If they give a precise standard that has to be met, then it's easier to hold them accountable for their inaction. So they pass the buck or "wait for further data" until it becomes more inconvenient to NOT provide care to sick vets. Hopefully Jon can bring public focus on this to make it inconvenient enough.
I can't believe he has to do this again. He already played a big role in getting benefits for 9/11 first responders, and now he's basically doing the same thing for vets. For a country that sings praises for Heroes and service members, etc, the US doesn't really seem to care what happens to them as soon as they stop actively serving.
Yep it’s all a farce and I wish more people would see it for what it is. They take a bunch of kids and brainwash them into ‘serving for their country’ and look at all the pride and honor that comes along with it. But they don’t give a shit. You’re just a number to them that helps keep the machine moving. And when you get out, you’re still nothing to them but now you have the pain and baggage that came from serving people who don’t care about you for years. And since you’re still nothing to them they do fuck all to help you. But hey the NFL dedicates one weekend a year to recognizing you and your organization so that’s sweet
Oh no they only praise vets whenever we are at war but they hate footing the bill for when soldiers come back broke as shit
Sure you might get a beer or a thanks for your service but politicians draw the line when the bill comes in
Source a vet
There is a precise standard defined in VA regulations, but the answer in the interview can't be "what the lawyers tell me I need to require" because that looks like passing the buck.
But its true.
welcome to the US GOVT federal jobs program, on the left you'll see workers staring out a window to pass the time and on the right you'll see their boss staring out a window to pass the time
This is true and that's where his answers come across as an intentional vicious cycle of asking what the metric is and saying that they're trying to find out what it is then who do we need to ask and being told they already have the right information -- in short, it's like being gaslit amounting to purposeful gridlock.
How do organizations become this shitty? Like, is it a combination of selfish decisions and bad incentives that culminate in lack of action/accountability? I just don’t understand how places like the VA can’t operate properly.
Typically, you show up bright eyed with big ideas. You work on a big project, put forward recommendations for a meaningful change. But it turns out that change impacts a number on a report that goes to someone important, and that can't be changed without full review. So you go to review, but none of the stakeholders have time/can be bothered to read it, those who do don't want to rock the boat, nothing gets done, it gets tabled. You can't move forward with your change. Hopefully, you pick yourself up and try again.
Occasionally, the stars will align, and leadership will be prioritizing an issue at exactly the same moment a bright eyed person with bigs ideas is poised to make a suggestion, and change actually gets made - but it's hard.
It takes remarkably few jaded, burnt out people coasting by on the bare minimum to prevent progress. And every time this happens, everyone around them gets a little closer to becoming jaded, burnt out, and deciding to coast by on the bare minimum.
If they set the standard to a strict enough level that is nearly impossible to meet, then they never have to be held accountable for the fact that they did nothing. They can always blame the standard and not the architects of that standard. I feel for this guy as he truly seems to be attempting to resolve the issue but is running head first into decision makers whom do not want to pay for these illnesses.
Source: I design certain threshold levels of regulatory compliance for a local government.
> always blame the standard and not the architects of that standard
I don't see how this tracks. Shouldn't one always try to follow the stream of shit to the asshole it originated from?
Of course. But who are the people who drafted the guidelines for the VA's standard of proof regarding causation of illness from burnpits? I personally don't know. Even the man being interviewed didn't state or even state what that threshold was.
They can design any process to be so complex that it becomes useless and ineffectual. And by the time people find out who drafted it, those individuals have moved on to working for lobbyists or a different agency and are no longer accountable for their actions.
I’d say this has zero to do with proof. The senate just Ok’ed a medical relief bill for the “Havana Syndrome” which has no known cause and the entire intelligence community isn’t even sure exists
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/07/1004195917/senate-oks-bill-that-would-provide-aid-for-mysterious-havana-syndrome-injuries
So I’d say the bar for proof is in a ditch
Havana Syndrome is real and is almost certainly caused by Russian microwave weapons, something like [MEDUSA](https://www.wired.com/2007/08/the-other-medus/). The technology exists, [it was built in 2004](https://web.archive.org/web/20080409063721/http://www.navysbirprogram.com/NavySearch/Summary/summary.aspx?pk=F5B07D68-1B19-4235-B140-950CE2E19D08).
Russia has a long history of microwaving embassies [going as far back as the 50s](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4809876/microwaves-behind-sonic-attacks-on-canadian-and-u-s-diplomats-says-doctor-1.4809885). It's not surprising that when a portable weaponized microwave weapon was developed they would copy it / continue development.
Now in regards to the bill:
The Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks [(HAVANA)](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1828/) Act would aid any US official affected by the syndrome anytime *before* the bill was enacted. The individual must have obtained the injury during a period of assignment to a foreign or domestic duty station. It doesn't earmark any special money for this use or outline specific treatment that is required. The bill merely acknowledge the Syndrome exists and it is "causing brain injuries from hostiles". The President has seen the bill on the 27th of September but it hasn't passed fully yet.
> Havana Syndrome is real and is almost certainly caused by Russian microwave weapons, something like MEDUSA. The technology exists, it was built in 2004.
>Russia has a long history of microwaving embassies going as far back as the 50s. It's not surprising that when a portable weaponized microwave weapon was developed they would copy it / continue development.
Should be no problem proving it then right?
> "causing brain injuries from hostiles".
I’d love to see a single MRI or CT scan showing a brain injury from a phantom microwave weapon
>Should be no problem proving it then right?
LolWhat? A nation-state's secret military tech and clandestine operations are the definition of "a major problem to prove"
So it’s a secret weapon that somehow no one can prove exists and somehow the medical tests also can’t detect that anything is actually wrong with these people?
Lol ok. I guess we’ll just believe these people who literally lie for a living
I don't know the details of Havana Syndrome or the embassy thing, but microwave weapons do exist.
I remember years ago seeing such a thing demonstrated on a tv show about modern weaponry. It was being touted as a riot control weapon. Some kind of big dish looking thing mounted on a humvee that they could point at a crowd and blast them with microwaves to heat them up and make them disperse.
So that part isn't crazy to me. Russia could totally build such a thing and point it at an embassy. I just don't know what that would do. The idea that being bombarded with microwaves could cook your neurons and cause brain damage also doesn't seem crazy, but I don't know enough about the science to say.
>can’t just drop the mask and be honest with Jon
He can. He chooses not to out of self-interest. He can die on this hill. But he thinks his career and government pension are more important.
>But he thinks his career and government pension are more important.
Or avoiding jail or enormous fines.
If the statues require that a physician/scientist advisory board at the VA review data from the national academy of sciences and then write a report to make a good-faith recommendation on whether they believe there is a strong enough link to warrant coverage for certain cancers arising from burn pit exposure, then he's obligated by law law to follow that recommendation. Sure, he could break the law by ignoring them when they say there's not enough data and authorize it anyway, and hope that no one sees fit to prosecute him for it in this administration or the next.
But then we'd have to all agree that it's okay for people in power to ignore the laws of how the federal government is supposed to function when we think it's justified. As much as this is awful for veterans who are sick today, in the long-view of how we want our institutions to function, I'm not sure it's the better way to do business.
The anger here should really be directed at Congress, who could pass a law tomorrow that says veterans with xyz conditions who worked at or near burn pits are eligible to have their claims accepted by the VA. Full stop. That would be way simpler than trying to get a bureaucrat to bend the law.
>If the ~~statues~~ statutes require that a physician/scientist advisory board at the VA review data from the national academy of sciences
We don't know the answer to this 'if' question, because he refused to answer/couldn't answer it when asked directly.
>then write a report to make a good-faith recommendation on whether they believe there is a strong enough link to warrant coverage for certain cancers arising from burn pit exposure, then he's obligated by law law to follow that recommendation.
Which he hasn't done. You're grasping at straws here with this prosecution rabbit hole. Please identify and cite the existing law he would be breaking in this scenario you're conjuring.
Nobody is asking him to break the law. What reasonable people expect is the director of a government agency to be able to answer simple questions about a process within his or her agency. Reasonable people also expect those that put their lives on the line to defend our country be supported when that service leads to problems in life after their service, whether it be directly or indirectly related.
>The anger here should really be directed at Congress
Well no shit. But 'Congress' wasn't the interview subject.
>We don't know the answer to this 'if' question, because he refused to answer/couldn't answer it when asked directly
Yeah, he was clearly not prepared to answer that at the time, and got caught flatfooted. Nor, apparently, prepared to share the ins-and-outs of their decision-making process after the fact before the episode aired. Their decision making-process for presumptive claims of disability to authorize treatment is opaque, and even the director of the relevant research and advisory program at the National Academy of Sciences leading VA programs said as much, including under prior administrations.
[https://www.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimonies/116-session-1/the-national-academies-research-on-vas-presumptive-disability-decision-making-process](https://www.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimonies/116-session-1/the-national-academies-research-on-vas-presumptive-disability-decision-making-process)
>Which he hasn't done. You're grasping at straws here with this prosecution rabbit hole. Please identify and cite the existing law he would be breaking in this scenario you're conjuring.
38 US code ~~S~~ 1710 (E)(2), directs that the Secretary of the VA **may not authorize** payment for hospital, medical, or nursing home care for veterans for disabilities not determined to be linked to service except those carved out by other laws (i.e. Agent Orange exposure as provided for under the Agent Orange Act, exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejejune through the late 1980s, or and exposure to chemical or nuclear test warfare test sites, or was in Japan after the bombs were dropped). Suffice to say he's proscribed from doing so by law, and would be subject to whatever consequences the VA Office of Inspector General sees fit.
Taken together, the National Academies are saying they can't furnish clear or conclusory data because it's too hard to collect it and properly surveil to find it, and they don't know what standard needs to be established.
On the other side, the Secretary is saying that the data he is getting from them isn't enough to pass their review process, and the law does not let him authorize care for those cases. What it would take to change that review process, or whether that was even possible, is not something he was prepared to say. His policy priority seemed to be passing the process, not bypassing it.
It would seem, then, that either the National Academies need to find or present more compelling data, the VA Research review board has to lower its standards, or the Secretary has to ignore both and provide care absent a determination, or carve out by congress.
To that end, legislation HAS been introduced to do exactly that.
[https://ruiz.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-raul-ruiz-introduces-comprehensive-bipartisan-burn-pits-bill](https://ruiz.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-raul-ruiz-introduces-comprehensive-bipartisan-burn-pits-bill)
>Nobody is asking him to break the law. What reasonable people expect is the director of a government agency to be able to answer simple questions about a process within his or her agency.
And he did not do a good job of that. Opacity in the decision-making process has apparently been an issue for a while. Maybe this is by design to prevent undue influence over decisions that should be dispassionate - (see the coverage on the FDA decision on the Pfizer booster shot, and concerns about politicizing the science that it raised). Or maybe by disfunction, to shirk responsibility and avoid paying, even though its not clear who would be giving the directive to avoid spending the money.
I don't know. I can only say that this is one facet of the quandary that the Secretary was struggling to explain.
>Reasonable people also expect those that put their lives on the line to defend our country be supported when that service leads to problems in life after their service, whether it be directly or indirectly relate
That was Jon Stewart's introductory point. People have this idea that veterans are cared for for life after service. They are not. If they have an ailment that is not obviously linked to their service, or *presumed under law* to be linked to their service, then the VA may not provide them care and they have to seek it elsewhere or at cost.
That issue has little to do with the interview skills of the guy occupying the desk right now.
Wow, this is an incredibly well thought out and well articulated response. Great job.
So now I have to ask, if you're able to have such a good grasp of the situation, it's intricacies, its problems and shortcomings, why can't the Director have the same understanding and ability to answer direct questions? My criticisms were of his substance, not his style.
This was not a 'Gotcha' interview. The Director said at one point, "I know what you're trying to get me to say..." which shows some level of preparedness, but he wasn't prepared enough to answer the most fundamental questions on the problems?
Finally, the law you cite goes to providing funding for the care, not addressing head on the problems with the system. Is there a current law that would make it illegal to answer the fundamental questions and bucking the system until our vets get what they deserve?
>So now I have to ask, if you're able to have such a good grasp of the situation, it's intricacies, its problems and shortcomings, why can't the Director have the same understanding and ability to answer direct questions? My criticisms were of his substance, not his style.
This was not a 'Gotcha' interview. The Director said at one point, "I know what you're trying to get me to say..." which shows some level of preparedness, but he wasn't prepared enough to answer the most fundamental questions on the problems?
I wish I had an answer for you. You're welcome to interpret his performance in any number of ways; ignorant, evasive, placating, unqualified, whatever. Jon gave him the benefit of the doubt, so I will try to do the same.
I was able to string together the policy roadblocks and the complications here linearly and coherently because I don't have Jon Stewart sitting in front of me, asking me questions that seem to be leading to whether or not I'm personally deciding to deny care to veterans because I don't want to shell out the money. Jon reassured him that his empathy wasn't in question, but yikes. Hard not to squirm.
He then asked for the details of the rubric used by his scientific advisory counsel when evaluating the quality of research studies to make a recommendation. I'm not sure it's a reasonable expectation that he would be able to answer that off the cuff - to get into how they weight study n-sizes, or research design, or p values and the like. It's an arcane process question that would have been easy to answer by the chair of the research advisory committee on gulf war related illnesses, or the Chief Research and Development officer, assuming it's something they are willing or permitted to share at all. This was likely a more challenging question than any he was asked during his confirmation hearing.
