VAOIG finds your claims in the shedder bin

Bobo sends us a link to the Military Times which reports that the Veterans’ Affairs Office of the Inspector General investigators found some veterans’ claims in the shedder bin at a Los Angeles office. Some lawmakers are asking for an explanation, and, of course, VA officials are downplaying the incident;

VA officials said only 10 files were misplaced in the bins, and the items would have been subject to additional review before being destroyed. They downplayed the problem as a one-time mistake from a small number of workers, not “malicious intent.”

Full details of the findings won’t be released for several more weeks, and the exact number of cases affected has not yet been released by the VA Inspector General’s Office.

But [Representative Julia Brownley, D-Calif.] and Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., have called for hearings and an immediate review of how the regional office handles documents.

“Only 10”? Um, those are the lives of ten people, even if that’s all that were affected. “Only one” would be too many. These “only ten” are counting on the government to do what they promised for us when we joined and wrote those blank checks on our lives.

VA leaders in recent years have placed extra emphasis on digitizing those records, in part to prevent that kind of loss.

The lawmakers did not say how many veterans may have been affected by the latest problem.

Yeah, at least if the records are digitized, we can get back up copies from the Chinese.

Trust us VA, we’re dying as fast as we can in order to alleviate the back log problem. You just have to have a little patience with us.

Category: Veterans' Affairs Department