Hospitals & Asylums 

 

 

VA Hyperinflation Discrimination is Not an Accounting Error HA-29-7-21

 

By Anthony J. Sanders

 

A. Department of Veterans Affairs pension program pre-date the nation.  The VA benefits system traces its roots back to 1636, when the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony were at war with the Pequot Indians and the Pilgrims passed a law which stated that disabled soldiers would be supported by the colony. The establishment of the Veterans Administration came in 1930 when Congress authorized the President to "consolidate and coordinate Government activities affecting war veterans" to fulfill President Lincoln’s promise – “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” with An act to authorize the President to consolidate and coordinate governmental activities affecting war veterans", approved July 3, 1930. President Herbert Hoover wrote Executive Order 5398—Establishing the Veterans' Administration on July 21, 1930. On March 15, 1989, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that elevated the Veterans Administration to full Cabinet status, and renamed it as the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 

1. Funding for the VA has increased significantly since 2012, with total funding growing by $72.5 billion (+37%) from 2018, and by $143.2 billion, (+113%) since 2012. The total 2022 request for VA is $269.9 billion (with medical collections), a 10.0% increase above 2021. The discretionary budget request of $117.2 billion (with medical collections), a 9.0% increase above 2021. The 2022 mandatory funding request is $152.7 billion, an increase of $14.9 billion or 10.8% above 2021. This funding is in addition to the $17.8 billion provided to VA in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (P.L. 117-2). With the Transformational Fund resources and medical collections, the total 2022 funding level is $270.7 billion, a 10.4% increase above 2021. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (P.L. 114-113) created the Recurring Expenses Transformational Fund, which allows VA to transfer un-obligated balances of expiring discretionary funds in any of its accounts into the Transformational Fund for use as directed in the Act. The 2023 Medical Care Advance Appropriations request includes a discretionary funding request of $115.5 billion (with medical care collections). The 2023 mandatory AA request is $156.6 billion for Veterans benefits programs (Compensation and Pensions, Readjustment Benefits, and Veterans Insurance and Indemnities). Because these are merely conservative estimates of year's spending in two years and are not included in next year budget request total, VA AA are not emphasized for inclusion in the undistributed offsetting receipt table.

 

Veterans Administration FY 19- FY 24

(millions)

 

Source: Wilke, Roberts. Department of Veterans Affairs Budget-in-brief FY 2018 - FY 2022

 

B. For at least the past decade the VA has consistently exhibited the highest rate of inflation of any federal agency, in excess of 10% percent. The two primary reasons for this hyperinflation is 5% annual growth in medical employment and either 5% growth in the number of beneficiaries or average benefit amount. Normal services agency spending growth is 3% and net new employment growth is 1%.  VA anticipates supporting 425,428 Full-time Equivalent (FTE) staff in 2022, a 5% increase from 404,835 FY 21. The majority of the increase, 17,403 FTE, is in medical care, which will allow VA to meet continued growth for VA provided health care services, particularly due to COVID-19-related deferred care returning in 2022. After years of out of control 5% annual staffing increases, the VHA budget requests 369,847 FTE in 2022, 5% more than 352,427 FY 21, and 369,847 FTE in 2023, net zero growth. Veteran compensation and pensions, grows even faster than social security retirement because the annual social security percentage cost of living adjustment is added to both the percentage growth in population and arbitrary increase in degree of disability determinations that takes all (the decrease in rate of new beneficiaries despite the lucky pandemic unemployment, post-retirement of the Vietnam era Baby Boomers). C&P inflation should not run more than 7%, roughly equal to pre-TCJA tax revenue growth, to be moderated by more controllable 3% medical spending growth, so that VA hyperinflation is post-TCJA repeal deficit neutral. However, after several attempts to reduce, there are no accounting errors, there is little that can be done, except set a reasonable spending growth limit on degree of disability adjustment that takes all. Individual Veterans are not to be denied. The last official to rob a Veteran's extra service pay was imprisoned and tortured in United States v. Thomas Fillebrown, Secretary of Commissioners of Navy Hospitals 32 US 28 7 Pet. 28 (1833).