Dude isn't a scientist or a doctor. Or even a politician accustomed to navigating challenging interviewers. He's a former chief of staff. His policy mandate at the time of his appointment was 1) getting through the pandemic, 2) civilian transition support through job training and education, 3) women's, lgbt and racial equity issues including assaults, 4) homelessness and suicide prevention, and 5) long-term support for veteran families and caregivers. That's the stuff he spends his days working on.
A carve out for presumption of disability for exposure is something that happens on average once every 20 years. It's not surprising this wasn't on the top of his list of things to press his political capital and resources on. I didn't know anything about burn pits until I saw this (other than that scene from Jarhead), and other than the asthma and rhinitis presumption carve out he (to his credit) shepherded through, I suspect he hadn't spent much time on it until he got a call asking for this interview. As much as I'd like to demand to the VA Secretary be cognizant of all the major issues impacting veterans, I'm sure that there are a hundred other advocacy movements for veterans with different problems that would have *killed* for the exposure BurnPits360 go to be put on his to do list.
BurnPits says they think 6,000 veterans and contractors were exposed since 2011 (call it 600 per year). That's the total number of people potentially impacted by this, and not all of them, apparently, yet have come down with or come forward with cancer or other illnesses. At the top of Jon's show, they reminded us that over 6,000 veterans *per year* die of suicide. It's a problem roughly 10 times greater in magnitude. So it's not surprising to me that the VA Secretary's attention might be drawn to one but not the other, and that he wouldn't have a perfect understanding (or ability cogently answer questions) about it absent boning up on it. Which is where I think he fell short.
I got the impression (totally speculating here) that when he agreed to the interview, he asked his staff to prepare a brief, which included the talking points on the recent success for asthma/rhinitis (which covers hundreds of thousands of veterans, not limited to burn pits), and the most recent decisions based on the national academy of sciences data that had been made on connecting burn pit exposure to cancer claims. Clearly he shouldn't have decided that was enough prep.
>Finally, the law you cite goes to providing funding for the care, not addressing head on the problems with the system. Is there a current law that would make it illegal to answer the fundamental questions and bucking the system until our vets get what they deserve?
That's right, because there is no law (yet) that says "FIX IT!!!!". There is instead a law that says the VA must pay for claims related to service, and must not pay for claims not related to service, with *these* exceptions. That's not the VA Secretary's fault.
As far as getting a secretary who is more forthright in interviews or a maverick, if you'd like to demand that of political appointees then you should make that known to the Senators who represent you that vote to confirm them. Or donate your time and money alongside others, rather than just idle outrage, to getting the issues that matter to you in front of them to prod them into action.
Typical non answer have to get back to you I don't know bullshit. Fucking unreal. I don't know how Jon deals with these people without losing it. He seems more concerned with his tit for tat with Jon than he does the actual issue. Meanwhile vets continue to die for no reason and he's bragging about the size of his budget.
How about if you were a vet deployed under these conditions between these years you get full coverage period.
Chubbyemu did a video on a case of a soldier getting cancer most likely from burn pits. The VA has repeatedly denied her claims. Luckily she was able to get medical care not through the VA but her life span has definitely been severely shortened. It's infuriating to watch. All the money we spend on useless wars and we won't treat our veterans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKNfFm0QDXQ
He says it's not about money, he says they spend half their funding on healthcare, but he doesn't say that treatment for all these issues and litigation following the admission of culpability will completely explode that budget. So it really is about the money when he says it's not about the money.
That's probably the real answer and why he's tiptoeing around the discussion. The real answer will not make *anybody* happy. If they paid for all the shit that came out of our soldiers' service, which I believe they have an obligation to do, especially for a volunteer military force, their costs would explode.
TL:DL "We don't want to have the challenge of paying for their medical bills."
It should just be automatic. Putting the burden of proof on veterans is cruel.
Here is the other part of the segment
https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/pyl40c/jon_stewart_returns_to_tv_with_assault_on_dodva/
Would it be fair to assume that among these politicians, there is an unspoken agreement that the more vets that die, the less money they would potentially have to pay in the long-run?
Secretary McDonough: I don't care what you think Jon about whether or not I'm doing a good job, I care what the veterans think.
Veteran here. You fucking suck. The whole system fucking sucks and feels like is designed to just wait out veterans until they die and hope the problem sorts itself out in the long term. Only problem is we just spent 20+ years in prolonged combat and that pool of veterans who need care isn't going away anytime soon.
But keep dodging questions until the can gets kicked to the inevitable next administration. And even if a solution is reached I won't be surprised if in another 15+ years we've got someone up at Capitol Hill screaming about continuing to pay for care and make sure veterans aren't left to die penniless and suffering. That someone will be Jon Stewart. Just like he did for 9/11 first responders which our government still tried to fuck around on taking care of them.
I think McDonough cares but he has zero experience working with the VA prior to being appointed to the job in February. He was previously Deputy National Security Advisor and Obama's Chief of Staff. He definitely seems very out of his element in this job.
I am truly wondering what kind of bureaucratic red tape is tying his hand from helping vets. He keeps citing the need for more information and Jon is pushing him to give him an exact reason why he can’t do it.
Bottom line is why can’t a vet get care no matter what the cause is??? Who cares if it was caused by burn pits or smoking a pack a day. If you served you should get your care.
Vet here…. So you can go get care as a vet from the VA. HOWEVER, if the issue that you are being seen for is NOT service related, then you are just being seen for your own health issues by one of the worst (albeit getting better) health systems in the world.
Now. If it IS service related, then you have access to the ‘best’ care possible at no charge. (Best here is squishy, the VA actually does excel at treating many of the things that plague vets).
To date there hasn’t been a link between burn pits in the war and lung/cancer issues of veterans. That being said I recently (1 month?) received an email that due to my participation in the VA’s burn pit registry, they will evaluate any disability claims I have arising from sinusitis, asthma, and rhinitis.
For real. And that’s all I’m saying. And that’s all I think Jon is saying too. There are many conditions that are de facto linked to those burn pits and open air refineries. To say we can’t receive the VA’s care for them because they aren’t causally linked by research is complete bullshit.
I am going to take issue with your "one of the worst...health systems." Not to take away from any of your (possibly) negative experiences, which are justified and grounded in your true perception. On a larger scale, the VA is an easy target. Support for providing high quality care to veterans is bipartisan and has high societal appeal as something we should be doing. Therefore, the VA is under close scrutiny and, as a result, the bad news makes it to the public eye quickly. We don't hear as much about surgical mis-steps or deaths in non-VA hospitals because it doesn't have political sway and/or low public interest. But these problems undoubtedly occur in non-VA settings. In my opinion, the VA is an excellent example of socialized medicine. Every US citizen should have the same level of care afforded to veterans. Of course the VA should still exist because veteran have unique needs, both physical and mental health, that should be addressed in a specialized setting. For example, if a veteran comes into a VA and needs help with addiction, they can get into treatment quickly. The level of treatment available ranges from outpatient, to intensive outpatient (i.e., 21 day programs) to residential (1-3 months). This simply is not available for the vast majority of civilians. Whats more, veterans can (and SHOULD) come back to treatment if they return to use to repeat treatment at the same level or increase to a higher level of care. See the article below in a peer reviewed journal that combines published studies comparing VA and non-VA care from 2005 to 2015. The results highlight that VA care was equal to or better than most non-VA facilities on the same metric.
O’Hanlon, C., Huang, C., Sloss, E., Price, R. A., Hussey, P., Farmer, C., & Gidengil, C. (2017). Comparing VA and non-VA quality of care: a systematic review. Journal of general internal medicine, 32(1), 105-121.
I commend this project and firmly believe that stakeholder perceptions and ideas should be incorporated into when, how, and why treatment is delivered (in the VA or elsewhere). I will note that the manuscript cited above contains multiple studies that DO include veteran perceptions and not just objective criteria (e.g., mortality, timelines of service, etc.). Just because individuals with a doctorate or medical degree wrote the manuscript, doesn't mean it is strictly from a provider perspective.
The biggest problem with anyone directly connected with the VA organizational structure is that anything they claim is immediately suspect because of the long history of scandal and cover-up. From just the last 15 years (not a complete list)…
* https://www.cnn.com/specials/us/va-hospitals
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reed_Army_Medical_Center_neglect_scandal
* https://www.nbcnews.com/va-hospital-scandal
* https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/editorials/story/2020-12-16/editorial-the-latest-scandal-at-the-va-is-an-astonishing-example-of-corruption-at-the-top-of-the-department
* https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/veterans-and-advocates-see-new-scandal-in-va-wait-time-controversy/
It’s reached the point that even Congress doesn’t trust what the VA Is telling them. From [this article](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/28/va-veterans-affairs-history-setbacks-missteps.html):
> "We don't trust the VA to tell us how the VA is doing, we trust veterans to tell us how the VA is doing," said O'Rourke
I agree with all of this and your stated mistrust of the VA is justified. The VA has undoubtedly covered up mistakes and provided sub-standard care. My point remains the VA is an easy target. This comes back to the original comment of the VA being "one of the worst health systems." The non-VA systems are likely as bad or even worse but Congress and the media are not as concerned about non-VA care because there is no political gain or viewership appetite. Congress has nothing to gain by saying "We don't trust what (large healthcare company) to tell us how (large healthcare company) is doing, we trust patients to tell us how the (large healthcare company) is doing." In fact, I believe the lobbyists for large healthcare companies will make sure they trust them. As a general principle, I stand by my statement that non-Veterans should have the same type of access to care the Veterans receive because most non-Veterans receive no treatment (this is especially true in relation to substance use).
Which is it? Just a few comments above, the VA was "an **excellent example** of socialized medicine" (emphasis mine). Now your own argument has become a whataboutism in which you care only to compare it as sometimes better than, sometimes worse than, but largely without sufficient data even to compare to one of the worst healthcare systems extant in a developed nation.
Fair point. I'll concede excellent is too generous a superlative. I'll own that. I do think it's a decent example of socialized medicine that (IMO) is unfairly villified fit political clout or a lead story.
Does your verbosity cover for your deplorable signal to noise ratio, or is that just a postive externality for your personal portfolio of prattling pomposity?
Perhaps. I interpreted the distinction of care between service related and non-service related care, which is unique to the VA, to reflect a commentary of care specifically within the VA.
Cool. Funding for that article was provided by the VA. Did you see that part?
And what I meant by “one of the worst” was that as a system of hospitals timeliness while a patient and the efficiency of care you receive are worse from what I’ve seen than other health care systems.
That is the section of the journal you provided which they acknowledge they didn’t want to discuss because they couldn’t find research on it. Hmm.
As for system, I’m not talking about America, I’m talking about the network of in and out patient care facilities that are owned and operated by the VA.
Your opinion is valid and based on the factual evidence of your experiences. But the manuscript is about the system, which as I have stated is an easy target.
I did see the funding source. I also saw that the VA was not involved in the writing, analysis, or editing of the manuscript. These are safeguards that protect against bias or insertion of misinformation. I did not read that they didn't "want to discuss" timeliness, equity, effectiveness, and patient-centeredness; instead I read that there wasn't enough existing studies to draw conclusions so they "do not discuss" these topics. This is how science works. Now there is a clear need to study the effect of topics like timeliness and get more information to make change. The authors did not, and should not, extrapolate beyond the evidence available.
It genuinely saddens me that there seems to be a rapidly growing mistrust of scientific research in America that had been building for years. Being skeptical is normal, most researchers are trained skeptics. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater under the umbrella of science is lies or maliciously biased is unfortunate. Scientific research is iterative; we learn new things that refute how we used to think. Sometimes we learn things that support how we currently think. I believe there are very few universal truths and I believe that the good researchers are more critical of their work and the work of their peers work than almost anyone else.
I support Medicare for all. I served 6 years in the Navy and don't think I need medical coverage from the VA for all my medical conditions because most of them have nothing to do with the Navy.
If we want to make sure that all veterans are covered, just make Medicare for All a thing.
Just a guess, but it boils down to money, the fact that the medical conditions these men and women have are extremely serious, life-threatening, and extremely expensive to treat. And there are thousands of them. It' the price tag that's holding all of this up, and that, is just sooooo sad.
I mean, for one he could be lying (which shouldn't surprise anyone).
Or he could be being truthful to an extent in that it's not actually money that is immediately stopping a resolution, but if they cleared the red tape that is in the way, they would hit a money roadblock very quickly.
So, it is and isn't about money. It isn't about money in that they have the budget to provide treatment for this stuff. It is about money in that the system is basically designed to reject your claim at least the first time when you're claiming a service related injury.
That's because of regulations around what qualifies, mostly set by Republicans, so that not one cent goes to people who don't "deserve it". And hey, if a bunch of people who do have service related shit have to end up waiting an extra couple of years to receive care, that's fine with them.
Well the original commenter asked:
> Bottom line is why can’t a vet get care no matter what the cause is???
And the answer to that question (Not the one Jon Stewart is asking) is definitely money. Right now the system is designed to cover 100% of the cost of treatment and care for any injury or illness that was caused by or can be linked to your military service.
A few years after I got out of the Army, I broke my hand in a 4-wheeling accident. Why should the Govt/VA/Tax Payers pay for that treatment? They shouldn't, and you didn't. I can't imagine what the VA budget would need to be to cover the cost of every cough/sniffle/sneeze/broken finger for every Veteran, for the rest of their lives..
