VA Organ Transplant Scandal Exposed By Whistleblower
The KARE 11 NBC news team just exposed massive problems within the VA organ transplant system forcing some veterans into extreme hardship.
The VA transplant program is forcing extremely sick veterans to travel sometimes over a thousand miles to receive transplants they could get right in their backyard. The hardship has risked the lives of many veterans and even resulted in death.
The examples are numerous.
VA ORGAN TRANSPLANT EXAMPLES
One medic, Aaron Arch needed a lung transplant while living in San Antonio. Lots of hospitals capable of the procedure in Texas, but VA forced Arch to get the transplant from Madison, Wisconsin.
Another veteran, John Moore, was forced to repeatedly travel from his home in Minnesota to Texas over 10 years for treatment of his Hepatitis C. He eventually died while waiting for a liver transplant.
Jamie McBride, a whistleblower at San Antonio VA, is the Program Manager for the Solid Organ Transplants program there. He reported problems with the program to VA OIG and Congress claiming unnecessary complications in the system was putting veterans’ lives at risk without justification.
Veterans thought the invention of Veterans Choice would help alleviate the problems, but VA has gummed up that system, too. Veterans seeking care in their community are being turned away by the program that claims it only pays for half the procedure.
For example, veterans seeking kidney transplants are able to get the surgery but Veterans Choice refuses to pay for the removal of the donor kidney, usually a normal part of the process. VA claims it will not cover any portion of any procedure on a non-veteran.
Now, if the veteran sought the same kidney transplant at the location VA requires over 1,000 miles away, VA would cover the procedure despite the donor kidney coming from a non-veteran.
How does that make sense?
The bureaucratic red tape within VA health care is beyond repair. Veterans Choice was supposed to help, but isn’t it clear that the agency is intentionally keeping that program broken?
08/20/2016
Dear Benjamin Krause,
Have you forgotten who the VA Attorneys are? And what those Attorneys have done?
Look deeper into this.
Do not forget the past deeds the VA has been involved with—Dr. Michael Mastromarino, etc…
The Garzones pleaded guilty to selling 244 Philadelphia cadavers to Michael Mastromarino, a disgraced oral surgeon who owned Biomedical Tissue Services Inc., of Fort Lee, N.J., and paid the Garzones $1,000 a corpse.
https://articles.philly.com/2008-10-23/news/25264402_1_biomedical-tissue-services-michael-mastromarino-body-parts
Biological Resource Center update: New details in investigation linked …
http://www.abc15.com/…/exclusive-fbi-releases-new-details-in-body-brokers-in...
KNXV‑TV
Mar 19, 2015 – Their cameras captured federal agents removing body parts arms, legs, … Arizona’s Attorney General could not comment on specific details …
Who do you think got those body parts?
Sincerely,
Don Karg
Folks, I have had a liver transplant from the VA in 2005. I found that I had Hep C in 03. Thank you USN. The next 2 years i jumped through ALL the hoops necessary in order to be qualified for said transplant. This was a process of disqualification rather than health care. I was told that I wasn’t going to get a transplant more than a few times. I was forcibly confined to a nursing home at 46 years old. I died 3 different times and didn’t quite get away with it if you know what I mean. After the third time I died, did they send me to the University of Nebraska Right here in Omaha NE? UNO has a nationally recognized transplant center within 15 miles of my home. Hell NO. They flew me, in an air ambulance with myself as the only passenger to PITTSBURG PA. To make a long story shorter, I had to go to The Pitts (as I called it) 5 separate times for weeks at a time. Causing my wife to lose her job. She NEVER left my side through the whole thing. Already in dire financial straights from my inability to work. Her not being able to work destroyed us financially. We lost our home, drove a $400 car and lived in an rental house by the grace of our landlord who went two months without a dime from us. I now am doing well with the transplant and I was even one of the lucky ones to get the Harvoni treatment. I am now Hep C free and my liver PA says I’m CURED. HOWEVER, I now live with the side effects from all that fine medical care. The anti rejection drug are eating my joints away. I live in 7-8 pain (on the 10 scale). From being dead, I have memory problems and even have trouble remembering my grand childrens names. Gastro problems. I’m almost as sick as I was before the transplant. AND THE FUCKING VA WILL DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!!! I wish that they would have just let me die. My only hope is that Trump gets it and I can go to COMPENTENT doctors outside the VA deathcare system. I have given a name to my enemy and that name is the Veterans Administration.