 

1. The only accounting deficiency is that Congress is obligated to increase the VHA facilities appropriation by $265,320,000 to $7 billion FY 22 by 42 months (Revelation 13:10), to pay for a $165 million mathematical shortfall and two major non-recurring maintenance projects in Black Hills Health Care System costing $100 million, with a commensurate reduction in medical community care appropriation pursuant to the Anti-Deficiency Act under §1515(b)(1)(B). Medical community care spending became an independent spending category for the discretion of Congress in FY 17. Hyperinflation in excess of 20% has been evident in medical community care. It is suggested, medical community care should be folded back into medical services to remove this temptation to finance hyperinflation in private health care from the Democratic-Republican (DR) two party system, because medical community care is not an original obligation of the United States, the obligation for medical community care is based upon the VHA being unable to schedule an appointment in 30 days.

 

2. To explain the hyperinflation in medical services to $70.3 billion in FY 23, appropriations made by irregular coronavirus relief and other Acts of Congress are used to pay for obligations, but are not included in the regular budget estimates because it is from the $3.3 trillion that has been “bought” by the Federal Reserve pursuant to counterfeit currency under 31USC§5153. VA is on track to fully execute the $19.6 billion in funding provided in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) by Congress in March 2020, with over 75% obligated as of May 2021. The funding aided all levels of the VA COVID- 19 response, from procurement of test kits and specialized equipment, to the overtime and travel costs for our staff rotating into hot zones. VHA hired thousands of clinical and administrative staff across the health care system to ensure stability and continued delivery of care. VA added over 2,500 medical/surgical and Intensive Care Unit beds. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided VA with $17.1 billion in mandatory funding to sustain the VA COVID-19 response beyond the expiration of the CARES Act funding into 2022. ARP funding will also enable VA to reduce the backlog of Veteran benefit claims and appeals, improve supply chain management capabilities, and train Veterans unemployed due to COVID-19 in high demand occupations. Pursuant to the American Families Plan the VA has employed a child and family counselor and intends to improve women's health care. Women make up 16.5% of today’s Active Duty military forces and 19% of National Guard and Reserves.

 

3. As of 2021, at a total cost of about $100 billion for 7 million unique enrollees, not including other than honorable discharges treated to mental health care, the per capita cost of VA health care is $14,286. In comparison Military Health Service costs $60 billion to treat 9 million healthy, when uninjured, soldiers, their families and some retirees, a per capita cost of $6,666. Medicaid costs state and federal governments $522 billion for 77 million, a per capita cost of $6,779. Medicare costs $906 billion for about 65 million, a per capita cost of $13,939, not including out-of-pocket payments. It is not certain whether better VA health outcomes than commercial health care, are the result of having the highest per capita cost, of any public health insurance program, or simply because they do not abusively bill their patient, just the all-mighty federal government. It is unfortunate that medical hyperinflation to taxpayers compromises the integrity of VA health care. Military Health Service prices are not hyper-inflationary and the quality of care is believed to be high, although comparatively understudied, however recently they have been exhibiting another hidden danger of the command economy - attrition from unnecessary budget and staff cuts that seems to be opportunistic of their cost consciousness without respect for the inexorable force of inflation and population growth. What is wanted from the VA health care system is that their outrageous 10% spending and 5% employment growth be normalized, without any counterintuitive zero growth punishment phase, to annual 3% spending and 1% net employment growth while enrollment is expanded to cover all Veterans, nearly all the time, with high quality health care, that does not excessively bill the patient. Numerous studies have found that the VA consistently provides patients with better outcomes than private health care. VHA cost $75 billion in 2019. If the Veterans enrolled in 2019 had chosen to receive all of their health care in VA (100% reliance), it is estimated this would have required an additional $129 billion for a total of $204 billion in 2019, and only about 31% of Veterans are enrolled, although mental health services are available to all Veterans, and telemedicine consultations might be extended to all Veterans at little cost.