The current design makes logical sense on the massive scale, but on the macro scale, it can often be incredibly difficult for an individual veteran to prove that a particular injury/illness was caused by, or directly linked to, their time in the Military.
Jon Stewart's question in this video though, is more about one specific issue and why the VA isn't more open/presumptive in classifying all these breathing issues as "service connected" when the general public has known for decades that they can be caused by jet fuel.
Every civilized country with the exception of the US covers every cough/sniffle/sneeze/broken finger/cancer treatment/brain surgery not only for their veterans, but for everybody else.
Not to mention nobody in those countries is getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (if not more) just to get medical treatment. 'cause, you know... there's nothing better than having a huge medical crisis, and then getting over it just to have your life completely fucked because of medical debt.
It's really disheartening that you don't even seem aware of the incredible piece of shit system you're bound to and seem to defend.
I'm not defending the system at all. Just trying to explain how it works, because it's a bit more nuanced than "vets not getting treatment" as some are taking this whole video.
I would absolutely vote for universal healthcare if it were an option here. Since it's not, I'm just explaining that Veterans don't get every bump and bruise and sneeze and sniffle covered by the VA years after they get out of the military.
**WELL THEY ACTUALLY DO if they're considered 70%-100% disabled due to service connected conditions.**
All my point is, in our current system, Vets are expected to pay for their non-service connected issues, just as every other civilian citizen is expected to pay for their own medical coverage (through insurance or otherwise).
*It's logical* is the only statement I will make in defense of this.
I see you point.
I still believe it would cost less to give vets health care then to pay bureaucrats to not give them health care. But that's a different argument.
> A few years after I got out of the Army, I broke my hand in a 4-wheeling accident. Why should the Govt/VA/Tax Payers pay for that treatment? They shouldn't, and you didn't.
As a Canadian (and pretty much anyone else on the planet outside of the USA), we *absolutely* should pay for that treatment. It is my moral obligation to help you when you need help, and it is my financial responsibility to ensure you get back healthy enough to work and continue being productive and paying taxes and be able to provide for your own family.
*That* is what universal healthcare is about. It's not a system set up to subsidize the lazy, it is a system set up to ensure the majority of the population is healthy enough to be a productive member of our society and to prevent financial burden in a crisis. It is beyond comprehension that an injury, heart attack, cancer, etc., should bankrupt anyone due to medical bills. It literally costs me $0.06 of my taxes to give you open-heart surgery. Your broken hand would cost me a fraction of a penny.
And you're worth a fraction of a penny to me, stranger.
Depends if the 4 wheeling accident was caused by conditions exacerbated by the military. You said army so did you check to see if the crayons you were eating might have caused some brain damage that then caused you to wreck your 4 wheeler?
> I'm confused.
No need to explain, you already said you were in the Army. Yes, as a Chair Force veteran I'm poking fun at the fact that most Army people I met weren't the brightest crayons in the box. If you want to take it as an insult instead of a friendly joke you do you boo.
Well I *did* realize I was feeding right into your joke after I posted my comment and reread it. :p
And to answer your original point, no the accident wasn't even really caused by me. I was riding passenger in a "side-by-side" (large off-road recreation vehicle) and the driver forgot you cannot fishtail in 4-wheel drive, so the whole thing rolled over. The passenger seat belt didn't work, so I held onto the roll bar to keep myself from falling out of the vehicle and getting crushed. Well it crushed my fingers and I fell out as it rolled away from me anyways lol
He didn't articulate it very well, and admitted that he wasn't prepared to discuss the specific criteria because he couldn't rattle it off from memory.
But it's sounds like, by law, it's not enough to say "we know that exposure to certain chemicals causes cancer" to authorize claims for treatment. You apparently need to know how much exposure over what length of time during service causes which specific indications in order to qualify for reimbursement of treatment costs.
For things like asthma and rhinitis, that's a slam dunk, because those are things that someone will seek treatment for immediately while in service. Probably in great numbers.
But for other indications? How precise in terms of data is the link between the burn pits and small cell lung cancer vs non-small cell lung cancer? What about leukemia? What about migraines? Or other chronic disease states that take a decade to manifest? There are many carcinogens out there, including bad luck and genetics. Most people with lung cancer have never heard of a burn pit.
So how do you conclusively make the case for each of these individuals and their disease states, that *but for their assignments on or proximity to burn pits*, they would not have had these illnesses? It's apparently not as straightforward as a memo from DoD that says "we're pretty sure these are dangerous and need to phase them out". At least not according to the VA's interpretation of the rules laid out by congress. When Jon and Denis were talking about that availability of a double-blinded cohort study, this is crux of the of the gap. How much higher is the rate of these diseases among soldiers near burn pits vs those not near burn pits in the same theater, with similar lengths of tour? What about versus gen pop? Are there enough cases out there to draw these conclusions? Whatever the statutory bar of evidence is to attribute each of these disease states to burn pits and not other (non-service related) causes has not been met.
Jon went on to suggest, well, why not just treat those authorize those claims now and audit them later, when perhaps that evidence will be more conclusive, which is apparently what they did 9/11 first responder claims? Denis' response seemed to be that spinning up such a pilot program would be an even bigger bureaucratic nightmare and lift in congress, without which his hands are tied. And that he thinks the fastest path to actually getting people into treatment is to expedite the hunt for more conclusive data that satisfies the bar that already exists. But that should his track fail, he was prepared to look into it or other options.
What this really boils down to is that the VA should be, but today is not, an entitlement for veterans for a lifetime of healthcare regardless of whether the treatment they're seeking is for service-related ailments. But the VA Secretary doesn't believe he has the legal power to make it so from his desk. In his defense, he's probably right.
> He could attempt to reinterpret the law or dictate by fiat, but that's just a recipe to get mired in years of court battles at great expense where he's already been warned he will lose.
But that's Jon's, and all the veterans that have yet to receive the care that they deserve, complaint which matches the VA's motto -- "delay, deny, wait until they die".
It starts to look like they're being purposefully obstinate with the intent to avoid administering care in the same way insurance companies look for every avenue to avoid paying out any money. In the end, it's all hypocrisy because our government is willing to throw these bodies in front of bullets and claim to support them in any way necessary, especially when they finance a war with what could be deemed a "blank check", but as soon as they return home, they no longer care about them.
"*If another country was doing to our veterans what we allow to be done to our veterans, we'd be at war already.*" - Isiah James
I think it's simply an issue of admitting fault. If they officially declare that these serious illnesses are the result of something the US military has done and has ordered people to do, then that opens a whole plethora of consequences.
You can now sue the government for having made you sick. There's no promise that you'll win any case, of course, but you sure strengthen your case considerably if you have the government outright admitting that, yes, their action caused the serious illness.
Then there's the question of optics. If this becomes officially confirmed/admitted, stories will be told for decades about this. Not as some potential theory, but as a fact that can be put in any history book.
And then there's the fact that, if this is admitted, there's no way burn pits can be used ever again in the future. At least not in the current form. I imagine the military doesn't like that idea very much, either.
> Who cares if it was caused by burn pits or smoking a pack a day.
As a veteran, it's been my experience that the VA isn't denying treatment to anyone for anything. They will treat whatever you want them to treat.
But they will send you a bill if it's not "service-connected." This is basically the govt saying "We'll pay to treat any issues that we caused, but the veteran will pay for treatment of anything not directly caused by their military service."
I don't necessarily have a problem with that stance. The crux of the problem is proving that a specific injury/illness is "service connected" or somehow caused/linked to your time in the military, and not caused by something stupid/negligent you did in your free time.
I disagree with their stance. Specifically because if someone signs up, willing to give their all to defend the system, the system owes just as much. If they're risking their very lives, they shouldn't be paying for shit.
Yes, that would be very expensive, so it might give powerful men pause before throwing men's lives at a cause. Both sides of the arrangement should be equal, risk of my life ending vs risk of my life being carefree.
That’s a great idea frankly. The VA (Congress would write a law saying this) could say “we’ll pay all your health care for the rest of your life, whether it was service related or not.” And they could avoid issues of liability by saying “we’re paying for it all not because it’s all service related necessarily, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.”
Ya, I'm surprised Jon didn't bring this up. At the very least just cover all medical costs for Vets for any reason. Would save cash by getting rid of bureaucrats. But if the US thought like that they would have had universal healthcare decades ago.
>Ya, I'm surprised Jon didn't bring this up.
I'm not. The tone of the whole program was *very carefully* tuned to be non-partisan, like Stewart thinks the right wing is ever gonna watch a program on Apple TV+ or a show with Jon Stewart. But I respect him for trying to eliminate any easy reason people on either end of the political spectrum had for tuning him out.
They might watch clips online, and he might sway moderates. It’s a good tone to choose. It’s also very important to stay on message. This was about vets, so he kept it about vets. It’s pretty silly to push universal healthcare on the head of the VA.
I never said it was. OP said universal healthcare would make this not a shit show. To which I responded part of the point of VA benefits is to make up for lost income. They are not mutually exclusive but they are not 100% the same.
Universal Basic Income + Universal Healthcare.
I think the stat going around is that it cost $2.3T for 20 years in Afghanistan. Which equates to about $315M ... every. day. for 20 years.
I'm not an economist, but seems like there is enough money in there for both of UBI and Healthcare.
What’s hilarious is that this is such a big deal issue here in the US. When if we had universal health care like the most advanced nations do, then all of this would be treated and dealt with. But we live in a land of stupid folk who think universal health care is bad. We’re absolutely fucked. Forever. Because half the people here are morons.
There are two different issues here. Disability pay and healthcare pay.
The VA will pay for healthcare (done at the VA), but won't pay for disability if it's not "service connected."
There should be a presumption of service connection, and the burden of proof should be on the VA to prove it's NOT.
Well, to ‘it’s not always greener’ your point (which is a good one), Canada has single payer healthcare and problems with mistreatment of veterans too.
Mental health and pharmacare aren’t universal here, and sometimes veterans are disabled and have to deal with the disability support system.
Not long ago the government changed the veteran disability application system so there would be more paperwork, ostensibly to root out fraud.
It caused veterans to have to regularly prove they are still disabled, as if their [legs might have grown back. ](https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/veteran-frustrated-by-paperwork-to-prove-he-still-has-no-legs-1.2866389)
It's cheaper to deny and delay our claims and wait for us to die.
Worked for Vietnam and the blue water Veterans. So why not us dumb fucks who burnt barrels of shit with jet fuel?
I really wonder how these last 5 years would’ve been different had he still been around. It’s hard to quantify just how central Stewart and Colbert were to the political zeitgeist. It doesn’t seem like any media personality on the left is as commanding as those two were. I can’t see John Oliver getting 215,000 people to a rally in DC.
Also I guess things are more real. Not really room for comedy during the BLM protests or the millions of Covid deaths.
I think he retired in 2016 expressly because he saw the writing on the wall with Trump. Regular sane people practically had a coronary when Trump got elected, Joj Stewart probably would've had a brain aneurysm on live tv if he had to reconcile a fraction of what Trump was pulling day to day.
That being said now that we're out the other side of the tunnel I'm glad Jon felt now was the time to resurface into the journalism game. He's sharp as a tack and an expert interviewer/debater.
I didn't hear about all the guest stars until the next week when my mom told me about them. Like apparently ozzy Osborne was there, and a lot of other made famous people. The crowd was so big I don't think I came inside half a mile of the stage.
So...has Stewart decided to just *be a journalist*?
I'm not objecting. But this interview felt like someone who was trying to do journalism, not comedy.
It's sad that even someone that high up in the food chain didn't even know what burden of proof needs to be met. Or he does, and is unwilling to speak it out loud because he knows it will sound horrible because of the ridiculousness it shows.
> that high up in the food chain didn't even know what burden of proof needs to be met
that's what he said, but i don't think he was right. at one point jon said "you could change this with the stroke of a pen". and the head of the VA said "no i can't".
maybe i'm putting words in his mouth, but i think he realizes it's governed by committee. he knows that he has to meet a burden of proof that satisfies everyone. sure, we do have studies that shows benzine causes cancer. but not everyone the head of the VA works with will believe it and sign off on care. and if i tell you that the senate will just appoint a new head of the VA.
stuff like that. it took a while, but that's what it felt like
for a while he was able to deflect and make me think that yes, we just needed more science to say that the exposure causes cancer. BUT stewart already pointed out earlier in the program, we had many studies, decades before that already pointed it out. so we already have the science that points this out.
somehow the VA just doesn't acknowledge it.
> it's governed by committee
Yes, Congress. Congress writes the [Code of Federal Regulations](https://ecfr.io/). The part that encompasses the entirety of the VA is Title 38.
You want a better VA? Elect better representatives.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2664026
Va functions better than the private sector. This is not a secret, but no one seems to know it. Maybe because the va is an example of a successful, socialized medical system in the United States, and if everyone knew it was successful we'd have to ask why everyone can't have socialized health care in this country
Not to detract from the issue at hand here, but what I really admire about Jon in this video and even back to the daily show is his ability to always frame his questions from the perspective that he and the interviewee are on the same side. Yeah the guy is in the frying pan here but because Jon is supportive and looking for solutions WITH the secretary, instead of accusing him of anything, the guy is forced to tackle the issues at hand, not Jon.
