What Two Months of Quiet Actually Bought

I already told you about the records fights -- Union County's $802.50, the Oregon Judicial Department's $373.75, the ODHS consolidated request. Those were not the only three fronts. Here is the rest of what two quiet months actually bought.

A FAMILY GOT A WORKING BATHTUB

A young pregnant mother with an infant was living in a unit with a broken bathtub. It had a hole in it. On-site management told her to bathe her newborn in the kitchen sink. I sent the property's out-of-state corporate landlord a formal demand letter documenting the habitability violations, and followed up when nothing moved. Faced with escalation to HUD Region X, Oregon Housing and Community Services, and the local building division, the landlord backed down. The bathtub got fixed. So did the dishwasher. It is a small story next to the others, and it is exactly the kind of thing this work is for: someone with no leverage got some.

THE ACENTRA FILE

Russell Bingaman's hospice quality-of-care review, run by CMS contractor Acentra Health, is where the paper trail gets strange. Patricia and I brought Congressman Cliff Bentz's office into it, and the congressional inquiry drew a response from CMS in June.

According to the intake and determination records in that file, Acentra's own paperwork does not hold together. The same two staff members who prepared the case intake also prepared the final determination -- both reviews, same hands, no fresh set of eyes, which is what CMS's own QIO manual requires. The stated review window on the determination letters does not match the events the determination is actually based on. And when we submitted a 20-page brief with 32 pieces of supporting evidence in May, Acentra said it could not open the files and asked us to fax them instead -- then moved to close the case before the faxed version could have been reviewed.

Heart 'n Home Hospice made more than 60 administrative edits to Russell's chart in its electronic system. Acentra reviewed the surface chart. It did not pull the edit history.

Patricia and I have asked Congressman Bentz's office to refer what we found to the VA Office of Inspector General and HHS-OIG. That request is pending.

THE VA FILE

I have my own case in this fight, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I filed for VA Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment benefits. The Boise VA Regional Office denied feasibility based on my disability rating alone, in an evaluation session that the record shows lasted eighteen minutes of a scheduled two-hour block, with the camera off.

The decision letters are dated February 24. The system that generated them shows they were actually created on March 4 -- eight days later than the date on the letter. That is not my characterization. That is what the record shows. And it does not look like a one-time slip: the backdated letters appear to have been generated from the same standard template, which raises a question I cannot answer from my case alone -- how many other veterans got the same paperwork.

When I filed a Privacy Act request for my own file, the VA's records officer first demanded a physical wet-ink signature, then attempted to recall that email after the fact. Separately, a congressional liaison told a colleague in writing that there were "no Congressional Inquiries or related documents on record" for my case -- less than a day after another VA office had already sent a response to that same inquiry to Congressman Bentz's office, copying a regional chief.

The VA ultimately ruled in my favor. It did not matter. My vocational rehabilitation counselor never did the underlying work in the first place, so a favorable ruling left nothing on the record to move my case forward on. The VA's answer to winning was to ask me to go back through intake and start over. I am not doing that. I am taking the Privacy Act and FOIA failures to court and putting the entire record in front of a judge instead.

I am telling you about my own case for the same reason I tell you about Union County's and ODHS's: the public has a right to see how these systems actually work, on the people fighting them and on me.

HELP FUND THE NEXT ROUND

None of the three things above cost much in dollars. They cost time, and they cost the willingness to keep pushing when an agency tells you no. The records fights are where the real costs are -- $802.50 here, $373.75 there, filing fees when the ODHS case goes back to court. Every dollar donated funds exactly that: the fee fights, the records lawsuits, and the free tools this site gives away for people who cannot afford a lawyer. Valor Investigates is an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit; contributions are tax-deductible.

Thank you for standing with us. We take sides here, because neutrality only ever helps the oppressor.