[@Ben]>> but isn’t it clear that the agency is intentionally keeping that program broken?
crystal clear & then some
None of this makes sense, but I am just a veteran I guess.
I am wondering what hoops the VA makes a veteran and their families jump through to go to another VA for a transplant, when the VA will not even send a vet to a larger VA hospital nearby for specialist care.
I am also wondering where the vast billions in the VA budget are going, or the vast billions given to Choice.
Perhaps the VA Black Hole is allowing this transplant travesty to rise into the news in preparation for/laying groundwork the next monetary sacrifice (money grab) to same Black Hole? All Vets receive in return is an after meal belch while the Black Hole cries for an after dinner mint. 🙂
Ben, Forgot another hidden cost the VA does too only pays 50% of hotel bills when sent any where for medical care outside ones VA we go to, Further they only pay 50% of food bills as well , even if one has to have a driver or a non-medical attendant! more ways to go in-debt and die for our country of lies!
So reading the linked news article, one finds the true reason for this lunacy. Manage costs.
Care for veterans does not even enter the equation.
But a question comes up. Why the hell are both the VA and Congress silent on CHAMPVA? Have they so gutted that program that it can no longer be used?
If Choice won’t cover getting an organ from a non veteran, why not use CHAMPVA?
Last question. What the hell kind of thinking goes on in these idiots that believe sick veterans being shipped around the country for transplants is OK, or denying transplants is OK, all to manage costs, but think nothing of spending millions on art for blind veterans, or having to import building materials from Brazil?
Typical. I used to be amazed at the shocking bureaucratic stupidity of thinking like this coming out of the EU, or similar nitwittery coming out of a communist state, but now it has infested the bureaucrats in government, and VA excels at this.
I may be wrong, but I understood that the VA has to pay travel costs for veterans being sent to other VA’s for treatment..unless these idiots have found a way to screw vets out of that as well. Where is the common sense of paying travel costs of sending a veteran 1000 miles away for a transplant and paying travel costs to do so? If the veteran is sent 1000 miles away for it, what does the veteran do for follow-up care after the transplant? Are they told to go back to their local VA to see their PCP (nurse practitioner? Physicians assistant?) for this follow up by someone with no training in transplant after care?
But then, the daily stories posted here and elsewhere about how absolutely distastrous the VA is now make no sense either.
Did I miss something here? What lame excuse is the VA giving for this nonsense?
@91veteran- “Did I miss something here? What lame excuse is the VA giving for this nonsense?”
That’s the thing, the V.A. Titanic has no excuse, thinking all is FUBAR. This is the exact thinking White Star Lines had about the original Titanic in that this ship is unsinkable. Even the typical VA Trolls are quiet and not defending this egregious organ transplant scavenger hunt.
I ask again:
Would a VA AFGE Employee needing an organ transplant *only* be allowed to have paid for a transplanted organ *only* from another AFGE VA employee, as how Vets are only allowed to have other Veteran’s organs as transplants???? See how this makes absolutely no sense to have these rules and how it all comes down to $$$???
I can’t believe they are lining they would be lining up for donations from little cox, but then again, they are likely vultures with everything else,, so why not.
This is not life or death as in the article, but when i used an emergency room that is 1.2 mi. from my house (i measured it) i figured i would be reimbursed by the VA. The other two VA ER hospitals i use are 17 mi and 27mi. I was really hurting. When i called about reimbursement, the first question i was asked, “was this visit life-threatening”. I reasoned that if you need help outside the VA, you better be close to death.
Hey Benjamin,
It’s pretty scary that the VA organ transplant system is hurting lives instead of saving them. It’s horrible that this is happening to our country’s veterans, but hopefully the system will be fixed because of the whistle-blower.
Dennis
@Dennis
What you mean, “…hopefully the system will be fixed because of the Whistle-blower.”
Haven’t you been keeping up? Whistleblowers end up with the short hairs! Their lives are turned upside down. They are more than likely fired, made out to be disgruntled employees or some other such B/S!
What needs to happen is a lot of these alleged VA healthcare employees need to start seeing long prison terms! Upper echelon employees need to see prison also!
Those bonuses should be repaid – with interest! If they refuse, send them to prison work farms!
What I’d like to see is for “Old Sparky” to be cleaned up and used AGAIN AND AGAIN!