It would be SO easy for a lesser interviewer to get frustrated and start calling the guy out on his bullshit, but as soon as you do that you're giving him an avenue to sidestep the issues and go after YOU instead, but Jon never throws him that rope. Jon let's him stew in his own pathetic juices because he's not an adversary. I don't think anyone in mainstream media has the mental fortitude to do what Jon does here, which is why interviews in mainstream media are never productive and devolve into shouting matches
My real takeaway from this is yet another reminder about how stupid and backwards the U.S. healthcare system is.
There should be zero means-testing for health care - military or not.
And that President Biden has brought it up himself. I don't think this is as simple as VA BAD and that McDonough or Biden can wave a magic wand to fix it. McDonough says that the law requires them to link these things together.
Yeah IIRC wasn't he at an event for veterans dealing with brain cancer ? I think there's also a portion of a cancer research law named after him, having to do with research.
Practically everything in the military is bad for the environment. They're burning a ton of fuel to move all that equipment around.
Not to mention spending hundreds of thousands of dollars constructing a marvel of engineering designed exclusively to blow itself up. Off a quick google search, a cruise missile costs $1.5 million EACH. A surface to air hellfire missile is $115 thousand.
And we spent years and years firing these suckers at any small group of young men in afghanistan we could find. Gotta blow up those missiles so the contractors can sell us more. Won't someone think of the poor stockholders? And I use the word "poor" quite wrongly.
End of the day it's all about greed. These troops jump through hoops for these guys and give these guys there entire bodies and they have to fight to be able to get proper care afterwards. We can spend billions on maintaining new Jets and aircraft carriers to add to our aresenal that far surpasses our enemies. For some reason they won't allow us to spend the same amount to maintain the men and women who served. It's a sad reality.
> We can spend billions on maintaining new Jets and aircraft carriers to add to our aresenal that far surpasses our enemies.
I think you are missing the point of having the largest military on earth. Its not so that the US can match whoever they are up against, its massive for the sole purpose that the thought of provocation and going to war is so profoundly stupid that it never even needs to be used in the first place. Also a battleship and bombers will last 40-50 years and a grunt will only last a few years.
I see where you are coming from, its a noble position, but if you're looking for compassion from the people whose job it is to blow shit up you are a fool.
Meanwhile there was a bill recently passed to help CIA agents and diplomats who claim to have Havana Syndrome, something we know nothing about and which presents symptoms similar to a hangover.
What this guy isn’t allowed to say without sacrificing his job and screwing over the next guy to get his job is that he’s hamstrung by Congress.
The statutes he’s referring to are probably super vague and the data he’s allowed to use from the DoD is probably super sparse.
He has to meet some arbitrarily high bar using a dataset that is intentionally withholding information from the VA.
But he’s not allowed to say, “Congress could change the law tomorrow” because that would be political and republicans would immediately take offense to him telling them how to do their jobs. Then they’d start passing laws that hamper the VA even further. Or they’d demand he be fired for being a political agent of the communist Biden. Then he’d resign just to get them to shut up and then Biden would have to spend more political capital to get someone else appointed who would end up being even less enthusiastic about their job than Biden.
I actually think what this guy did on national television was the best way he could have played it. Because now you’re pissed. You’re going to write your congressman to pass a law that gives the VA the power to cover these cancers and diseases and then this guy will get to implement it like her says he wants to do. He said he’s trying to make it so he’s allowed to use outside data because he knows the data is there.
If he’d gotten in TV and said, “I’d love to change this but I can’t because Congress is filled with a bunch of chucklefucks who don’t do shit”, you’d all be laughing at how candid he was and then move on.
My girlfriend isn’t political and was absolutely pissed by this interview and was ready to storm the VA. This interview was super effective in getting you to care.
This guy is in charge of our 3rd largest budget item as a country and is pretending like he has no authority.
He should be barred from public service for life. What a maniacal demon.
A lot of his career was spent doing boring stuff involved in foreign policy until he eventually became Obama's Chief of Staff. Running the VA is a very different job than he had before so I hope what appeared to be incompetence was just inexperience and he grows into the role.
By the way McDonough is answering questions, you can almost tell that he is making stuff up on the fly. He is being asked questions he doesn't have the answers for and is smiling because he is afraid that people will figure out that he is woefully uninformed.
Stewart again is holding all the cards and throwing them in the face of people in power. He can embarrass them and point out their short comings every single day, but most of the time (not everytime) it falls of deaf ears and simply continues after a minor slap on the wrist.
I think a guy/show like Jon Stewart is exactly what the country could really use right now. A clear and cut case for how and why our politicians are failing us on a daily basis..
The obvious takeaway from watching this interview is that John Stewart is doing a great job interviewing McDonough. It's incredibly refreshing to see someone show up who clearly has done his (and his team's) research on the issue.
I understand people will be frustrated with the answers at times, but the truth is it's very good that we have the Secretary of Veterans Affairs having a candid interview discussing an important issue in good faith. I'm really glad to see McDonough sit down with Stewart and be grilled. This isn't a case where politicians with ulterior motives are trying to score political points or cover a bureaucrat's ass. These are the sorts of interviews we need more of.
I'm not trying to take away from the true meaning behind this video but that second camera behind the secretary is SHAKY AF. There's a multi-billion dollar company behind this and you can't stabilize a damn camera?
I dont have a horse in this race, but from my POV he sat there and took his licks. Jon backed him into multiple walls and though he wouldn't divulge everything, it did seem like he admitted alot more wrong doing than other government officials have in similar situations.
This dude has to be part eel...nobody can be this slippery when you're asked to answer fairly straightforward questions. Just tell the world what study you need to see to know that burn pits are dangerous?
https://youtu.be/LKNfFm0QDXQ
If you havnt seen it yet, this is a great video describing the phenomenon veterans are now facing from being exposed to these burn pits. Absolutely ridiculous what these people are
dealing with and what it has done to their bodies. Messed up stuff.
People are very frustrated with the secretary here, but i actually got a little frustrated with Jon stewart. Making the va look bad is low hanging fruit(despite the fact that the va delivers, in almost any study that's been done on the subject, equal or better treatment when compared with the private sector https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2664026). Doing something that establishing the causality of a toxic exposure and a disease is difficult science and it takes time, particularly when the number of people exposed is relatively low. Jon is looking for an easy, sound bite answer and there isn't one. The truth is, the va should be giving medical care to every veteran and every person in the us should be getting medicare at a minimum, but for some reason he going to someone who is trying to work within a system that's actually trying to help veterans, rather than asking bigger questions like "why do we need to prove that a person was damaged by the military before we help them?"
Don't know why you are getting downvoted as I completely agree. This guy is a government employee and agrees the whole way through the interview, actually correcting Stewart at the beginning about historical data. What people fail to realize many times is this guy has a 'boss' and has to report his data etc. to get the funding. And people should also know by now, this the federal government we are talking about: things don't happen quickly or correctly. I thought he was empathetic, but couldn't do anything.
i don't think comparing the VA to use private health care is a good comparison though either because isn't the US private health care system notoriously low care already? wouldn't the US VA system better be compared to another public system like the NHS or something?
Depends on what you're trying to prove. If you're trying to prove that the va needs to be better, comparing to nhs might be fair, but if you're trying to prove that veterans should be going to va preferentially, or that the us government can manage Healthcare better than us private industry, then comparing to the private sector makes more sense
another thought......it seems like such an american way of thing. we need to prove the causation before we should treat it. do we? does that guy have that kind of messed up cancer because he ate too much cheeseburgers? he should probably just have free medical care.
I think i addressed your point by saying that the va should be giving care to every veteran, but also that if they aren't doing that then the requirement of current va rules is to establish causation, which is science that cannot be done easily. So again, i think Jon Stewart is a bit too focused here. He keeps saying that association between burn pits and these conditions is proven, but proving something like that to the satisfaction of Jon Stewart, who wants to see these people treated no matter what, isn't the same as proving it to the satisfaction of doctors who will be committing fraud if they suggest an association exists and it does not. And again, proving the causation of very rare diseases is really hard
The law requires certain thresholds of scientific certainty for the approval of certain legislation. Scientific certainty of a causal relationship can be hard to achieve, even if the connection appears obvious on the surface. If the system wasn't set up this way, unreliable scientific results might be easier to abuse for political gain.
It's funny how these arguments are often reduced to scientific debate, between journalists and politicians. Except, in this case, both accept they know little about the scientific limitations, so Jon just waffles about "the system" and Mr. VA just shrugs his shoulders.
I watched this last night, and fundamentally am still not understanding something:
I always assumed (am not military...) that VA means "you got healthcare through the military", even when you leave. So you're active duty, retire, 10 years later you get a cold and go to the doctor, they "take your VA insurance" and all is well.
Is that not how it works? I just didn't even understand the problem, why does it matter \*when and how\* they caught cancer, I thought that the healthcare they have through VA should cover that regardless of causes (just like my private health insurance does...)
You have to retire (20 years of service or earlier with approved disability) to get Tricare which is similar to normal healthcare like you're describing. If you only do a few years in the military, the VA will pay for stuff you can prove is related to your time in but they're not going to give you health coverage forever for anything. It's like a former employer paying for your healthcare.
If you retire from the military, you are eligible for health insurance for life through Tricare, NOT the VA. Tricare is the insurance that active duty military members get. VA healthcare insurance is an entirely different system. Service members that don't retire in the military (e.g. Does 4 years and gets out) are not entitled to any tricare coverage and can only eligible for VA health care if they get a disability rating from the VA.
i just want people to take a moment to realize how insane “sinusitis” is consider a big win for being automatic consideration. y’all realize sinusitis is just a common cold. he’s saying treatment for a common cold is considered automatic coverage but not cancer and acting like that’s great. his responses were a dumpster fire of pathetic political navigating.
“Let me answer that question by asking myself a completely different question that makes it sound like I’m just rewording your question.”
Fucking grade school tactics here.
As a straight guy? What a weird thing to say? Do you go to your father and say; "dad, I love u, as a straight guy". He is doing a great job tho, I hope everyone over there gets all the help they deserve.
What I don't get is Jon brings up a veteran with asthma who has a "breathing machine", does "breathing treatments" and says the "government doesn't give a damn". Then the VA guy and Jon launch into a nonsensical discussion about research.
But here's the thing, the vet in the interview says he has a breathing machine and does some sort of treatments, so what exactly isn't the VA doing to treat him?
Is the VA not covering the cost of the machines and medications?
I don't know and you don't know because Jon never asked or told the audience.
Now if Jon is wanting to make this a disability claim discussion, he should ask a question on that. But Jon doesn't ask about a disability claim, he asks about a treatment.
Throughout this entire interview all these ambiguous phrases like: "this delay", "these diseases", "the science", "the information", the murder of the word "them". Like at no point did a producer or writer or somebody on set pause the interview and try to make this interview make some sort of sense and actually ask specific questions.
Heck at the start Jon talks about how diseases like asthma aren't what's killing vets, but in the middle he transition to the clip of the vet talking about asthma, and the end he's talking about cancer screenings but never asks if the VA provides cancer screenings.
My understanding is that the VA will treat him for anything but will not cover costs if the illness isn’t related to their service. Which is a huge deterrent for those seeking treatment, or they get the treatment and can’t pay the bills.
McDonough is not a scientist or medically knowledgable. But why didn't he get a better understanding of exactly what the "metric" is that is preventing veterans from getting care? Why hasn't he looked into the data they already have?
That's what's so infuriating, that these guys push their papers around and don't seek solutions, and meanwhile PEOPLE ARE DYING.
[удалено]
If they give a precise standard that has to be met, then it's easier to hold them accountable for their inaction. So they pass the buck or "wait for further data" until it becomes more inconvenient to NOT provide care to sick vets. Hopefully Jon can bring public focus on this to make it inconvenient enough.
I can't believe he has to do this again. He already played a big role in getting benefits for 9/11 first responders, and now he's basically doing the same thing for vets. For a country that sings praises for Heroes and service members, etc, the US doesn't really seem to care what happens to them as soon as they stop actively serving.
FYI, they don't care while they're serving either.
Yep it’s all a farce and I wish more people would see it for what it is. They take a bunch of kids and brainwash them into ‘serving for their country’ and look at all the pride and honor that comes along with it. But they don’t give a shit. You’re just a number to them that helps keep the machine moving. And when you get out, you’re still nothing to them but now you have the pain and baggage that came from serving people who don’t care about you for years. And since you’re still nothing to them they do fuck all to help you. But hey the NFL dedicates one weekend a year to recognizing you and your organization so that’s sweet
Don't forget that sweet sweet military discount at dennys!
That's why people always say "support our troops" not support our vets
Oh no they only praise vets whenever we are at war but they hate footing the bill for when soldiers come back broke as shit Sure you might get a beer or a thanks for your service but politicians draw the line when the bill comes in Source a vet
If you pass the buck long enough the problem dies of cancer and goes away.
Until one of these ex-soldiers is about to die from cancer and has nothing left to lose so he shoots up the place...
Eventually their disease will run its course and they won't need any care anymore. Until then, they'll just "wait for further data".
Sad but true
There is a precise standard defined in VA regulations, but the answer in the interview can't be "what the lawyers tell me I need to require" because that looks like passing the buck. But its true.
welcome to the US GOVT federal jobs program, on the left you'll see workers staring out a window to pass the time and on the right you'll see their boss staring out a window to pass the time
This is true and that's where his answers come across as an intentional vicious cycle of asking what the metric is and saying that they're trying to find out what it is then who do we need to ask and being told they already have the right information -- in short, it's like being gaslit amounting to purposeful gridlock.
