The Sacred Trust: A Historical Account of Commitments and Failed Promises to Our American Veterans

By Thomas D. Plantz MHA

Its been hundreds of years since United States war veterans entered a covenant with their governmentone that promised they would be cared for physically and mentally.

But the scandal that broke out at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans Medical Center in Phoenix, in May 2014, showed that one side is not holding up its end of the bargain. That scandal rolled across the nation to other Veterans Affairs facilities, and the crisis is far from over.

Thomas D. Plantz, a retired health care executive and Vietnam combat veteran, highlights through his dedicated analysis how the VA and all levels of government have failed to ensure that veteransin a timely manner can access health care services. While the VA provides many excellent specialty services at its 150 acute care hospitals and 820 outpatient clinics, Plantz argues that its warts and blemishes distract from the good work provided by its physicians, nurses, and support personnel.

The VAs problems must be tackled, and a newly-elected president working in concert with a committed Congress, new VA executive leaders, and a public dedicated to providing treatment to our nations veterans would restore The Sacred Trust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Dec 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480839236

Thomas D. Plantz MHA

Thomas D. Plantz, MHA, was born and educated in Minneapolis. He is a retired health care executive with a Master of Healthcare Administration, from the University of Minnesota and is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Plantz served as a U.S. Air Force officer and is a Vietnam combat veteran. He draws upon his Midwestern values, patriotism, and health care expertise to paint a portrait of broken promises in The Sacred Trust. Tom currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 Thomas D. Plantz, MHA.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3922-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4074-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3923-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920149

Archway Publishing rev. date: 11/23/2016

Contents

My Father

Introduction

Chapter 1 Historical Commitments and the Sacred Trust

Chapter 2 Failed Promises

Chapter 3 Storm Clouds Developing

Chapter 4 The Crisis and Scandal

Chapter 5 Veterans’ Voices

Chapter 6 Congressional Voices

Chapter 7 The Issues Emerge

Chapter 8 The Problem Defined

Chapter 9 Quo Vadis?

Chapter 10 Going Forward

Chapter 11 Some Final Thoughts

Epilogue

Sources and Notes

Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs speaks out…

Representative Jeff Miller (R, FL) a twenty-one year member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and its chairman for six years has been an outstanding champion for numerous veterans’ measures. His powerful committee provides oversight of the VA system, the second largest department in the federal government with over 300,000 employees and a budget of $150 billion. Miller’s statements in Oct 2015 were directed at Hillary Clinton who has consistently downplayed the VA scandal and crisis.

Whether it is continued delays in veterans’ medical care, the blatant waste of billions of taxpayer dollars or, a rampant lack of accountability throughout every corner of the VA organization, there is simply no denying that the problems of the VA are indeed widespread. Anyone who would claim the opposite simply is not paying attention.

The Va scandal was caused by dishonest bureaucrats who chose to whitewash the VA’s problems rather than solve them. Those who repeat that shameful behavior are only short-changing our veterans while giving failed VA bureaucrats cover for malfeasance.

American veterans and taxpayers are rightly asking themselves, when will the madness at the VA end?

To my father, the epitome of the American soldier and veteran

To all who have served and continue to serve their country

MY FATHER

My father, Chief Master Sergeant George R. Plantz, United States Air Force, retired, a combat veteran of World War II, flew fifty-eight missions as a ball turret gunner on a B-24 bomber with General Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers in China. Dad received the Air Medal, Purple Heart, and Distinguished Flying Cross. His service carried over to the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.

Dad’s love of country displayed through forty years of military service (1929–1969) is a source of great pride for me and serves as a constant reminder of the sacrifices made by members of our American armed services who unselfishly place duty, honor, and country ahead of themselves.

INTRODUCTION

My roots were in Minneapolis, where I was educated and worked for a part of my career. Loving parents, nuns, Christian brothers, and college professor priests instilled in me a value system, a zest for life, and a strong Midwestern work ethic. This preparation grounded me well as an air force officer, Vietnam veteran, and health-care executive.

During my master’s degree work at the University of Minnesota in the early 1970s, I began to see a changing society. As a member of a military family, I grew up with profound respect for our American service heritage. I was troubled by the increasing number of social dissidents who were rapidly checking out of my world, which was grounded in strong values and respect for authority, life, and the tenets that make our country great. As we know, all too many lost their moral compasses in the 1960s and 1970s.

