 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, welcome to another edition of Hawaii in Uniform. I'm your host Calvin Griffin, and for those of you who may not have seen the program before, which I think everybody around the world is viewing, we talk about military and veterans issues. Today, my special guest is Dennis E. Yee, he's an activist. He does a lot of things in the veterans community, travels around the country talking to different groups about what's happening out there. And again, what we try to do here is bring the information that's going to be beneficial or to enlighten you to what's going on. And a lot of the subjects we talk about, of course, deal with the military and veterans. But we want to show you how the military and veterans interact with the local communities and try to get as much support for those individuals who are out there serving us. Dennis, thanks for coming on the program. Yeah, thanks for having me, Calvin. It's always good fun when we get on the air. Yeah, good. So what's been happening lately? What's the last time you've been back to the mainland and some major issues that's been coming up? I understand. I wanted to read something real quick, anyhow, before we get into it. Well, yeah, it was last October. And this was to attend a military retiree seminar in Pensacola, Florida. And then I'm planning to go again in March this year. And this time it'll be to Washington, D.C. to wish Mary a happy New Year to our members of Congress. Yeah. Okay. Okay, one thing I want to get out the way, because since we had been, did a couple programs about the Branch 46, the Fleet Reserve Association, we had the national president that came on and also some of the local officers, anyhow, just to give the viewers an update on what's happening. I know that there is a lot of things that's still going on. They're still trying. There's an effort to still try to save the organization. I know there's a meeting on the 19th of January, as of this taping, for those who want to get involved. But of course, with some things that need to be worked out and clarified. So we want to publicly acknowledge that and then for the sake of clarity or honesty or whatever it is, I'm a branch of a lounge member, as they say. And I think you're a full member? Full member. Yes, full member. Actually, you have the branch. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I want to make sure I like say that when we put anything out here, I like say, you know our affiliation. So I'm not personally not involved with any of the administrative or anything like that. But as I mentioned, just a concerned veteran who is a member of the organization. But hopefully they'll get it together and like Sam will find out what's going on because not only with that organization, I was surprised to find out that there's like 180 different entities over here that claim affiliation or some kind of workings with the veteran community. You were aware of that, right? I wasn't aware there's that many. There's probably too many, but that's my opinion. Yeah, that's a question that's coming up where I call it divide and conquer. Yeah, we need to more and more solidify as far as some of the efforts anyhow because roughly we have like about 180, 120,000 vets give or take throughout the islands anyhow. And with the amount of involvement, individual community activities that the veterans are involved in. A lot of it doesn't have to deal with organizations, but the attitude that a lot of veterans have is spirit of giving. We talk about that a lot. So hopefully we'll see how things transpire in the future or what happens with this organization, with that organization and see if there's going to be a change in attitude within the veterans community, especially with a lot of these different organizations. Because unfortunately what happened, we have people that have been in positions far too long. And what happens with the new people that come in, it seems like they're kind of turned off with some of the internal politics sometime that goes on. And not saying that all these organizations are like that. Of course, there's some stellar groups that you can point out, while we veterans counsel or the operation down there. One thing is totally transparent with three to one anyhow. So we'll see. What do you hear this one that arises and that's affecting veterans right now? Well, I still think that the veterans administration is going to be under the gun this year. The non-mainstream media keeps on leaking horrible things into the social media. And people listen to this. I do too. And I believe that eventually, quietly or with some drama, the VA will eventually ditch the VHA. And right now they're very quietly outsourcing more and more providers. My hearing aids, they're maintained by a contractor. So I think this is the way it's going to go. Fort Bliss area in Texas, the congressman sponsored this for that area. He sponsored that type of, and the VA agreed it would give it a try. I mean, Fort Bliss is pretty big. And there's lots of retired and military and veterans who reside in the area. And it seems to be going so smoothly, we don't even hear about it here anymore. Yeah, we hear about all these different stories that go on within the VA. And there's supposed to be changes that came about to understand that there were people in high places and around the country that were removed. And then some of them are being put back and reinstated. And a lot of people are curious about what's going on with that. But again, that's at a large level. Here locally, what do you, I mean, there's systemic problems anyhow. But as far as with your personal knowledge, the feedback that you're getting from veterans, are they happy with the VA system over here? Or there's been some improvements? Or there's, of course, there's always room for improvement. But what is the sense that you get about what's happening with the VA