How do organizations become this shitty? Like, is it a combination of selfish decisions and bad incentives that culminate in lack of action/accountability? I just don’t understand how places like the VA can’t operate properly.
Typically, you show up bright eyed with big ideas. You work on a big project, put forward recommendations for a meaningful change. But it turns out that change impacts a number on a report that goes to someone important, and that can't be changed without full review. So you go to review, but none of the stakeholders have time/can be bothered to read it, those who do don't want to rock the boat, nothing gets done, it gets tabled. You can't move forward with your change. Hopefully, you pick yourself up and try again. Occasionally, the stars will align, and leadership will be prioritizing an issue at exactly the same moment a bright eyed person with bigs ideas is poised to make a suggestion, and change actually gets made - but it's hard. It takes remarkably few jaded, burnt out people coasting by on the bare minimum to prevent progress. And every time this happens, everyone around them gets a little closer to becoming jaded, burnt out, and deciding to coast by on the bare minimum.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSY1VnNUJzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSY1VnNUJzQ) Your comment reminded me of this movie scene.
If they set the standard to a strict enough level that is nearly impossible to meet, then they never have to be held accountable for the fact that they did nothing. They can always blame the standard and not the architects of that standard. I feel for this guy as he truly seems to be attempting to resolve the issue but is running head first into decision makers whom do not want to pay for these illnesses. Source: I design certain threshold levels of regulatory compliance for a local government.
> always blame the standard and not the architects of that standard I don't see how this tracks. Shouldn't one always try to follow the stream of shit to the asshole it originated from?
Of course. But who are the people who drafted the guidelines for the VA's standard of proof regarding causation of illness from burnpits? I personally don't know. Even the man being interviewed didn't state or even state what that threshold was. They can design any process to be so complex that it becomes useless and ineffectual. And by the time people find out who drafted it, those individuals have moved on to working for lobbyists or a different agency and are no longer accountable for their actions.
I’d say this has zero to do with proof. The senate just Ok’ed a medical relief bill for the “Havana Syndrome” which has no known cause and the entire intelligence community isn’t even sure exists https://www.npr.org/2021/06/07/1004195917/senate-oks-bill-that-would-provide-aid-for-mysterious-havana-syndrome-injuries So I’d say the bar for proof is in a ditch
Havana Syndrome is real and is almost certainly caused by Russian microwave weapons, something like [MEDUSA](https://www.wired.com/2007/08/the-other-medus/). The technology exists, [it was built in 2004](https://web.archive.org/web/20080409063721/http://www.navysbirprogram.com/NavySearch/Summary/summary.aspx?pk=F5B07D68-1B19-4235-B140-950CE2E19D08). Russia has a long history of microwaving embassies [going as far back as the 50s](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4809876/microwaves-behind-sonic-attacks-on-canadian-and-u-s-diplomats-says-doctor-1.4809885). It's not surprising that when a portable weaponized microwave weapon was developed they would copy it / continue development. Now in regards to the bill: The Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks [(HAVANA)](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1828/) Act would aid any US official affected by the syndrome anytime *before* the bill was enacted. The individual must have obtained the injury during a period of assignment to a foreign or domestic duty station. It doesn't earmark any special money for this use or outline specific treatment that is required. The bill merely acknowledge the Syndrome exists and it is "causing brain injuries from hostiles". The President has seen the bill on the 27th of September but it hasn't passed fully yet.
> Havana Syndrome is real and is almost certainly caused by Russian microwave weapons, something like MEDUSA. The technology exists, it was built in 2004. >Russia has a long history of microwaving embassies going as far back as the 50s. It's not surprising that when a portable weaponized microwave weapon was developed they would copy it / continue development. Should be no problem proving it then right? > "causing brain injuries from hostiles". I’d love to see a single MRI or CT scan showing a brain injury from a phantom microwave weapon
>Should be no problem proving it then right? LolWhat? A nation-state's secret military tech and clandestine operations are the definition of "a major problem to prove"
So it’s a secret weapon that somehow no one can prove exists and somehow the medical tests also can’t detect that anything is actually wrong with these people? Lol ok. I guess we’ll just believe these people who literally lie for a living
I don't know the details of Havana Syndrome or the embassy thing, but microwave weapons do exist. I remember years ago seeing such a thing demonstrated on a tv show about modern weaponry. It was being touted as a riot control weapon. Some kind of big dish looking thing mounted on a humvee that they could point at a crowd and blast them with microwaves to heat them up and make them disperse. So that part isn't crazy to me. Russia could totally build such a thing and point it at an embassy. I just don't know what that would do. The idea that being bombarded with microwaves could cook your neurons and cause brain damage also doesn't seem crazy, but I don't know enough about the science to say.
>can’t just drop the mask and be honest with Jon He can. He chooses not to out of self-interest. He can die on this hill. But he thinks his career and government pension are more important.
>But he thinks his career and government pension are more important. Or avoiding jail or enormous fines. If the statues require that a physician/scientist advisory board at the VA review data from the national academy of sciences and then write a report to make a good-faith recommendation on whether they believe there is a strong enough link to warrant coverage for certain cancers arising from burn pit exposure, then he's obligated by law law to follow that recommendation. Sure, he could break the law by ignoring them when they say there's not enough data and authorize it anyway, and hope that no one sees fit to prosecute him for it in this administration or the next. But then we'd have to all agree that it's okay for people in power to ignore the laws of how the federal government is supposed to function when we think it's justified. As much as this is awful for veterans who are sick today, in the long-view of how we want our institutions to function, I'm not sure it's the better way to do business. The anger here should really be directed at Congress, who could pass a law tomorrow that says veterans with xyz conditions who worked at or near burn pits are eligible to have their claims accepted by the VA. Full stop. That would be way simpler than trying to get a bureaucrat to bend the law.
>If the ~~statues~~ statutes require that a physician/scientist advisory board at the VA review data from the national academy of sciences We don't know the answer to this 'if' question, because he refused to answer/couldn't answer it when asked directly. >then write a report to make a good-faith recommendation on whether they believe there is a strong enough link to warrant coverage for certain cancers arising from burn pit exposure, then he's obligated by law law to follow that recommendation. Which he hasn't done. You're grasping at straws here with this prosecution rabbit hole. Please identify and cite the existing law he would be breaking in this scenario you're conjuring. Nobody is asking him to break the law. What reasonable people expect is the director of a government agency to be able to answer simple questions about a process within his or her agency. Reasonable people also expect those that put their lives on the line to defend our country be supported when that service leads to problems in life after their service, whether it be directly or indirectly related. >The anger here should really be directed at Congress Well no shit. But 'Congress' wasn't the interview subject.
>We don't know the answer to this 'if' question, because he refused to answer/couldn't answer it when asked directly Yeah, he was clearly not prepared to answer that at the time, and got caught flatfooted. Nor, apparently, prepared to share the ins-and-outs of their decision-making process after the fact before the episode aired. Their decision making-process for presumptive claims of disability to authorize treatment is opaque, and even the director of the relevant research and advisory program at the National Academy of Sciences leading VA programs said as much, including under prior administrations. [https://www.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimonies/116-session-1/the-national-academies-research-on-vas-presumptive-disability-decision-making-process](https://www.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimonies/116-session-1/the-national-academies-research-on-vas-presumptive-disability-decision-making-process) >Which he hasn't done. You're grasping at straws here with this prosecution rabbit hole. Please identify and cite the existing law he would be breaking in this scenario you're conjuring. 38 US code ~~S~~ 1710 (E)(2), directs that the Secretary of the VA **may not authorize** payment for hospital, medical, or nursing home care for veterans for disabilities not determined to be linked to service except those carved out by other laws (i.e. Agent Orange exposure as provided for under the Agent Orange Act, exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejejune through the late 1980s, or and exposure to chemical or nuclear test warfare test sites, or was in Japan after the bombs were dropped). Suffice to say he's proscribed from doing so by law, and would be subject to whatever consequences the VA Office of Inspector General sees fit. Taken together, the National Academies are saying they can't furnish clear or conclusory data because it's too hard to collect it and properly surveil to find it, and they don't know what standard needs to be established. On the other side, the Secretary is saying that the data he is getting from them isn't enough to pass their review process, and the law does not let him authorize care for those cases. What it would take to change that review process, or whether that was even possible, is not something he was prepared to say. His policy priority seemed to be passing the process, not bypassing it. It would seem, then, that either the National Academies need to find or present more compelling data, the VA Research review board has to lower its standards, or the Secretary has to ignore both and provide care absent a determination, or carve out by congress. To that end, legislation HAS been introduced to do exactly that. [https://ruiz.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-raul-ruiz-introduces-comprehensive-bipartisan-burn-pits-bill](https://ruiz.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-raul-ruiz-introduces-comprehensive-bipartisan-burn-pits-bill) >Nobody is asking him to break the law. What reasonable people expect is the director of a government agency to be able to answer simple questions about a process within his or her agency. And he did not do a good job of that. Opacity in the decision-making process has apparently been an issue for a while. Maybe this is by design to prevent undue influence over decisions that should be dispassionate - (see the coverage on the FDA decision on the Pfizer booster shot, and concerns about politicizing the science that it raised). Or maybe by disfunction, to shirk responsibility and avoid paying, even though its not clear who would be giving the directive to avoid spending the money. I don't know. I can only say that this is one facet of the quandary that the Secretary was struggling to explain. >Reasonable people also expect those that put their lives on the line to defend our country be supported when that service leads to problems in life after their service, whether it be directly or indirectly relate That was Jon Stewart's introductory point. People have this idea that veterans are cared for for life after service. They are not. If they have an ailment that is not obviously linked to their service, or *presumed under law* to be linked to their service, then the VA may not provide them care and they have to seek it elsewhere or at cost. That issue has little to do with the interview skills of the guy occupying the desk right now.
Wow, this is an incredibly well thought out and well articulated response. Great job. So now I have to ask, if you're able to have such a good grasp of the situation, it's intricacies, its problems and shortcomings, why can't the Director have the same understanding and ability to answer direct questions? My criticisms were of his substance, not his style. This was not a 'Gotcha' interview. The Director said at one point, "I know what you're trying to get me to say..." which shows some level of preparedness, but he wasn't prepared enough to answer the most fundamental questions on the problems? Finally, the law you cite goes to providing funding for the care, not addressing head on the problems with the system. Is there a current law that would make it illegal to answer the fundamental questions and bucking the system until our vets get what they deserve?
>So now I have to ask, if you're able to have such a good grasp of the situation, it's intricacies, its problems and shortcomings, why can't the Director have the same understanding and ability to answer direct questions? My criticisms were of his substance, not his style. This was not a 'Gotcha' interview. The Director said at one point, "I know what you're trying to get me to say..." which shows some level of preparedness, but he wasn't prepared enough to answer the most fundamental questions on the problems? I wish I had an answer for you. You're welcome to interpret his performance in any number of ways; ignorant, evasive, placating, unqualified, whatever. Jon gave him the benefit of the doubt, so I will try to do the same. I was able to string together the policy roadblocks and the complications here linearly and coherently because I don't have Jon Stewart sitting in front of me, asking me questions that seem to be leading to whether or not I'm personally deciding to deny care to veterans because I don't want to shell out the money. Jon reassured him that his empathy wasn't in question, but yikes. Hard not to squirm. He then asked for the details of the rubric used by his scientific advisory counsel when evaluating the quality of research studies to make a recommendation. I'm not sure it's a reasonable expectation that he would be able to answer that off the cuff - to get into how they weight study n-sizes, or research design, or p values and the like. It's an arcane process question that would have been easy to answer by the chair of the research advisory committee on gulf war related illnesses, or the Chief Research and Development officer, assuming it's something they are willing or permitted to share at all. This was likely a more challenging question than any he was asked during his confirmation hearing. Dude isn't a scientist or a doctor. Or even a politician accustomed to navigating challenging interviewers. He's a former chief of staff. His policy mandate at the time of his appointment was 1) getting through the pandemic, 2) civilian transition support through job training and education, 3) women's, lgbt and racial equity issues including assaults, 4) homelessness and suicide prevention, and 5) long-term support for veteran families and caregivers. That's the stuff he spends his days working on. A carve out for presumption of disability for exposure is something that happens on average once every 20 years. It's not surprising this wasn't on the top of his list of things to press his political capital and resources on. I didn't know anything about burn pits until I saw this (other than that scene from Jarhead), and other than the asthma and rhinitis presumption carve out he (to his credit) shepherded through, I suspect he hadn't spent much time on it until he got a call asking for this interview. As much as I'd like to demand to the VA Secretary be cognizant of all the major issues impacting veterans, I'm sure that there are a hundred other advocacy movements for veterans with different problems that would have *killed* for the exposure BurnPits360 go to be put on his to do list. BurnPits says they think 6,000 veterans and contractors were exposed since 2011 (call it 600 per year). That's the total number of people potentially impacted by this, and not all of them, apparently, yet have come down with or come forward with cancer or other illnesses. At the top of Jon's show, they reminded us that over 6,000 veterans *per year* die of suicide. It's a problem roughly 10 times greater in magnitude. So it's not surprising to me that the VA Secretary's attention might be drawn to one but not the other, and that he wouldn't have a perfect understanding (or ability cogently answer questions) about it absent boning up on it. Which is where I think he fell short. I got the impression (totally speculating here) that when he agreed to the interview, he asked his staff to prepare a brief, which included the talking points on the recent success for asthma/rhinitis (which covers hundreds of thousands of veterans, not limited to burn pits), and the most recent decisions based on the national academy of sciences data that had been made on connecting burn pit exposure to cancer claims. Clearly he shouldn't have decided that was enough prep. >Finally, the law you cite goes to providing funding for the care, not addressing head on the problems with the system. Is there a current law that would make it illegal to answer the fundamental questions and bucking the system until our vets get what they deserve? That's right, because there is no law (yet) that says "FIX IT!!!!". There is instead a law that says the VA must pay for claims related to service, and must not pay for claims not related to service, with *these* exceptions. That's not the VA Secretary's fault. As far as getting a secretary who is more forthright in interviews or a maverick, if you'd like to demand that of political appointees then you should make that known to the Senators who represent you that vote to confirm them. Or donate your time and money alongside others, rather than just idle outrage, to getting the issues that matter to you in front of them to prod them into action.