What motivated me to write The Sacred Trust was simply my love of country, my own military and health-care experience, and my profound respect for my fellow servicepersons. Each of these altruistic vectors became the catalyst and motivation for me to pen this manuscript.

As the crisis and scandal broke at the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix in May 2014, spreading across our country like a wildfire, the blight befalling our veterans deeply troubled and touched me. I closely followed this national problem over the past two one-half years, and I was very much appalled by what was going on and, worse yet, the obvious lack of substantive responses from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It is still quiet!

I volunteered to help the VA, telling them that I believed my credentials might be of some help to them, given my forty-two-year career in health-care leadership roles. I left it to them as to how they wished to use me. The VA’s response took nearly three months, not unlike my fellow veterans who were in the queue for months without being given an appointment or assignment to a physician. Their response politely said in a one-liner, Nice background but no need at this time. Yes, this rebuff in not being able to serve my country once again indeed disappointed me. I suppose, somewhere in a government back office, a HR person determined, This dude is too old.

It was then that I decided to write The Sacred Trust. The wordsmithing experience was almost as good as returning to the CEO hot seat. I never thought that one day I would write a book, but the inspiration I received in discussion with family and friends, combined with my depth of experience in health-care leadership roles, became the catalyst that many months later would produce The Sacred Trust.

It’s been a great ride!

No matter how much wisdom may go into planning, whether it be an insurance program, an armed invasion of a continent, or a campaign to reduce the inroads of disease, the measure of its success will always be the spirit and mettle of the individuals engaged in its execution. No matter how much treasure may support a project, or how elaborate its organization, or how detailed and farsighted its operational scheme, the human element is always the central one.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

CHAPTER 1

Historical Commitments and the Sacred Trust

Once upon a time, as the story goes and long before the Veterans Bureau was established in 1921 and subsequently the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) came about in 1930, our American veterans received care and support. These efforts reach back to colonial times, as long ago as 1636. The Pequot Indians were at war with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony. A law passed by the colony provided support for soldiers disabled by war wounds. This statute marked the beginning of a more than three hundred-year-long metamorphosis involving commitments made to US veterans by our federal government.

In 1776, during the early days of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress sought enlistments to grow the army’s ranks and provided pensions to soldiers disabled during the fighting. In those early days of our emerging nation, colonies and local communities provided direct hospital and medical care to veterans in the community.

In 1811, the federal government built the first domiciliary, as the medical facilities were called. Following that, the federal government made expansionary additions in the areas of benefits and pensions, not only for veterans but also for their widows and dependents.

The first national effort to provide medical care for disabled American vets was the Naval Home, established in Philadelphia in 1812. Two facilities in Washington, DC—the Soldiers Home in 1853 and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1855—followed.

In his second inaugural address in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln called upon Congress to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. President Lincoln’s words would later become the motto for the VA. On March 3, 1865, Congress passed legislation to establish the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers and sent it to President Lincoln for signature. The president signed the bill on March 5, six weeks before his assassination. It was later renamed the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. Historian Patrick Kelly suggests that the speed with which the legislation passed speaks more to the reaction of Congress to the imminent end of the Civil War and to public sentiment than to any carefully planned solution for the particular problems of disabled veterans.

Suzanne Julin, in her dissertation on this legislation, provides an assessment of its significance as a national historic landmark. This new law provided care for volunteer soldiers who had been disabled through loss of limb, wounds, disease, or injury during service in the Union forces in the American Civil War. It represented a policy for veterans’ benefits that directly influenced the development of a national system for veterans’ health care in the United States. It was the first real signal of a departure from the previous focus on care for professional soldiers. It established the federal government’s commitment and concern for the well-being of the civilian soldier by providing the first design for a comprehensive system of care for veterans, that is, inpatient or outpatient medical and mental health care for the elderly and/or blind; domiciliary care; and vocational-educational assistance.

Of interest, Julin states, the men served by the institution were first referred to as inmates, a term that fell into disuse during the 1880s and was replaced with beneficiaries, soldiers, men, and members.

During the late 1800s, national homes for veterans were established in many states to provide veterans with domiciling care, together with medical and hospital treatment covering diseases and injuries, whether service-related or not. Veterans of the Civil War, Indian Wars, and the Spanish-American War, along with other regular members of the armed