Am I being too harsh? NO! Because I’ve never let a veteran die because of incompetence or lack of compassion!
Where is the outrage from the, “Stupid-in the- face men’s clubs”, AL, VFW, DAV, VVA???????? enough to make a reasonable person wonder how much of a kick back they get for not rocking the boat.
CHOICE PROGRAM? Va parasite, vampire , union werewolves managed to drown the CHOICE program in inpenetrable red tape to protect VA jobs.
The VA states it can *only* use harvested organs from other Veterans and will in no case pay for the harvesting of organ from anyone that is not a Veteran either. WTF???!!
Does this mean in ‘VA-Speak’ that “We at the VA only wish to use experimentally deeply frozen organs from Veterans we have killed but we have no idea what blood type or if any infectious diseases exist, let’s make it work!”
My point is the VA is killing Vets by inventing new red tape and runarounds and distance impasses that are not realistic in real world to any family, let alone a single Vet, and even IF the VA performs needed organ transplant after the Vet jumps through all the hoops and is still alive, there is NO guarantee the VA is not going to give you HIV or who knows, from said operation, MRSA from idiot VA employees that cannot operate or properly sterilize surgical equipment…you get f*cked either way with a little special gift that the VA will deny because nothing was documented, that set of Dr.’s no longer listed there, moved off-shore from pending lawsuits and extradition attempts for abusing Vets…the list goes on.
What can we as collective of Vets do even beyond freaking billboards? Skywriting over D.C.??
Help me understand why none of this is logical in what the VA has evolved or devolved into? Really…this does not compute.
Can anyone say;
“POPULATION CONTROL!”
Just as is done in all major cities with Planned Parenthood!
Why else is VA refusing to save veterans lives!
Yeah, those ‘green crackers’ at the VAMC Cafeteria may not be just mold covered after all, they may be something akin to that movie “Soylent Green”, another great American actor’s movie, Charlton Heston. 🙂
Where’s McCain and all the so-called VSO’s crying foul on the VA’s Organ Transplant red tape and Vet’s dying?
Rep. Miller’s loud Hurrumphs have not done a thing to even encourage the VA or McDuck to do the right thing all this time, how will this be any different?
However, I BET if any AFGE VA Employee needs a freaking organ transplant, they are NOT limited to ONLY other AFGE Members are they? See my logic or attempt to convey it?
Reference info to movie and crazyelf’s comment on population control, again SciFi has predicted the future(1973), “Soylent Green”: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green”
In yesterday’s “Comment Section” Seymore Klearly put some current news articles on about HOW VA is spending taxpayers monies, (11:05 pm). (I’ve left off the authors names and news sources!)
titles!
1.)
“Deadly, Scandal Ridden VA Hospital Addresses Crisis With…Interior Designers”
2.)
“VA’s Army of Bored Interior Designers Can’t Keep Their Hands Off Brazilian Wood”
3.)
“VA’s ‘Candy Man’ Faces More Sanctions”
4.)
“VA Labor Contracts Favors Union Bureaucrats Over Vets For Jobs”
These articles, and many more, show – without a shadow of a doubt – VA contracts, the union (AFGE), VA (VBA and VHA) directors and other VA upper echelon personnel ARE, in my opinion, “skimming off the top” of taxpayers monies.
Basically, an “All for one and one for all” scheme! There’s absolutely no way all that money is going for veterans healthcare, compensations, employees pay and/or other items, ie: law suits, etc.!
Look at the contracts over the hospitals being built. The items being purchased. Or where no one can find out WHY certain items were being purchased, etc., etc., etc.! The list goes on and on!
Is there any way for someone, anyone, to find out WHERE all those BILLIONS of taxpayers monies are actually going?
Are the monies being hidden in ‘off shore accounts’, just waiting for the hammer to fall on 20 Jan 2017, IF a certain person takes office? VA has had decades to “skim”! Especially since 2014, when all Hell Broke Loose on VA! Maybe ‘Wikileaks’ can help on this!
We, on here and many other sites, see the corruption, abuse, fraud and waste on almost a daily basis! Its been reported and Congress has done little to nothing to correct it!
Miller said “…VA could correct this (today’s blog issue) situation internally!” Well, why hasn’t it been corrected? In my opinion, VA upper echelon has been pocketing the monies in the different VISN’s!