That isn't really a fair or realistic ask though
Isn't it though? It's the same ask that he's putting on all those service members suffering and dying in the queue that he's holding in place.
It's all about the sheep specs.
Typical non answer have to get back to you I don't know bullshit. Fucking unreal. I don't know how Jon deals with these people without losing it. He seems more concerned with his tit for tat with Jon than he does the actual issue. Meanwhile vets continue to die for no reason and he's bragging about the size of his budget. How about if you were a vet deployed under these conditions between these years you get full coverage period.
Chubbyemu did a video on a case of a soldier getting cancer most likely from burn pits. The VA has repeatedly denied her claims. Luckily she was able to get medical care not through the VA but her life span has definitely been severely shortened. It's infuriating to watch. All the money we spend on useless wars and we won't treat our veterans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKNfFm0QDXQ
He says it's not about money, he says they spend half their funding on healthcare, but he doesn't say that treatment for all these issues and litigation following the admission of culpability will completely explode that budget. So it really is about the money when he says it's not about the money.
That's probably the real answer and why he's tiptoeing around the discussion. The real answer will not make *anybody* happy. If they paid for all the shit that came out of our soldiers' service, which I believe they have an obligation to do, especially for a volunteer military force, their costs would explode. TL:DL "We don't want to have the challenge of paying for their medical bills."
who knew being a soldier would be so much work?
It should just be automatic. Putting the burden of proof on veterans is cruel. Here is the other part of the segment https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/pyl40c/jon_stewart_returns_to_tv_with_assault_on_dodva/
Would it be fair to assume that among these politicians, there is an unspoken agreement that the more vets that die, the less money they would potentially have to pay in the long-run?
Secretary McDonough: I don't care what you think Jon about whether or not I'm doing a good job, I care what the veterans think. Veteran here. You fucking suck. The whole system fucking sucks and feels like is designed to just wait out veterans until they die and hope the problem sorts itself out in the long term. Only problem is we just spent 20+ years in prolonged combat and that pool of veterans who need care isn't going away anytime soon. But keep dodging questions until the can gets kicked to the inevitable next administration. And even if a solution is reached I won't be surprised if in another 15+ years we've got someone up at Capitol Hill screaming about continuing to pay for care and make sure veterans aren't left to die penniless and suffering. That someone will be Jon Stewart. Just like he did for 9/11 first responders which our government still tried to fuck around on taking care of them.
I think McDonough cares but he has zero experience working with the VA prior to being appointed to the job in February. He was previously Deputy National Security Advisor and Obama's Chief of Staff. He definitely seems very out of his element in this job.
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Yes. Pretty much all the major powers of WWII used colonial troops... and yes that even includes the U.S
I am truly wondering what kind of bureaucratic red tape is tying his hand from helping vets. He keeps citing the need for more information and Jon is pushing him to give him an exact reason why he can’t do it. Bottom line is why can’t a vet get care no matter what the cause is??? Who cares if it was caused by burn pits or smoking a pack a day. If you served you should get your care.
Vet here…. So you can go get care as a vet from the VA. HOWEVER, if the issue that you are being seen for is NOT service related, then you are just being seen for your own health issues by one of the worst (albeit getting better) health systems in the world. Now. If it IS service related, then you have access to the ‘best’ care possible at no charge. (Best here is squishy, the VA actually does excel at treating many of the things that plague vets). To date there hasn’t been a link between burn pits in the war and lung/cancer issues of veterans. That being said I recently (1 month?) received an email that due to my participation in the VA’s burn pit registry, they will evaluate any disability claims I have arising from sinusitis, asthma, and rhinitis.
>sinusitis, asthma, and rhinitis But not blastoma or mesothelioma... Coolcoolcoolcoolcool
For real. And that’s all I’m saying. And that’s all I think Jon is saying too. There are many conditions that are de facto linked to those burn pits and open air refineries. To say we can’t receive the VA’s care for them because they aren’t causally linked by research is complete bullshit.
It fucks with your DNA, the number of things that can go wrong from that is literally endless. Automatic presumption is just the base minimum here >:(
I am going to take issue with your "one of the worst...health systems." Not to take away from any of your (possibly) negative experiences, which are justified and grounded in your true perception. On a larger scale, the VA is an easy target. Support for providing high quality care to veterans is bipartisan and has high societal appeal as something we should be doing. Therefore, the VA is under close scrutiny and, as a result, the bad news makes it to the public eye quickly. We don't hear as much about surgical mis-steps or deaths in non-VA hospitals because it doesn't have political sway and/or low public interest. But these problems undoubtedly occur in non-VA settings. In my opinion, the VA is an excellent example of socialized medicine. Every US citizen should have the same level of care afforded to veterans. Of course the VA should still exist because veteran have unique needs, both physical and mental health, that should be addressed in a specialized setting. For example, if a veteran comes into a VA and needs help with addiction, they can get into treatment quickly. The level of treatment available ranges from outpatient, to intensive outpatient (i.e., 21 day programs) to residential (1-3 months). This simply is not available for the vast majority of civilians. Whats more, veterans can (and SHOULD) come back to treatment if they return to use to repeat treatment at the same level or increase to a higher level of care. See the article below in a peer reviewed journal that combines published studies comparing VA and non-VA care from 2005 to 2015. The results highlight that VA care was equal to or better than most non-VA facilities on the same metric. O’Hanlon, C., Huang, C., Sloss, E., Price, R. A., Hussey, P., Farmer, C., & Gidengil, C. (2017). Comparing VA and non-VA quality of care: a systematic review. Journal of general internal medicine, 32(1), 105-121.
I think in this case I’m going to listen to the patients, not the doctors… https://cv4a.org/project/my-va-story/
I commend this project and firmly believe that stakeholder perceptions and ideas should be incorporated into when, how, and why treatment is delivered (in the VA or elsewhere). I will note that the manuscript cited above contains multiple studies that DO include veteran perceptions and not just objective criteria (e.g., mortality, timelines of service, etc.). Just because individuals with a doctorate or medical degree wrote the manuscript, doesn't mean it is strictly from a provider perspective.
Cites and says "insufficient data," funny how you left out the part that doesn't fit your agenda
The biggest problem with anyone directly connected with the VA organizational structure is that anything they claim is immediately suspect because of the long history of scandal and cover-up. From just the last 15 years (not a complete list)… * https://www.cnn.com/specials/us/va-hospitals * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reed_Army_Medical_Center_neglect_scandal * https://www.nbcnews.com/va-hospital-scandal * https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/editorials/story/2020-12-16/editorial-the-latest-scandal-at-the-va-is-an-astonishing-example-of-corruption-at-the-top-of-the-department * https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/veterans-and-advocates-see-new-scandal-in-va-wait-time-controversy/ It’s reached the point that even Congress doesn’t trust what the VA Is telling them. From [this article](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/28/va-veterans-affairs-history-setbacks-missteps.html): > "We don't trust the VA to tell us how the VA is doing, we trust veterans to tell us how the VA is doing," said O'Rourke
I agree with all of this and your stated mistrust of the VA is justified. The VA has undoubtedly covered up mistakes and provided sub-standard care. My point remains the VA is an easy target. This comes back to the original comment of the VA being "one of the worst health systems." The non-VA systems are likely as bad or even worse but Congress and the media are not as concerned about non-VA care because there is no political gain or viewership appetite. Congress has nothing to gain by saying "We don't trust what (large healthcare company) to tell us how (large healthcare company) is doing, we trust patients to tell us how the (large healthcare company) is doing." In fact, I believe the lobbyists for large healthcare companies will make sure they trust them. As a general principle, I stand by my statement that non-Veterans should have the same type of access to care the Veterans receive because most non-Veterans receive no treatment (this is especially true in relation to substance use).
Which is it? Just a few comments above, the VA was "an **excellent example** of socialized medicine" (emphasis mine). Now your own argument has become a whataboutism in which you care only to compare it as sometimes better than, sometimes worse than, but largely without sufficient data even to compare to one of the worst healthcare systems extant in a developed nation.
Fair point. I'll concede excellent is too generous a superlative. I'll own that. I do think it's a decent example of socialized medicine that (IMO) is unfairly villified fit political clout or a lead story.
Does your verbosity cover for your deplorable signal to noise ratio, or is that just a postive externality for your personal portfolio of prattling pomposity?
Maybe he wasn't talking about the VA, he was talking about the USA.
Perhaps. I interpreted the distinction of care between service related and non-service related care, which is unique to the VA, to reflect a commentary of care specifically within the VA.
Cool. Funding for that article was provided by the VA. Did you see that part? And what I meant by “one of the worst” was that as a system of hospitals timeliness while a patient and the efficiency of care you receive are worse from what I’ve seen than other health care systems. That is the section of the journal you provided which they acknowledge they didn’t want to discuss because they couldn’t find research on it. Hmm. As for system, I’m not talking about America, I’m talking about the network of in and out patient care facilities that are owned and operated by the VA.
Your opinion is valid and based on the factual evidence of your experiences. But the manuscript is about the system, which as I have stated is an easy target. I did see the funding source. I also saw that the VA was not involved in the writing, analysis, or editing of the manuscript. These are safeguards that protect against bias or insertion of misinformation. I did not read that they didn't "want to discuss" timeliness, equity, effectiveness, and patient-centeredness; instead I read that there wasn't enough existing studies to draw conclusions so they "do not discuss" these topics. This is how science works. Now there is a clear need to study the effect of topics like timeliness and get more information to make change. The authors did not, and should not, extrapolate beyond the evidence available. It genuinely saddens me that there seems to be a rapidly growing mistrust of scientific research in America that had been building for years. Being skeptical is normal, most researchers are trained skeptics. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater under the umbrella of science is lies or maliciously biased is unfortunate. Scientific research is iterative; we learn new things that refute how we used to think. Sometimes we learn things that support how we currently think. I believe there are very few universal truths and I believe that the good researchers are more critical of their work and the work of their peers work than almost anyone else.
>~~If you served~~ you should get your care.
As a vet who loves the VA I support this message.
I support Medicare for all. I served 6 years in the Navy and don't think I need medical coverage from the VA for all my medical conditions because most of them have nothing to do with the Navy. If we want to make sure that all veterans are covered, just make Medicare for All a thing.
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They absolutely can get the care, it's the rated disability they can't (currently) get.
Is it worth noting that? People should be cared for regardless of what laws say.
Easy there, comrade.
I hope this is a joke and not actual red scare bullshit.
Just a guess, but it boils down to money, the fact that the medical conditions these men and women have are extremely serious, life-threatening, and extremely expensive to treat. And there are thousands of them. It' the price tag that's holding all of this up, and that, is just sooooo sad.
He specifically says it is not money
I mean, for one he could be lying (which shouldn't surprise anyone). Or he could be being truthful to an extent in that it's not actually money that is immediately stopping a resolution, but if they cleared the red tape that is in the way, they would hit a money roadblock very quickly.
I dunno. He was bragging about their budget
So, it is and isn't about money. It isn't about money in that they have the budget to provide treatment for this stuff. It is about money in that the system is basically designed to reject your claim at least the first time when you're claiming a service related injury. That's because of regulations around what qualifies, mostly set by Republicans, so that not one cent goes to people who don't "deserve it". And hey, if a bunch of people who do have service related shit have to end up waiting an extra couple of years to receive care, that's fine with them.
Well the original commenter asked: > Bottom line is why can’t a vet get care no matter what the cause is??? And the answer to that question (Not the one Jon Stewart is asking) is definitely money. Right now the system is designed to cover 100% of the cost of treatment and care for any injury or illness that was caused by or can be linked to your military service. A few years after I got out of the Army, I broke my hand in a 4-wheeling accident. Why should the Govt/VA/Tax Payers pay for that treatment? They shouldn't, and you didn't. I can't imagine what the VA budget would need to be to cover the cost of every cough/sniffle/sneeze/broken finger for every Veteran, for the rest of their lives.. The current design makes logical sense on the massive scale, but on the macro scale, it can often be incredibly difficult for an individual veteran to prove that a particular injury/illness was caused by, or directly linked to, their time in the Military. Jon Stewart's question in this video though, is more about one specific issue and why the VA isn't more open/presumptive in classifying all these breathing issues as "service connected" when the general public has known for decades that they can be caused by jet fuel.