here? Well, I think the veterans, they're somehow we're happy. And then there's more who are afraid to say they're not happy. They're afraid of retaliation. That's the feeling I get. And so you don't say anything if you don't want it to get worse. That's one of the things I've been hearing also is the fact, and again, this is unsubstantiated, but I believe the source anyhow, is yeah, sometimes when you do appeal certain things, there's that letter that you know you sometimes get where it's like a veiled threat where if you pursue this, the possibility that you can lose more or all of it. So don't rock the boat, keep your mouth shut. And they say it's been quite a few people I've heard that had, in fact it happened to me personally. But I tried to, you know, it's one of those things that need to be dealt with anyhow. Well, Congress recently turned over another $10 or $20 billion to the VA. Because the VA went to Congress and said, the sky is falling. And they said, okay, well, every one of these congressmen has veterans in their district. And if you presume one veteran per household, that's a good chunk. So they all voted to give some more of our money to the VA to do. We're really not sure what they're going to do with it. The choice program, I think, has been running into a little heat. I've always favored transforming our veterans' health care enrollment ID card, the photo ID card, into a proof of insurance. And making that statement to Senator Hirono on her last field hearings that were here kind of shocked her. And but she did share with me when she got her composure back that, oh, well, we have to put everybody under contract. I mean, is everybody who provides Medicare under contract? If they are, we don't know about it. And Medicare seems to be working. Or it would be 17% of the population in Hawaii is over 65, and presumably on Medicare, or at least eligible to be there. So that's a good chunk. And the veterans would probably not even add 10% to that. 120,000 more people here in Hawaii. Maybe we should put the veterans on Medicare. You become a veteran the moment you raise your hand and you swear allegiance to the flag. OK. I'll tell you, there's something else that I ran across I'm going to read off to you. It's the Republican representative to Gabbard introduced a bipartisan bill to improve access to the quality of health for disabled veterans. And the Fair Access to Insurance for Retired Heroes Act will allow medically-retired veterans to choose between Medicare, Medicaid for health coverage. And you know, it sounds like a good idea. Well, I like Tulsi Gabbard. She's a go-getter. Some people, they will claim that she's out for them, but then they don't like her. So you can expect that. And you can smile when they say that. But I think she's trying to be effective. And in some cases, she has been. She's new to the game. So all the machine may not be aware of all the nuances. But she has a staff. Anybody who works in the staff for a member of Congress is seasoned. They just recycle themselves through the offices. When one of them decides to retire, the staff goes somewhere else. So that backup is always constant. I talked to a gentleman, and one of his issues was access to the PX. There were a lot of individuals out there who do like 10, 11 years in the military discharge, honorably for the most part, or whatever. And there's a call to open up the PX system. I know that right now, there's something that may already be in place where they can purchase things online if you're a veteran. Are you aware of that? Yes, you can. This is something new. It tells me that the exchange system is not attracting as many customers as they would like. Other private sector retailers could probably kill the exchange system by just you flash your ID card, you get a 10% discount. And that would probably be the end of it. Also, I think another thing that may help is that rather than trying to invent a management style that is effective, outsource the management to a private sector giant, I mean, there's always Walmart. They seem to know what they're doing. And the exchange can still be the exchange. It'd just be managed by somebody that maybe knows better what they're doing about providing those kind of retail services, the military personnel, people who are in the reserves, or whatever. When you go to the PX system, the commissary, I mean, the commissary is great for what they provide and the pricing and everything else. But the PX system seems like you can go to Walmart, as you say, or some of the other places, retailers, and get a better price. Get a better price, and you pay tax, but then you pay a surcharge. So it's about even up. You go to the exchange, they rave about you're not paying any taxes in the store, but they don't tell you about the surcharge. Surcharge, yeah. Anyhow, so with this being an election year, what do you think are gonna be some of the hot topics that some of the, our elected officials who wanna be reelected, what are some of the things you think they're gonna jump on to try to, you know, garner that military and veteran vote? Well, since only 30% of the people in Hawaii voted for the current president and his administration, I would say that it's supposed to be gonna be focusing seven and 10 on jumping on the president and administration. So we won't hear if the president is doing anything good, we won't hear much about it here. And if it can be perceived as being bad, we'll hear about that here. But then again, we can always apply humor to both sides of this drama. I would say that we do have illegal immigrants residing here, but many of them are actually performing useful services. They work and they come from countries that if you don't work, you starve. So I would say that's gonna be an issue, maybe not so much, but it has been an issue with our department of justice here in Hawaii. We've got the leader of that team is gonna run for