 

C. While the number of pension beneficiaries has been steadily decreasing due to 9.3% net rate of death during the beginning of the pandemic in FY 20, disability compensation beneficiaries have been increasing, but not quite enough to justify the increase in benefit spending. Between FY 20 and FY 21 the number of compensation beneficiaries increased by about 226,000 (4.1%), while pensions declined by 14,500 (-3.7%). FY 20 – FY 21 the total number of compensation and pension (C & P) beneficiaries is estimated to increase by about 213,000 (3.6%) while mandatory outlays increased $14,769 million (9.8%) with only a 1.3% COLA, degree of disability payments increased 4.9%. FY 21 – FY 22 the number of total number of beneficiaries is (over)estimated to increase by about 256,000 (4.2%) while spending is anticipated to increase $14,768 million (12%), the COLA is anticipated to be extremely high, between 4.5% and 6.5%, so degree of disability can be expected to moderate at 2. VBA FY 22 – FY 23 advance appropriation, the number of post-pandemic C & P beneficiaries is probably overestimated to increase about 229,000 (3.6%), while spending growth moderates to $8,451 million (6.2%), only enough for a 2.6% COLA. FY 23- FY 24 population growth is estimated at 183,000 (2.8%) and spending growth $7,040 million (4.9%) enough for a 2.1% COLA. Degree of disability adjustments may be a temporary injunction of COVID-19 pandemic overestimates. What may be wanted is that instead of excessively apologizing for the hyperinflation, VA C&P moderates inflation to 7%.

 

1. The GI Bill is a great deal. Based on length of active duty service and training rate, students are entitled to a percentage of the following: Full cost of tuition and fees at the public school in-state rates, or up to $26,042.81 (as of August 1, 2021) for those attending out-of-state, private, or foreign schools (paid to school); Monthly housing allowance (paid to the student); Yearly books and supplies stipend of up to $1,000 per year (paid to student); and payments for those pursuing a non-institute of higher learning program such as a non-college degree, on the job training, apprenticeship training, flight programs, or a correspondence program. However, the GI Bill should maybe be increased from 36 months to 48 months, to be more sure to afford Veterans, especially those pursuing a career in law enforcement, and college professors, the Bachelor degree the United States needs to require from law enforcement officers, and thereby reduce the brain drain of educated Veterans caused by over-employment by the VA.

 

2. Law enforcement officers are currently required to have served 2 to 4 years in the armed forces and attend police academy, and sometimes as much as an Associates degree, however to prevent recidivism and criminal partnership need to be required to achieve a Bachelor degree. The United States detains more people than any other nation in the world, and has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, due to recent increases in certain small island Caribbean nations. Other than the habitually small brains of overeducated and illiterate lawyer gentry, due to unwitting exposure to mind-altering drugs, usually pseudo-ephedrine, by malicious prosecutors, corrupt law enforcement, especially the unwarranted federal elite FBI and DEA, and intimate partner informants, the prison slavery problem in the United States is hypothetically because law enforcement officers do not have the Bachelor degree they need to theoretically not recidivate and flawlessly execute court orders. Recidivism is defined as being re-incarcerated for a felony within three years of being released from prison. Several state studies have shown that people who earned a post-conviction Bachelor degree were free of recidivism 100% of the time, Associates degrees 75%, Vocational certificates, such as police academy and some college 50%, and high school degree or less 33%. The GI Bill is the way to get these police officers the Bachelor degree the United States needs from them.