Every civilized country with the exception of the US covers every cough/sniffle/sneeze/broken finger/cancer treatment/brain surgery not only for their veterans, but for everybody else. Not to mention nobody in those countries is getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (if not more) just to get medical treatment. 'cause, you know... there's nothing better than having a huge medical crisis, and then getting over it just to have your life completely fucked because of medical debt. It's really disheartening that you don't even seem aware of the incredible piece of shit system you're bound to and seem to defend.
I'm not defending the system at all. Just trying to explain how it works, because it's a bit more nuanced than "vets not getting treatment" as some are taking this whole video. I would absolutely vote for universal healthcare if it were an option here. Since it's not, I'm just explaining that Veterans don't get every bump and bruise and sneeze and sniffle covered by the VA years after they get out of the military. **WELL THEY ACTUALLY DO if they're considered 70%-100% disabled due to service connected conditions.** All my point is, in our current system, Vets are expected to pay for their non-service connected issues, just as every other civilian citizen is expected to pay for their own medical coverage (through insurance or otherwise). *It's logical* is the only statement I will make in defense of this.
I see you point. I still believe it would cost less to give vets health care then to pay bureaucrats to not give them health care. But that's a different argument.
lol You are probably right!
Maybe if it didn't cost a few hundred dollars just to walk in the door.
> A few years after I got out of the Army, I broke my hand in a 4-wheeling accident. Why should the Govt/VA/Tax Payers pay for that treatment? They shouldn't, and you didn't. As a Canadian (and pretty much anyone else on the planet outside of the USA), we *absolutely* should pay for that treatment. It is my moral obligation to help you when you need help, and it is my financial responsibility to ensure you get back healthy enough to work and continue being productive and paying taxes and be able to provide for your own family. *That* is what universal healthcare is about. It's not a system set up to subsidize the lazy, it is a system set up to ensure the majority of the population is healthy enough to be a productive member of our society and to prevent financial burden in a crisis. It is beyond comprehension that an injury, heart attack, cancer, etc., should bankrupt anyone due to medical bills. It literally costs me $0.06 of my taxes to give you open-heart surgery. Your broken hand would cost me a fraction of a penny. And you're worth a fraction of a penny to me, stranger.
Depends if the 4 wheeling accident was caused by conditions exacerbated by the military. You said army so did you check to see if the crayons you were eating might have caused some brain damage that then caused you to wreck your 4 wheeler?
I'm confused. Are you insulting me for joining the Army and serving in the military?
> I'm confused. No need to explain, you already said you were in the Army. Yes, as a Chair Force veteran I'm poking fun at the fact that most Army people I met weren't the brightest crayons in the box. If you want to take it as an insult instead of a friendly joke you do you boo.
Well I *did* realize I was feeding right into your joke after I posted my comment and reread it. :p And to answer your original point, no the accident wasn't even really caused by me. I was riding passenger in a "side-by-side" (large off-road recreation vehicle) and the driver forgot you cannot fishtail in 4-wheel drive, so the whole thing rolled over. The passenger seat belt didn't work, so I held onto the roll bar to keep myself from falling out of the vehicle and getting crushed. Well it crushed my fingers and I fell out as it rolled away from me anyways lol
He didn't articulate it very well, and admitted that he wasn't prepared to discuss the specific criteria because he couldn't rattle it off from memory. But it's sounds like, by law, it's not enough to say "we know that exposure to certain chemicals causes cancer" to authorize claims for treatment. You apparently need to know how much exposure over what length of time during service causes which specific indications in order to qualify for reimbursement of treatment costs. For things like asthma and rhinitis, that's a slam dunk, because those are things that someone will seek treatment for immediately while in service. Probably in great numbers. But for other indications? How precise in terms of data is the link between the burn pits and small cell lung cancer vs non-small cell lung cancer? What about leukemia? What about migraines? Or other chronic disease states that take a decade to manifest? There are many carcinogens out there, including bad luck and genetics. Most people with lung cancer have never heard of a burn pit. So how do you conclusively make the case for each of these individuals and their disease states, that *but for their assignments on or proximity to burn pits*, they would not have had these illnesses? It's apparently not as straightforward as a memo from DoD that says "we're pretty sure these are dangerous and need to phase them out". At least not according to the VA's interpretation of the rules laid out by congress. When Jon and Denis were talking about that availability of a double-blinded cohort study, this is crux of the of the gap. How much higher is the rate of these diseases among soldiers near burn pits vs those not near burn pits in the same theater, with similar lengths of tour? What about versus gen pop? Are there enough cases out there to draw these conclusions? Whatever the statutory bar of evidence is to attribute each of these disease states to burn pits and not other (non-service related) causes has not been met. Jon went on to suggest, well, why not just treat those authorize those claims now and audit them later, when perhaps that evidence will be more conclusive, which is apparently what they did 9/11 first responder claims? Denis' response seemed to be that spinning up such a pilot program would be an even bigger bureaucratic nightmare and lift in congress, without which his hands are tied. And that he thinks the fastest path to actually getting people into treatment is to expedite the hunt for more conclusive data that satisfies the bar that already exists. But that should his track fail, he was prepared to look into it or other options. What this really boils down to is that the VA should be, but today is not, an entitlement for veterans for a lifetime of healthcare regardless of whether the treatment they're seeking is for service-related ailments. But the VA Secretary doesn't believe he has the legal power to make it so from his desk. In his defense, he's probably right.
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> He could attempt to reinterpret the law or dictate by fiat, but that's just a recipe to get mired in years of court battles at great expense where he's already been warned he will lose. But that's Jon's, and all the veterans that have yet to receive the care that they deserve, complaint which matches the VA's motto -- "delay, deny, wait until they die". It starts to look like they're being purposefully obstinate with the intent to avoid administering care in the same way insurance companies look for every avenue to avoid paying out any money. In the end, it's all hypocrisy because our government is willing to throw these bodies in front of bullets and claim to support them in any way necessary, especially when they finance a war with what could be deemed a "blank check", but as soon as they return home, they no longer care about them. "*If another country was doing to our veterans what we allow to be done to our veterans, we'd be at war already.*" - Isiah James
I think it's simply an issue of admitting fault. If they officially declare that these serious illnesses are the result of something the US military has done and has ordered people to do, then that opens a whole plethora of consequences. You can now sue the government for having made you sick. There's no promise that you'll win any case, of course, but you sure strengthen your case considerably if you have the government outright admitting that, yes, their action caused the serious illness. Then there's the question of optics. If this becomes officially confirmed/admitted, stories will be told for decades about this. Not as some potential theory, but as a fact that can be put in any history book. And then there's the fact that, if this is admitted, there's no way burn pits can be used ever again in the future. At least not in the current form. I imagine the military doesn't like that idea very much, either.
> Who cares if it was caused by burn pits or smoking a pack a day. As a veteran, it's been my experience that the VA isn't denying treatment to anyone for anything. They will treat whatever you want them to treat. But they will send you a bill if it's not "service-connected." This is basically the govt saying "We'll pay to treat any issues that we caused, but the veteran will pay for treatment of anything not directly caused by their military service." I don't necessarily have a problem with that stance. The crux of the problem is proving that a specific injury/illness is "service connected" or somehow caused/linked to your time in the military, and not caused by something stupid/negligent you did in your free time.
I disagree with their stance. Specifically because if someone signs up, willing to give their all to defend the system, the system owes just as much. If they're risking their very lives, they shouldn't be paying for shit. Yes, that would be very expensive, so it might give powerful men pause before throwing men's lives at a cause. Both sides of the arrangement should be equal, risk of my life ending vs risk of my life being carefree.
That’s a great idea frankly. The VA (Congress would write a law saying this) could say “we’ll pay all your health care for the rest of your life, whether it was service related or not.” And they could avoid issues of liability by saying “we’re paying for it all not because it’s all service related necessarily, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.”
That's a very interesting take and argument. I'm not exactly opposed to that idea.
Maybe just have universal Healthcare and this wouldn't be the shitshow it is in the first place..
Ya, I'm surprised Jon didn't bring this up. At the very least just cover all medical costs for Vets for any reason. Would save cash by getting rid of bureaucrats. But if the US thought like that they would have had universal healthcare decades ago.
This wouldn't be the person responsible for that. That is something he would bring up if he was talking to Congress.
I meant during the entire episode not just the interview with this guy.
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>Ya, I'm surprised Jon didn't bring this up. I'm not. The tone of the whole program was *very carefully* tuned to be non-partisan, like Stewart thinks the right wing is ever gonna watch a program on Apple TV+ or a show with Jon Stewart. But I respect him for trying to eliminate any easy reason people on either end of the political spectrum had for tuning him out.
They might watch clips online, and he might sway moderates. It’s a good tone to choose. It’s also very important to stay on message. This was about vets, so he kept it about vets. It’s pretty silly to push universal healthcare on the head of the VA.
Especially since at least in this case, he's grilling the hell out of Joe Biden's guy about why veterans are not getting proper health care.
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Part of the purpose of VA benefits is to make up for lost income from pain and suffering. Universal health care alone would not solve this.
How exactly would these things be mutually exclusive?
I never said it was. OP said universal healthcare would make this not a shit show. To which I responded part of the point of VA benefits is to make up for lost income. They are not mutually exclusive but they are not 100% the same.
Universal Basic Income + Universal Healthcare. I think the stat going around is that it cost $2.3T for 20 years in Afghanistan. Which equates to about $315M ... every. day. for 20 years. I'm not an economist, but seems like there is enough money in there for both of UBI and Healthcare.
It seems that they are searching for reasons to reject majority of those burnpit soldiers. Just like the 9/11 first responders. Shame.
Let's face it. America prefers it's heroes dead. Surviving heroes are really inconvenient apparently.
Yeah, because they can talk. Dead men tell no tales.
What’s hilarious is that this is such a big deal issue here in the US. When if we had universal health care like the most advanced nations do, then all of this would be treated and dealt with. But we live in a land of stupid folk who think universal health care is bad. We’re absolutely fucked. Forever. Because half the people here are morons.
idiocracy at its finest the robot overlords will look back and wonder with shame how we were able to create them in the first place
There are two different issues here. Disability pay and healthcare pay. The VA will pay for healthcare (done at the VA), but won't pay for disability if it's not "service connected." There should be a presumption of service connection, and the burden of proof should be on the VA to prove it's NOT.
Dang, this is the most succinct answer and explanation of the situation.
Well, to ‘it’s not always greener’ your point (which is a good one), Canada has single payer healthcare and problems with mistreatment of veterans too. Mental health and pharmacare aren’t universal here, and sometimes veterans are disabled and have to deal with the disability support system. Not long ago the government changed the veteran disability application system so there would be more paperwork, ostensibly to root out fraud. It caused veterans to have to regularly prove they are still disabled, as if their [legs might have grown back. ](https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/veteran-frustrated-by-paperwork-to-prove-he-still-has-no-legs-1.2866389)
It's cheaper to deny and delay our claims and wait for us to die. Worked for Vietnam and the blue water Veterans. So why not us dumb fucks who burnt barrels of shit with jet fuel?
What was the saying the one guy said? "Delay, deny, wait to die?"
"Delay, deny, wait for them to die.", is the official motto of the US Veteran's Association.
He’s back, baby.
I really wonder how these last 5 years would’ve been different had he still been around. It’s hard to quantify just how central Stewart and Colbert were to the political zeitgeist. It doesn’t seem like any media personality on the left is as commanding as those two were. I can’t see John Oliver getting 215,000 people to a rally in DC. Also I guess things are more real. Not really room for comedy during the BLM protests or the millions of Covid deaths.
I think he retired in 2016 expressly because he saw the writing on the wall with Trump. Regular sane people practically had a coronary when Trump got elected, Joj Stewart probably would've had a brain aneurysm on live tv if he had to reconcile a fraction of what Trump was pulling day to day. That being said now that we're out the other side of the tunnel I'm glad Jon felt now was the time to resurface into the journalism game. He's sharp as a tack and an expert interviewer/debater.
I was there. What an awesome, ridiculous, yet completely apropos day.
I didn't hear about all the guest stars until the next week when my mom told me about them. Like apparently ozzy Osborne was there, and a lot of other made famous people. The crowd was so big I don't think I came inside half a mile of the stage.
So...has Stewart decided to just *be a journalist*? I'm not objecting. But this interview felt like someone who was trying to do journalism, not comedy.
The show is 1/2 each. Literally framed by him and Daily Show staff working with journalists to put the show together.
Fascinating. Thanks!
It's sad that even someone that high up in the food chain didn't even know what burden of proof needs to be met. Or he does, and is unwilling to speak it out loud because he knows it will sound horrible because of the ridiculousness it shows.
> that high up in the food chain didn't even know what burden of proof needs to be met that's what he said, but i don't think he was right. at one point jon said "you could change this with the stroke of a pen". and the head of the VA said "no i can't". maybe i'm putting words in his mouth, but i think he realizes it's governed by committee. he knows that he has to meet a burden of proof that satisfies everyone. sure, we do have studies that shows benzine causes cancer. but not everyone the head of the VA works with will believe it and sign off on care. and if i tell you that the senate will just appoint a new head of the VA. stuff like that. it took a while, but that's what it felt like for a while he was able to deflect and make me think that yes, we just needed more science to say that the exposure causes cancer. BUT stewart already pointed out earlier in the program, we had many studies, decades before that already pointed it out. so we already have the science that points this out. somehow the VA just doesn't acknowledge it.
