The rabbit hole gets a little bit deeper

Whoa. According to this article, Filipino veterans of WWII are asking for VA benefits from the US department of Veteran’s affairs. According to the article, last year (2004) was the year that Filipino veterans were allowed into the US VA health care system.

That’s a surprise to me. In 1992, while I was an intern at the Long Beach VA Medical Center, which is partially administered by UC Irvine, one of my inpatients was a Filipino veteran who was never a member of the US regular armed services, but of the Filipino armed services. This man lived in the inpatient units of the VA for, to the best of my knowledge, months at a time, and had been a long term patient of the VA before I was hired, and continued to be a patient after I left. I asked about this at the time, and was told that President Roosevelt had authorized Filipino Vets to be treated in the US VA system, so it was legit.

On the other hand, according to the Sun-Times article linked above, the US Congress elected not to recognize Filipino veterans as "active veterans" in 1946. So, if my reading of the the Sun Times article is correct, from 1946 until 2004, barring unusual circumstances (and, based on the other irregularities I’ve described in the posts below this one, and the fact that no other unusual circumstances were described when I first asked about this back in 1992, my first guess as to the most likely set of operative "unusual circumstances" is fraud), Filipino veterans were not authorized for treatment at the VA medical centers. And yet, there he was. Makes me wonder about the other VA patients I met who were not US veterans. Also makes me wonder about the elderly woman whose records and ID had a man's name (her husband's name, according to her) on them, and who was also a long-term patient of the VA.

Anyone from the Long Beach VAMC or UC Irvine want to explain this? (bearing in mind that I’ve already gotten the "President Roosevelt gave them this, so it’s OK" explanation from the VA, which is apparently not true) I’m at pbanos[at]yahoo.com