 

D. While the 100% vaccination mandate for federal workers incited by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, does not constitute felony monopolization, like the adulteration of menthol tobacco by the Secretary of Health and Human Services that caused the most recent outbreak of coronavirus, or the dominating pseudo-ephedrine science corruption of the robbery of marijuana to push methamphetamine of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), it is a prime example of the unfair competition by developmentally defective vaccine propaganda, that has caused the global COVID-19 pandemic and made it most severe in industrialized nations whose populations are majorly incapable of scientific revolution against the most depraved of colonial propaganda. To being to redress the wildly tangential, “misdemeanor” pattern of discrimination against disability, that generates such an overwhelming sense of “permanent helplessness” for which “suicide attack” the VA awards an exorbitant amount of compensation under 38CFR§4.15, it is necessary VA Secretary be held responsible for the prohibition against retaliation and coercion pursuant to Sec. 503 of the Americans with Disabilities Act under 42USC§12203. The VA Secretary is therefore ordered to alter facilities at Battle Mountain Sanitarium to make such facilities readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities pursuant to Sec. 308 of the ADA under 42USC§12188(a)(2) and new construction or lease of joint VA-DOD Multi-Specialty Outpatient Clinic at Rapid City pursuant to Sec. 303 of the ADA under 42USC§12183.

 

1. The VA Secretary has made the observation that there is an outbreak of COVID-19 in VA health care facilities, incidental to the adulteration of coronavirus curative menthol tobacco, without respect to the curative medicine for the purpose of Sec. 3(4)(E)(i)(I) of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 under 42USC§12102(4)(E)(i)(I). The VA Secretary has made an error of judgment, and is mentally disabled, in regards to abusing the nearly infinitely murderous power of COVID-19 vaccine propaganda to impose the COVID-19 vaccine as the “qualification standards” that an individual shall not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals in the workplace in Title I Sec. 103(b) of the ADA under 42USC§12113(b). Vaccines pose a direct threat of adverse side-effects and monopolization bias in coronavirus treatment and public information, by a patently defective product. Why wait two weeks to be cured for an instant with a COVID-19 vaccine, when one can be instantly cured by swimming in a saline or chlorine pool? Can't breathe? Take a mentholyptus cough drop and/or Echinacea pill to treat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Point being, it is a deadly sin for a public officials, to misdemeanor by contemptuously retaliating against the truth, by wasting their breath coercively enforcing defective vaccine propaganda upon the unwashed masses, when they should be prescribing “hydrocortisone, eucalyptus (echinacea), lavender, peppermint or salt helps water cure coronavirus” as ordered.

 

2. The VA Secretary's is defended against discrimination as a dangerous psychopath by the success of vaccines in hopelessly infected nursing homes at the beginning of the pandemic, now unequally sustained by hygiene (Lysol) and treatment – hydrocortisone, eucalyptus (echinacea), lavender, peppermint or salt helps water cure coronavirus allergic rhinitis. Vaccinating 10% of VA staff who have not been vaccinated, will not help the 90% who have already been cured by the so-called vaccine, and are now as vulnerable to contagious coronavirus as anyone, who may or may not know how to treat coronavirus, because they have not been publicly informed, either that their coronavirus curative menthol tobacco has been adulterated by the FDA or that there are many other 100% effective over-the-counter cures in minutes, not least the instant cure of submerging the head by swimming in a saline, chlorine or healing mineral water. School Board of Nassau County v. Arline No. 85-1277 (1987) held that persons with contagious diseases may indeed be considered handicapped due to the threat of (ineffectively treated tubercular or non-tubercular mycobacterial) infection poses to others. Normally, the Secretary should defer to the reasonable medical judgments of public health officials, however their beloved vaccine doesn't work and they don't seem to “nose” anything but that involuntary exposure to sinus clearing pseudo-ephedrine brain shrink makes justices illiterate.  The fact that some persons who have contagious diseases may pose a serious health threat to others under certain circumstances does not justify excluding (truly curative medicines to enforce defective COVID-19 vaccines). Such exclusion would mean that those accused of being contagious would never have the opportunity to have their condition evaluated in light of medical evidence and a determination made as to whether they were "otherwise qualified", in the sense that the public is informed that VA hospital employees are gainfully employed in clinical trials of eucalyptus scented humidifiers, before the dreaded return of the snot nosed children to school as ordered pursuant to 21CFR§330.10.