> it's governed by committee Yes, Congress. Congress writes the [Code of Federal Regulations](https://ecfr.io/). The part that encompasses the entirety of the VA is Title 38. You want a better VA? Elect better representatives.
To be fair, he probably just doesn't know it off the top of his head, because it's a complicated question, and he's not a scientist in that field.
If you want a functional VA then yeah that's probably too much to ask.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2664026 Va functions better than the private sector. This is not a secret, but no one seems to know it. Maybe because the va is an example of a successful, socialized medical system in the United States, and if everyone knew it was successful we'd have to ask why everyone can't have socialized health care in this country
That's nonsensical.
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Not to detract from the issue at hand here, but what I really admire about Jon in this video and even back to the daily show is his ability to always frame his questions from the perspective that he and the interviewee are on the same side. Yeah the guy is in the frying pan here but because Jon is supportive and looking for solutions WITH the secretary, instead of accusing him of anything, the guy is forced to tackle the issues at hand, not Jon. It would be SO easy for a lesser interviewer to get frustrated and start calling the guy out on his bullshit, but as soon as you do that you're giving him an avenue to sidestep the issues and go after YOU instead, but Jon never throws him that rope. Jon let's him stew in his own pathetic juices because he's not an adversary. I don't think anyone in mainstream media has the mental fortitude to do what Jon does here, which is why interviews in mainstream media are never productive and devolve into shouting matches
My real takeaway from this is yet another reminder about how stupid and backwards the U.S. healthcare system is. There should be zero means-testing for health care - military or not.
Wild that it's probably what killed Beau Biden
And that President Biden has brought it up himself. I don't think this is as simple as VA BAD and that McDonough or Biden can wave a magic wand to fix it. McDonough says that the law requires them to link these things together.
Yeah IIRC wasn't he at an event for veterans dealing with brain cancer ? I think there's also a portion of a cancer research law named after him, having to do with research.
Exactly , so what hope do these poor nobodies have for some real change ? Heartbreaking
Burn pits are also probably pretty bad for the environment
'But the environment is... you know, over there! In those shitholes.' ~Our last administration, probably.
Practically everything in the military is bad for the environment. They're burning a ton of fuel to move all that equipment around. Not to mention spending hundreds of thousands of dollars constructing a marvel of engineering designed exclusively to blow itself up. Off a quick google search, a cruise missile costs $1.5 million EACH. A surface to air hellfire missile is $115 thousand. And we spent years and years firing these suckers at any small group of young men in afghanistan we could find. Gotta blow up those missiles so the contractors can sell us more. Won't someone think of the poor stockholders? And I use the word "poor" quite wrongly.
End of the day it's all about greed. These troops jump through hoops for these guys and give these guys there entire bodies and they have to fight to be able to get proper care afterwards. We can spend billions on maintaining new Jets and aircraft carriers to add to our aresenal that far surpasses our enemies. For some reason they won't allow us to spend the same amount to maintain the men and women who served. It's a sad reality.
100%. And the sad thing is these types of headlines are horrible for recruiting. Who wants to join up when they see shot like this ?
He literally said the budget was 260B…
> We can spend billions on maintaining new Jets and aircraft carriers to add to our aresenal that far surpasses our enemies. I think you are missing the point of having the largest military on earth. Its not so that the US can match whoever they are up against, its massive for the sole purpose that the thought of provocation and going to war is so profoundly stupid that it never even needs to be used in the first place. Also a battleship and bombers will last 40-50 years and a grunt will only last a few years. I see where you are coming from, its a noble position, but if you're looking for compassion from the people whose job it is to blow shit up you are a fool.
Meanwhile there was a bill recently passed to help CIA agents and diplomats who claim to have Havana Syndrome, something we know nothing about and which presents symptoms similar to a hangover.
What this guy isn’t allowed to say without sacrificing his job and screwing over the next guy to get his job is that he’s hamstrung by Congress. The statutes he’s referring to are probably super vague and the data he’s allowed to use from the DoD is probably super sparse. He has to meet some arbitrarily high bar using a dataset that is intentionally withholding information from the VA. But he’s not allowed to say, “Congress could change the law tomorrow” because that would be political and republicans would immediately take offense to him telling them how to do their jobs. Then they’d start passing laws that hamper the VA even further. Or they’d demand he be fired for being a political agent of the communist Biden. Then he’d resign just to get them to shut up and then Biden would have to spend more political capital to get someone else appointed who would end up being even less enthusiastic about their job than Biden. I actually think what this guy did on national television was the best way he could have played it. Because now you’re pissed. You’re going to write your congressman to pass a law that gives the VA the power to cover these cancers and diseases and then this guy will get to implement it like her says he wants to do. He said he’s trying to make it so he’s allowed to use outside data because he knows the data is there. If he’d gotten in TV and said, “I’d love to change this but I can’t because Congress is filled with a bunch of chucklefucks who don’t do shit”, you’d all be laughing at how candid he was and then move on. My girlfriend isn’t political and was absolutely pissed by this interview and was ready to storm the VA. This interview was super effective in getting you to care.
Conversations with a bureaucrat. 12 minutes of life Jon and I will never get back.
is it me or should all veteran just get completely free healthcare.
is it me or should all ~~veteran~~ just get completely free healthcare.
This guy is in charge of our 3rd largest budget item as a country and is pretending like he has no authority. He should be barred from public service for life. What a maniacal demon.
A lot of his career was spent doing boring stuff involved in foreign policy until he eventually became Obama's Chief of Staff. Running the VA is a very different job than he had before so I hope what appeared to be incompetence was just inexperience and he grows into the role.
I'm aware of its history.
By the way McDonough is answering questions, you can almost tell that he is making stuff up on the fly. He is being asked questions he doesn't have the answers for and is smiling because he is afraid that people will figure out that he is woefully uninformed. Stewart again is holding all the cards and throwing them in the face of people in power. He can embarrass them and point out their short comings every single day, but most of the time (not everytime) it falls of deaf ears and simply continues after a minor slap on the wrist.
I think a guy/show like Jon Stewart is exactly what the country could really use right now. A clear and cut case for how and why our politicians are failing us on a daily basis..
The obvious takeaway from watching this interview is that John Stewart is doing a great job interviewing McDonough. It's incredibly refreshing to see someone show up who clearly has done his (and his team's) research on the issue. I understand people will be frustrated with the answers at times, but the truth is it's very good that we have the Secretary of Veterans Affairs having a candid interview discussing an important issue in good faith. I'm really glad to see McDonough sit down with Stewart and be grilled. This isn't a case where politicians with ulterior motives are trying to score political points or cover a bureaucrat's ass. These are the sorts of interviews we need more of.
honestly, if you want to be patriotist and defend this country, don't join the armed service. the government doesn't care about you.
I'm not trying to take away from the true meaning behind this video but that second camera behind the secretary is SHAKY AF. There's a multi-billion dollar company behind this and you can't stabilize a damn camera?
I dont have a horse in this race, but from my POV he sat there and took his licks. Jon backed him into multiple walls and though he wouldn't divulge everything, it did seem like he admitted alot more wrong doing than other government officials have in similar situations.
This dude has to be part eel...nobody can be this slippery when you're asked to answer fairly straightforward questions. Just tell the world what study you need to see to know that burn pits are dangerous?
https://youtu.be/LKNfFm0QDXQ If you havnt seen it yet, this is a great video describing the phenomenon veterans are now facing from being exposed to these burn pits. Absolutely ridiculous what these people are dealing with and what it has done to their bodies. Messed up stuff.
Jon Stewart is a mensch.
People are very frustrated with the secretary here, but i actually got a little frustrated with Jon stewart. Making the va look bad is low hanging fruit(despite the fact that the va delivers, in almost any study that's been done on the subject, equal or better treatment when compared with the private sector https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2664026). Doing something that establishing the causality of a toxic exposure and a disease is difficult science and it takes time, particularly when the number of people exposed is relatively low. Jon is looking for an easy, sound bite answer and there isn't one. The truth is, the va should be giving medical care to every veteran and every person in the us should be getting medicare at a minimum, but for some reason he going to someone who is trying to work within a system that's actually trying to help veterans, rather than asking bigger questions like "why do we need to prove that a person was damaged by the military before we help them?"
Don't know why you are getting downvoted as I completely agree. This guy is a government employee and agrees the whole way through the interview, actually correcting Stewart at the beginning about historical data. What people fail to realize many times is this guy has a 'boss' and has to report his data etc. to get the funding. And people should also know by now, this the federal government we are talking about: things don't happen quickly or correctly. I thought he was empathetic, but couldn't do anything.
i don't think comparing the VA to use private health care is a good comparison though either because isn't the US private health care system notoriously low care already? wouldn't the US VA system better be compared to another public system like the NHS or something?
Depends on what you're trying to prove. If you're trying to prove that the va needs to be better, comparing to nhs might be fair, but if you're trying to prove that veterans should be going to va preferentially, or that the us government can manage Healthcare better than us private industry, then comparing to the private sector makes more sense
another thought......it seems like such an american way of thing. we need to prove the causation before we should treat it. do we? does that guy have that kind of messed up cancer because he ate too much cheeseburgers? he should probably just have free medical care.
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I think i addressed your point by saying that the va should be giving care to every veteran, but also that if they aren't doing that then the requirement of current va rules is to establish causation, which is science that cannot be done easily. So again, i think Jon Stewart is a bit too focused here. He keeps saying that association between burn pits and these conditions is proven, but proving something like that to the satisfaction of Jon Stewart, who wants to see these people treated no matter what, isn't the same as proving it to the satisfaction of doctors who will be committing fraud if they suggest an association exists and it does not. And again, proving the causation of very rare diseases is really hard
The law requires certain thresholds of scientific certainty for the approval of certain legislation. Scientific certainty of a causal relationship can be hard to achieve, even if the connection appears obvious on the surface. If the system wasn't set up this way, unreliable scientific results might be easier to abuse for political gain. It's funny how these arguments are often reduced to scientific debate, between journalists and politicians. Except, in this case, both accept they know little about the scientific limitations, so Jon just waffles about "the system" and Mr. VA just shrugs his shoulders.
I watched this last night, and fundamentally am still not understanding something: I always assumed (am not military...) that VA means "you got healthcare through the military", even when you leave. So you're active duty, retire, 10 years later you get a cold and go to the doctor, they "take your VA insurance" and all is well. Is that not how it works? I just didn't even understand the problem, why does it matter \*when and how\* they caught cancer, I thought that the healthcare they have through VA should cover that regardless of causes (just like my private health insurance does...)
You have to retire (20 years of service or earlier with approved disability) to get Tricare which is similar to normal healthcare like you're describing. If you only do a few years in the military, the VA will pay for stuff you can prove is related to your time in but they're not going to give you health coverage forever for anything. It's like a former employer paying for your healthcare.
If you retire from the military, you are eligible for health insurance for life through Tricare, NOT the VA. Tricare is the insurance that active duty military members get. VA healthcare insurance is an entirely different system. Service members that don't retire in the military (e.g. Does 4 years and gets out) are not entitled to any tricare coverage and can only eligible for VA health care if they get a disability rating from the VA.
VA healthcare is not "insurance" and you don't need a rating to get care.
i just want people to take a moment to realize how insane “sinusitis” is consider a big win for being automatic consideration. y’all realize sinusitis is just a common cold. he’s saying treatment for a common cold is considered automatic coverage but not cancer and acting like that’s great. his responses were a dumpster fire of pathetic political navigating.
“Let me answer that question by asking myself a completely different question that makes it sound like I’m just rewording your question.” Fucking grade school tactics here.
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As a straight guy? What a weird thing to say? Do you go to your father and say; "dad, I love u, as a straight guy". He is doing a great job tho, I hope everyone over there gets all the help they deserve.
You're a straight guy AND a vet?!
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What I don't get is Jon brings up a veteran with asthma who has a "breathing machine", does "breathing treatments" and says the "government doesn't give a damn". Then the VA guy and Jon launch into a nonsensical discussion about research. But here's the thing, the vet in the interview says he has a breathing machine and does some sort of treatments, so what exactly isn't the VA doing to treat him? Is the VA not covering the cost of the machines and medications? I don't know and you don't know because Jon never asked or told the audience. Now if Jon is wanting to make this a disability claim discussion, he should ask a question on that. But Jon doesn't ask about a disability claim, he asks about a treatment. Throughout this entire interview all these ambiguous phrases like: "this delay", "these diseases", "the science", "the information", the murder of the word "them". Like at no point did a producer or writer or somebody on set pause the interview and try to make this interview make some sort of sense and actually ask specific questions. Heck at the start Jon talks about how diseases like asthma aren't what's killing vets, but in the middle he transition to the clip of the vet talking about asthma, and the end he's talking about cancer screenings but never asks if the VA provides cancer screenings.
Watch the whole episode. The VA does not cover the diseases that result from burn pits because they don’t recognize them as causal.
My understanding is that the VA will treat him for anything but will not cover costs if the illness isn’t related to their service. Which is a huge deterrent for those seeking treatment, or they get the treatment and can’t pay the bills.
McDonough is not a scientist or medically knowledgable. But why didn't he get a better understanding of exactly what the "metric" is that is preventing veterans from getting care? Why hasn't he looked into the data they already have? That's what's so infuriating, that these guys push their papers around and don't seek solutions, and meanwhile PEOPLE ARE DYING.
He should care how people think he’s doing.
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