Can anyone say “BONUSES” will be paid AGAIN this year, in violation of federal law!?
I’d like to see lots of VA employees being carted off to jail over this s++t! And I do mean LOTS!
P.S.
I also forgot to remind all about;
The $6.5 TRILLION the DOD “LOST” in the past 10 years or so!
Of course, it’s been said, and I truly believe incorrectly, there’s NO CONNECTION between VA and the DOD!
So, If, as it’s been said, the “VA is a civilian entity”, is VA like “Planned Parenthood”?
We all know P.P. is government run and subsidized. And now there’s a hard push to “defund” it.
Maybe, this is what needs to be done to VA.
Side note: (in my opinion)
Planning Parenthood was/is solely a Democratic agency, therefore a civilian+federal government entity, to stop our country from ‘over populating”!
This is especially true in the ‘inner cities’ where the “lower economic citizens resides and Planned Parenthood thrives!”
My hypothesis or theory is that as reported in today’s full story, THOUSANDS of Vets have DIED from the VA’s insane organ transplant made-up-rules-as-they-go, ONLY to protect the freaking billable hours of the VA’s Pretend Dr.’s to PRACTICE and EXPERIMENT on Vets with NO LIABILTY. Veteran Lab Rats No MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today’s story kind of sent me over the edge. The VA has completely turned the Choice Program inside-out and took a crap on it and put it back inside and served it warm.
Rep. Miller may have taunted with words to Sec. McDonald but I am afraid his brain has been replaced with exact replacement rocks he had at P&G. Rep. Miller might as well have been talking to his own asshole. (well, I guess he was in a sense) 🙂
If the VA could get away with telling a Vet that they would have to somehow get to the International Space Station for their transplant, they would. Rat Bastards, all of them.
The issue is as always the VA has their collective heads up their wall-o-chocolate-o
Today’s article only proves that most so-called “VA Leaders” have had their brains removed in a transplant operation and instead of a new brain they installed a fresh box of rocks that have absolutely no mineral value.
Yes, I am implying the VA is BRAIN DEAD but only on the life support of Fraud & Corruption, the only thing keeping the paint sticking to the walls at this point.
The Medical side of the VA needs to be demolished and give every Vet a Medicare Authorization for Private Medical and allow Social Security to take over the claims and appeals process of the VBA/VHA. This bullshit needs to stop and now.
Were it available, you will still have kiss the Fee Basis/Choice card/PC3 Program employees ^%$! They misuse even the tiniest little bit of authority they have.
It is very clear that Robert McDonald has to be fired.
Seymore, I’d like to see McDuck, and many more, fired and arrested for all the illegal acts committed against veterans/senior citizens and taxpayers!
Firing him/them will not help. It hasn’t before is all i’m saying. Gonna take someone in WH to initiate a true fix ALONG with “somehow” getting a veteran social change movement to sprout & grow.
Firing “Ask Bob” will not accomplish the task. There is a culture of denial, and my VA execs needed fired, mostly, they need to clean house of the “dead wood.” The problem is the VAOIG..they are impotent, and VA needs a real independent prosecution/investigation team and not this Kangaroo court that “makes reccommendations” to management, with no follow up or assurance the “recommendations” are complied with. As long as we keep the fox (VAOIG) in charge of guarding the hen house, the chickens (Veterans) will continue to be manipulated or even killed to support this “fox only” bonus system for politically well connected management.
You are correct to a certain extent, but the source of the IG problem is elsewhere.
The source of the IG problem is and has been Obama starting in 2009 when he fired and smeared at least 4 IGs from other agencies for doing their jobs investigating friends of Obama and cronyism. There are several news stories about this, with one of the more blatant ones involving Gerald Walpin, IG at Americorps. He was investigating Obama crony Kevin Johnson for misusing Americorps funds. The WH then smeared Walpin. Walpin just died in June. Walpin filed a civil suit over the firing and smearing in 2009 claiming it violated the 2008 Inspector General Act, but the suit was dismissed by a Clinton appointed judge in 2010. Other fired IGs were Barofsky investigating Obama stimulus spending, and Gwynne from the International Trade Commission. Walpin and the IG firings caused any other IGs to shut up, or declare open season on looting federal agencies.
The other source of the problem is Congress, who should have been holding Obama accountable for violating laws regarding Inspectors General. Senator Grassley tried, but it went nowhere.