017 and veterans added that the VA had gone downhill over the last 8 years.

The Cherokee Tribune had a report in May of 2018 that 1.3 million veterans had been overcharged and were getting reimbursements.

And in June WHIO 7 News reported this mess.

A key program being expanded by the Trump administration to give veterans greater access to private doctors has failed to provide care within 30 days as promised due to faulty data and poor record-keeping that could take years to remedy, according to a government investigation released Monday. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing arm, found veterans often had to wait between 51 and 64 days for appointments with private doctors under the Veterans Choice program. It cited a lengthy scheduling process that took as long as 70 days.

Read more of this type of pat on the back while the rest of us are scratching our heads instead of pulling our hair out!

"New VA leadership carried out what has been described as the most comprehensive overhaul in agency history."

Treating veterans like the rest of us in never right. Sending veterans into the same system members of Congress have been complaining about, is even worse. When reporters get a pat of the back for not telling the whole story, that is the worst!
Military.com had this in June.

The GAO said veterans could wait up to 70 days for private-care appointments under the Choice program because of poor communication between the VA and its facilities and "an insufficient number, mix, or geographic distribution of community providers."

As for the Whistleblowers protection, you can look that up yourself since that has also been going on for a very long time. Yep~Congress yet again. 

 

Vietnam POW U.S. Army Captain Isaac “Ike” Camacho

El Paso Army veteran recalls life as POW in Vietnam

El Paso Inc.
By Lisa Amaya
November 11, 2018

Camacho escaped the camp on July 9, 1965, during a monsoon, slipping through the bars of his cage and hiding in the jungle for four days until he reached U.S. forces.

Memories of being caged, shackled and exposed to the powerful herbicide Agent Orange linger in the mind of retired U.S. Army Captain Isaac “Ike” Camacho, the first American to escape a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam.

Still, Camacho, who spent nearly two years as a prisoner of war, said he would serve again if he could.

“At one point in your life you have to serve your country. This would be one way of serving your country,” the now 81-year-old Camacho said from his home in East El Paso.

Camacho is among the thousands of borderland veterans whose service to the country will be commemorated during Veterans Day on Sunday, Nov. 11.

His life story has been recounted in “Isaac Camacho, An American Hero.” The book by Billy Waugh, a retired Army sergeant major, was released in March by Permuted Press.
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So why are so many charities leaving them behind?

If you do a Google search on Vietnam Veteran, click news, this is on the first page of 8,280,000 results. Each one of them is about doing something for someone else.

That is the point of that generation. Vietnam veterans vowed to never leave another generation of veterans behind. So why are so many charities leaving them behind?

Vietnam veteran says he is glad soldiers are respected now

Hickory Daily Record-4 hours ago

Vietnam veteran Rom Brown served in the U.S. Army in 1969 and 1970, and like many others, he did not have much of a say. Brown, now 68 ...

Vietnam veterans help others access VA benefits
Fredericksburg.com-12 hours ago

Vietnam vets honored during Fort Polk ceremony
Military Times-Nov 9, 2018

Fredericksburg.com

Military Times

Leesville Daily Leader

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Vietnam veteran: I didn't go in there just to loaf and have a good time ...

Hickory Daily Record-4 hours ago

Drum served a little more than a year in Vietnam, working as a clerk at a hospital unit about 7 miles away from the Vietnamese Demilitarized ...

Vietnam veteran was a Marine and in the Army

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In January 1968, Coulter arrived in Vietnam, where he worked as a radio ... Vietnam veteran Clifton Coulter proudly stands in his front yard ...

Vietnam veteran still coping with effects of war

Dothan Eagle-12 hours ago

“But what people didn't realize back then − instead of the government sending someone to tell people that their child had died in Vietnam, they ...

Vietnam veteran Tom Williams is twice decorated, never intimidated

Greensboro News & Record-9 hours ago

The thing you have to understand, says retired federal judge Tom Williams, is how invulnerable the young person feels who enlists during ...

Vietnam War veterans' kids say Agent Orange impact 'a nightmare'

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The daughter of a combat Vietnam veteran who served in 1969 until 1970 in areas that were the most heavily sprayed with Agent Orange, Kuhn ...

Vietnam veteran Lee Smith Jr. enjoys sharing the less harrowing war ...

Dothan Eagle-8 minutes ago

The first lesson Lee C. Smith Jr. learned in the Army was that panicking was the fastest way to get yourself and your peers killed during war.

Decorated Longmont Vietnam vet recovers medals lost to the flood

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A Vietnam veteran who served in the 101st Airborne from 1967 to 1969, he came home with not only a lot of keepsakes; he came home with, ...

A long time coming: Badger Honor Flight gives Vietnam vets proper ...

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JANESVILLE. John Gorski kept his emotions in check during most of the recent Badger Honor Flight to Washington, D.C.. But when the Vietnam ...

A VETERAN'S STORY: Understanding Veterans Day
Gwinnettdailypost.com-10 hours ago

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A Vietnam veteran died with no family to attend his funeral. So other ...

ABC Action News-18 hours ago

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee community came together Friday to make sure an unclaimed veteran would not be forgotten.

Battle of Ben Cui "...my father doesn’t need an occasion to remember."

'They Are My Men': A 50-Year Veterans Reunion Helped My Dad Process A Brutal Battle

NPR
by Kara Frame
Nov. 11, 2018

At that exact time 50 years ago, the guys were half a world away, about to enter battle. It was a muggy morning and my dad’s unit, part of the 5th Infantry Regiment,was headed on a reconnaissance mission into enemy territory. There were 88 men from his unit there that day. Some were on foot, wading through thick brush into the dark canopy of the Ben Cui rubber tree plantation. Others were in armored personnel carriers behind .50-caliber machine guns.

Not a day goes by that my dad, former Army Staff Sgt. Tom Frame, doesn’t think about the men who fought and died alongside him in Vietnam.

Staff Sgt. Tom Frame, the author's father, stands at right in this 1968 snapshot from Vietnam. Frame family photo

In recent years for Veterans Day, he and some other guys from his unit have paid tribute by traveling to Texas, which was home for Staff Sgt. Marvin Rex Young. Young was one of 18 men who lost their lives in the Battle of Ben Cui, an intense firefight between my dad’s unit and the North Vietnamese army.

The pilgrimages have been a way for my dad to reconnect with his fellow soldiers. And it was another trip to Texas, back in the summer, that really helped him honor Young and the others who died in the Battle of Ben Cui.

It has been 50 years since Ben Cui, and to mark the anniversary, my dad organized a reunion for soldiers from his unit and for family – the first time since 1968 that the men would be together on the day of the battle, Aug. 21.

I asked him why he wanted to get the guys together. “It’s my duty,” he said.

But really, my father doesn’t need an occasion to remember. “I wake up in the morning and I look outside at a beautiful morning — and I think about them,” he told me. He wonders why he survived and they didn’t. It weighs on him. And it has weighed on our whole family — in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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