In the News

Congress will meet with Veterans Affairs Department officials next week to demand answers on how the agency is handling appeals filed by veterans whose compensation claims were denied. The focus on the Board of Veterans Appeals comes as the VA works at restoring trust to a department seriously shaken by confirmed reports of secret wait lists, systemic manipulation of patient data and instances of veterans dying before getting to see a doctor. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colorado, told Military.com on ... Read more

A draft report that could show whether top officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs pressured the agency’s inspector general to soften its damning assessment of patient deaths at a Phoenix hospital is being withheld from a congressional oversight committee, the Washington Examiner has learned. Richard Griffin, acting inspector general at the veterans’ agency, is refusing to turn over the draft version, which was submitted to top VA officials for comment prior to the publication of the fi... Read more

They know the effects are real and lasting; they deal with them every day. The problem for two Highlands County Gulf War veterans is they think the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is slow to offer those veterans assistance and they want other former military personnel to know they have support. Larry Roberts and Randy Livingston both served with the U.S. Army during Desert Shield-Desert Storm in the early 1990s and both have chronic health problems they attribute to exposure during their to... Read more

Plenty of bold-face names in Colorado — from U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet* to House Speaker Mark Ferrandino — have taken the ALS icebucket challenge, which has raised more than $100 million to fight those suffering from ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The craze has swept the country. From former President George W. Bush: “To you all who challenged me, I do not think it’s presidential for me to be splashed with ice water, so I’m simply going to write you a check.” From former First Lady Laura Bush: “Th... Read more

What does it take for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire a rogue employee? That’s a question the Montgomery Advertiser asked after an agency employee allegedly drove a patient to a crack house and left him there overnight. The newspaper, which serves Alabama’s second-largest city, said in a recent editorial that the VA’s response raises questions about “what constitutes a firing offense in the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System, if indeed anything.” The VA employee — a peer-sup... Read more

If Russian military units with more than 1,000 soldiers are operating in eastern Ukraine, as a spokesman for NATO's senior command said Thursday, then President Obama needn't hesitate from describing what's happening there as a Russian invasion. That's what it is, and not merely a "continuation of what's been taking place for months now," as the president said at a press conference Thursday. It's a carefully controlled invasion, of course. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Pow... Read more

Earlier this month, NACS Grassroots reached a new level of community involvement with the launch of the NACS In Store initiative. The program invites members of Congress to spend a few hours at a local convenience store during their congressional recess, giving the legislators an opportunity to experience what really happens in our industry. During the visit, legislators are given a tour by store employees and learn first-hand how proposed legislation — such as menu labeling, data security and ... Read more

The U.S. House Committee on Veteran's Affairs is seeking answers about why a Tuskegee VA employee took a recovering patient to a crack house and is still employed more than a year later. U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, wrote a letter to VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald on Thursday detailing the Montgomery Advertiser's Aug. 17 story on an investigation that found the employee was guilty of patient abuse, misuse of government vehicles,... Read more

A bipartisan group of lawmakers demanded Wednesday that the Department of Veterans Affairs improve its response to an independent board created to look at Gulf War illness. "It has been of great concern to us that VA's reaction to reports of the congressionally mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans Illnesses, detailing VA staff manipulation of Gulf War research to mischaracterize the health problems of these veterans, has been to eliminate the independence of the committee, ... Read more

The deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced on Wednesday changes specific to the Eastern Colorado Health Care System, including the Colorado Springs clinic, stemming from the department's unflattering audit of healthcare access wait times. "We still take too long to deliver decisions to our veterans, we still don't meet our quality standards and there are occasions where the quality of our data, the integrity of our data ... has been called into question," Deputy S... Read more