Congress and see if he can get a Hanabusa's vacated seat. Yeah, okay. Yeah, like we talked about the military spending, you know, and they seemed like a lot of it's going towards this high tech, you know, whiz bang type of stuff, you know, it's out there. I know there's a certain, of course, the troops are getting some of the gravy on that one anyhow, but it seemed like the majority of the money is going towards, like, say, these technological, technological, you know, weaponry that in a way, we do help to eliminate a lot of the personality out. Anyhow, we're about ready to take a break for a minute, but anyhow, stay tuned, we'll be back in a few minutes with the, this is Hawaii in uniform, and we'll continue our conversation with Dennis, and let me get my tongue straight and I'll be fine, but we'll be back in a moment. Good afternoon, my name is Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, a program on Think Tech Hawaii. We show at three o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday. My guests are specialists, both from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. Aloha, my name is Mark Schlauwe. I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii, not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea, aloha. And welcome back to Hawaii in uniform. And again, I'm yours Calvin, and we got Dennis E. Gay, of course, with us. Dennis, for those who may not know and know that you've been around for a while, and you deal with a lot of the legislative issues, not only here in Hawaii, but you do visit Washington. What is the response that you're getting and has it improved as far as the attitude with a lot of our elected officials or just business as usual and they'll play it by ear? It's slow, but it's slow and it's measured. So when you learn not to be frustrated with the pace because there's so many different, I mean, in Congress, there's 400 opinions, right? 100 of them are in the Senate. And how many people appreciate the fact that our senators represent our state's interests in the Congress or as the house represents the districts within those states. Sometimes there's one in the same, in the smaller states. But once you understand that and you start working with the people who are elected to represent your interests in Congress and in the state legislature, because we show our face in the state legislature also and we've had some success in the past. I'm looking for some more this year. It's mostly based on what the National Defense Authorization Act did for the benefit of divorcing military personnel. And then also the Supreme Court finally set the table straight here on what is the status of a disabled veteran's disability compensation? Is it disposable income? No. Do you touch it in a divorce court? No, it's off the table. It's not even considered. But that took the Supreme Court to overcome almost 40 years of inequity. Yeah. It was just like when we talked about veteran. A lot of people still confused, because you have like the federal terminology or definition of what a veteran is and you had a state and everything else. What is your definition of a veteran? I'll use the VA's definition. When you swear allegiance to the flag when you're sworn into the military, some of your VA benefits begin at that moment in time. Therefore, in my opinion, you are a veteran as soon as you're sworn in. You may not be the veteran of any war yet, but it may take time to get there. So the VFW can't accept you. The largest veterans support organization, the American Legion won't even set limits on that. But they're support organizations. They're not the government. So in the eyes of the government and the eyes of the veteran's administration, you are a veteran at the moment you're sworn in. Not for everything, but for many things, that if something kicks in, you're a veteran. You just have to kind of wait for all of the benefits to kick in for you. And that's when you do your service, you perform creditably, which in the dictionary says honorably, then all the services and veterans benefits, administration and veterans health administration, they're all yours. Yeah, there's another thing that came out of the, let me read this also. The department of veterans of Harris has suspended the application for the new veteran identification card program. It seemed like that was launched, I think, in November or early December. I think so. And then almost immediately, like I said, the system went down, where they were so overwhelmed. But again, that's another thing where they have these different programs that come into place, so they announce it. And then when it's kicked off, then these little glitches start happening. The people, the veterans are wondering, what is going on here? I mean, you tell us you got it in place, then when we do try to access it or utilize it, then there's some kind of technical problems that slow it down. The next thing you know, it's on temporary or even permanent hold. And again, that's another thing that's frustrating to a lot of veterans because again, number of times when we did the council meetings and some other ways we get our information, it's like they'll keep telling you sometimes where it's in the works, it's coming. And we hear this, like I said over and over again, five, 10 years ago, the same thing that they're saying, or if they do get something in position, then it's like once it starts working well, then they wanna turn around and institute another program and then they're asking for a little bit of time to lose their flesh and sing out, five, 10 years, whatever, and you're back to square one again. Let me speak to that issue. We all remember Tammy Duckworth. Yeah. She was a helicopter pilot in the Gulf War. And before she became a member of Congress, she moved into the Veterans Administration Building, which is about 150 yards away from the White House. So the president has close association with that and