VA Exec Insists Agent Orange is Harmless & Orders C-123 Exposure Claim Denied: Earns $11,000 Bonus!

Its true. The recent release of VA executive bonuses revealed a sore point about a sore point.

A C-123 veteran's claim for Agent Orange exposure was ordered denied by VA's Compensation and Pension Service with the statement that Agent Orange is harmless. Hard to believe, right?

Here is is. A regional office had recommended approval of a C-123 veteran's Agent Orange exposure claim and, following instructions in VA 21-1MR, forwarded the case to a special desk at VBA's Compensation and Pension Service. Quickly, the claim was slapped down and ordered denied.

In the Advisory Opinion sent back to the regional office, the Director of Compensation and Pension summaries the official findings by the CDC/ATSDR that C-123 vets were exposed to Agent Orange and suffer a 200-fold greater cancer risk with the misleading sentence in the summary paragraph, "In summary, there is no evidence of adverse health effects from TCDD exposure."

This executive earned $11,000 by overlooking the reams of VA official documentation labeling

TCDD "a potent human carcinogen." This executive earned $11,000 by ignoring the requirement in his department's own rules that all a non-Vietnam vet needs to prove is Agent Orange exposure, and the executive twisted the denial into one citing no proof of medical nexus...a requirement not mentioned in the law, VA rules, Federal Register...only in his mindset that the clam must be denied.

Maybe he was too focused on that $11,000 bonus to read the law correctly.

VA Abuses Physician Incentives

Note: The C-123 Veterans note that performance expectations of military personnel, up to the point of sacrifice of life and limb, are expected and not rewarded with any bonus.

The Department of Veterans Affairs awards performance-pay bonuses to doctors without a clear policy on merits for the payments that average $8,000 a year and that go, in some cases, to physicians disciplined or reprimanded, says a governmental review.

According to a Government Accountability Office report recently issued, investigators found that during the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years:

• A $7,663 performance-pay bonus went to a VA doctor who was reprimanded for practicing medicine with an expired license for three months.

• A $11,189 bonus was given to a surgeon who was suspended without pay for 14 days after leaving an operating room before surgery was completed, allowing residents to continue unsupervised.

• A $7,500 pay bonus went to a doctor who was reprimanded for refusing to see assigned patients in an emergency room, actions that forced 15 patients to wait six hours to be treated and led nine other patients to leave without treatment.

• An $8,216 bonus was paid to a radiologist whose privileges had been reduced for failing to read mammograms and other complex images competently.