My Dad is in terrible back pain. He has spinal stensosis, and 2 slipped discs. HIs Parkinsons keeps him moving so he's jarring his back over and over again

He had an visit with a pain doc for the first time in 2 years scheduled for Monday, but he just got a call. Since this visit is on his medicaid, and not the VA, they cancelled his appointment.

My Mom tried to help explain, she was told "I'm talking to Him, not you"

She finally said the doctor must be paid, and cancelled his appointment.

@NiveusLepus
Unfortunately, many doctors don’t accept Medicaid, because it pays so little. I’m unclear about why he was referred out of the VA system in the first place. Are there no pain doctors in the VA? Or is his problem not service connected?

@Smccune55 @NiveusLepus

Wait.

VA ONLY treats medical issues caused by military service?

Since when?

@LnzyHou @Smccune55 They can for some issues. It's a bit of a morass.

@LnzyHou @Smccune55

Dad keeps getting denied for a greater amount of service connected disability assistance for instance, because while he was stationed in Iwo Jima running a Loran station for a year, and then did clean up duty on Guam. They lost all the records for his time in Guam, and so they can't verify his toxic exposure.

The benefits coordinator says this is very common as the computerization of records was imperfect.

@NiveusLepus @Smccune55

And that’s where it ends?

Surely you have his congressman involved?

@LnzyHou @Smccune55

This is west Texas. Trump country big time for the politicos... As to that is where it ends, maybe? They are on appeal.

@NiveusLepus @Smccune55

All the records of his entire unit cannot be lost. Can’t they investigate conditions of other members of his unit?

@LnzyHou @Smccune55 They have to be able to verify he was there. He was assigned in Guam on temporary duty, independent of his unit, while rotating back to the states.

It's when they gave him his new assignment and he got a little tipsy that he got into a dispute with another enlisted man, which was fine until his temp CO got in the way of the first punch.

They reassigned him to New Jersey, where he met my mom.

They have found some deep in the weeds reason to yoga around approving him.