the state treasury, there's a side gate from the grounds of the White House. So I guess if the president wanted to go visit the treasury building, he could do that without showing his face in public. But anyway, at the time I went to visit Tammy when she was at the VA, she said that President Obama had gotten the VA and the Defense Department chiefs, the shake hands on the idea of integrating their healthcare databases. Oh, it still hasn't happened. At the time that this happened, the VA's healthcare database was touted to be the best and it was most compatible with the private sector healthcare industry database. And now it seems like maybe that's not true. Maybe the Pentagon pushed back and said, we're gonna keep ours, even though it's not compatible with the doctors, it'll be treating veterans. We're more concerned about the military personnel that we're treating, but I don't know. There's something I can find out in March and I probably will. So if I get back on the air after I get back from my adventure in Washington DC this coming spring, we'll know more about it. Good. What I'm gonna try to do here is in the past, I've tried to contact or yeah, the contact of some of our people in Washington or in places where they're making the decisions to come on and give us the direct story. We're gonna make a more concerted effort here. Like I said, go ahead and get in touch with these people to have a call in and see if we can do like a call in session or whatever it is to answer some of the questions or if not get in touch with other organizations or entities that may be on top of the current situation there that we won't have any lag time as far as getting the information to the veterans here in the state of Hawaii and on around anyhow. So that's one of the things we're doing in here. Well, I haven't seen him recently, but I think it's the chief of staff at the local office for Senator Hirono. Yeah. He seems to be very articulate when we're asking questions, he has the answers. And if he says he's gonna get back to you, he doesn't actually rely on you to forget that you asked the questions. And of course that doesn't happen. The president of all veterans council won't let them off the hook so their only recourse if they don't have an answer or they know we won't like the answer, they just don't show up. This is also the case for the VHA here locally. The VBA is always there touting their home loan guarantees, et cetera, et cetera, on the benefit side, but on the healthcare side, we have to rely on the state office of veteran services to provide a lot of that information here in Hawaii. That is supposed to be our advocate. There's supposed to be the liaison between us and the federal government. I know there's been some questions that a few people have approached me about it. Is the doctors, again, like I said, the treatment for the most part is top notch. I mean, once you're getting in the system, it's fine. But when you're being evaluated for your claim, for benefit, I mean, increase or whatever it is anyhow, it seems to be where some of the doctors don't seem to be, someone can be downright rude when they're talking to you or how they handle it. And again, from my personal experiences, again, I don't wanna go ahead and put that in because I had a bad experience with the system. Doesn't mean that it's totally all wrecked and everything else. But that's another thing where as far as we're veterans when they have issues about the way they're being treated within the system, who can they go to? Is there really gonna be a resolution to the situation? It's just a matter of respect. And I think that that's another thing that needs to be addressed within the system. Some of the personnel, as a majority of them, are courteous, conscientious, trying to do what they can to what they have to work with within the system, but still and all, you can have that one veteran, like I said, it has that bad experience where it has a major impact on his life and could be detrimental. So we wanna make sure that nobody falls through the cracks, it can't be perfect, and we understand that. But when there are things that are identified that are seem to be common instead of uncommon, then it has to be dealt with. So that's what I said. Well, if my option comes true, all veterans will belong to Medicare. And then you do have an option. You don't like your doctor? You go find another one. If you don't like your VA doctor, you're kinda stuck. And I don't really have the answer to your question if you're having a beef with your VA doctor. Now, I'm on my third VA doctor, and that's because they rotated in and out, okay? No, I thought it'd be fired. No, no, I didn't, okay. No, I know that, and they're my backup. I mean, they're my reliable backup to be in on Medicare, for example. So I would say that if you can't work with your doctor, I would suggest that you try to work with the nurse and see what the nurse, the nurse may be able to change your perspective a little bit to where you understand what the doctor is doing. Now, some of the VA doctors may not really be MDs. They could be a nurse that's got advanced training, and so they're almost a doctor. And that's almost good enough, right? For some things that a veteran brings to the doctor's office, and you still got the backup of the full professional staff. We're getting it out to the wire, but Dennis, like I said, we're gonna follow up. I know you're gonna do what you can to go and keep us on top of everything anyhow, but yeah, what I'm gonna do is, like I said, make a conservative effort to get more information out there directly, and get some of the people to come in to answer these questions about the treatment of veterans anyhow, but we'll do that. Take it from there. But yeah, I wanna thank the viewers for staying tuned and tuning into the program and join us again next time here on Y in Uniform, and God bless and until that time.