VESID, CPEP/CPAP, Medicaid & Malpractice: Answers to More Questions

VESID—a drug; I don’t like VESID; Complaints and VESID; is celiac covered under NYS VESID Act?

VESID is neither a drug nor an act. It is New York State’s Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities. (They couldn’t think of a longer name for it.) A disability is any condition which significantly impedes your ability to walk, talk, think or carry on the normal activities of daily living, and from which you cannot reasonably be expected to recover.

Celiac is an autoimmune disease triggered by the gluten protein that causes diarrhea and weight loss. Stop eating wheat, rye, oats and other gluten products and you’ll be fine. VESID’s job is to retrain you for employment if you have a disability that prevents your regular employment. You can do any job you want to if you just stop eating gluten products, so I can’t think of any reason you would qualify for services from VESID. You need a dietician, not a job counselor.

The Syracuse VESID office is reputed to be significantly worse than VESID offices in other areas of the state. If you have a complaint, go to http://www.acces.nysed.gov/vr/do/expectations.htm. It outlines the complaint process. Call VESID and tell them you want the contact information for the CAP—Client Assistance Program—that is located in an Independent Living Center near you. Also, file a complaint with your state senator’s office.

I don’t like VESID either. They refused to provide appropriate service for me, so I fought them through their own process and won. Then I wrote a story about it and got paid for having it published. There is justice.

(See “Tabula Rasa by VESID” https://annecwoodlen.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/tabula-rasa-by-vesid-part-i/)

CPEP vs. CPAP

CPEP is the Community Psychiatric Emergency Program, i.e., a psychiatric emergency room, operating in various locations under the New York State Office of Mental Health.

CPAP is a Continuous Positive Air Pressure machine used to treat obstructive sleep apnea by blowing air up your nose to keep your breathing passage open while you sleep.

Try not to confuse the two as they are not interchangeable, although poor sleep can lead to an emotional meltdown and an emotional meltdown can cause sleeplessness. Nevertheless, get your sleep problem evaluated by a pulmonologist before you resort to CPEP.

Alternatively, try to get an appointment with Dr. Nasri Ghaly who is both a psychiatrist and a physician who runs a sleep lab. He’s the best person to sort out your problem. The study of sleep disorders began in psychiatry but has been taken over by pulmonologists who refuse to consider that emotional disorders may be triggered by poor sleep patterns.

Go figure.

Medicaid malpractice; Malpractice insurance and Medicaid; Can you sue for malpractice if you are on Medicaid? In NY State do you have to pay back Medicaid if you file a malpractice lawsuit?

The long and short of it is this: If you’re receiving Medicaid then you are too poor to get a lawyer to sue for malpractice.

Lawyers work for money, not justice. Anybody who is so poor that they qualify for Medicaid is too poor to hire a lawyer.

Lawyers take malpractice suits on a contingency basis, that is, you pay nothing up-front but if you win then the lawyer gets one-third of the settlement, plus you have to pay for certain expenses whether you win or lose.

The likelihood that a lawyer will take a malpractice suit is determined by how easy the suit will be to win, and how much it will be settled for. To get a lawyer to take a malpractice suit for someone on Medicaid, the suit would have to be such a slam-dunk that his secretary could settle it.

Legal Aid cannot sue for malpractice. They are not allowed to take cases that generate income, and malpractice is considered to be such a suit.

If you are poor then you will not get a lawyer. I’m sorry, but that’s reality. See also “Malpractice and Medicaid” at https://annecwoodlen.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/malpractice-and-medicaid-what-you-need-to-know-before-you-decide/

I was damaged by a physician who prescribed a drug and then didn’t properly monitor it, resulting in permanent kidney damage. When I consulted a lawyer at a major law firm he rejected the case saying, “It would only settle for about $70,000 and, frankly, we were looking for a windfall.”

Lawyers want money—lots of it. If you don’t have any then they won’t work for you, therefore if you are poor enough to be on Medicaid then no lawyer will take your malpractice case.

Dr. of acupuncture near Syracuse University

That would be Dr. Nasri Ghaly, located at 614 S. Salina St., also near Upstate Medical University from whence students come to learn from him. Dr. Ghaly is both superbly well-trained in acupuncture and one of the nicest human beings you will ever meet. Absolutely the nicest physician you will ever meet.

Andreoli Syracuse attorney

Peter Andreoli was an attorney in the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan when the governor tapped him to come to Syracuse and investigate allegations of political corruption in Onondaga County around 1980.

Because Andreoli would not kowtow to the Syracuse Newspapers publisher Stephen Rogers, the press tagged his investigation as a “witch hunt.” The witch hunt uncovered a scheme whereby county government department heads, under County Executive John Mulroy, were systematically shaking down Civil Service employees twice a year every year for contributions to the Republican Party.

From the deputy comptroller to a state senator, men pled guilty or were convicted at trial, however they were always found innocent in the newspapers. Mulroy pled guilty and was sentenced but was not forced out of office.

Dr. William Harris(?), commissioner of the Dept. of Health, was the special prosecutor’s unsung hero: Commissioner Harris was the only department head who refused to shake down his employees. He stood his ground and the county executive and Republican Party backed off. Dr. Harris did not lose his job, proving that the co-conspirators (county executive and Republic Party) were toothless dragons. If you stood up to them, they would fold.

No other department head—including the district attorney—stood up to them. They all went along with the shakedowns, some more eagerly than others.

About annecwoodlen

I am a tenth generation American, descended from a family that has been working a farm that was deeded to us by William Penn. The country has changed around us but we have held true. I stand in my grandmother’s kitchen, look down the valley to her brother’s farm and see my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Hannah standing on the porch. She is holding the baby, surrounded by four other children, and saying goodbye to her husband and oldest son who are going off to fight in the Revolutionary War. The war is twenty miles away and her husband will die fighting. We are not the Daughters of the American Revolution; we were its mothers. My father, Milton C. Woodlen, got his doctorate from Temple University in the 1940’s when—in his words—“a doctorate still meant something.” He became an education professor at West Chester State Teachers College, where my mother, Elizabeth Hope Copeland, had graduated. My mother raised four girls and one boy, of which I am the middle child. My parents are deceased and my siblings are estranged. My fiancé, Robert H. Dobrow, was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. In 1974, his plane crashed, his parachute did not open, and we buried him in a cemetery on Long Island. I could say a great deal about him, or nothing; there is no middle ground. I have loved other men; Bob was my soul mate. The single greatest determinate of who I am and what my life has been is that I inherited my father’s gene for bipolar disorder, type II. Associated with all bipolar disorders is executive dysfunction, a learning disability that interferes with the ability to sort and organize. Despite an I.Q. of 139, I failed twelve subjects and got expelled from high school and prep school. I attended Syracuse University and Onondaga Community College and got an associate’s degree after twenty-five years. I am nothing if not tenacious. Gifted with intelligence, constrained by disability, and compromised by depression, my employment was limited to entry level jobs. Being female in the 1960’s meant that I did office work—billing at the university library, calling out telegrams at Western Union, and filing papers at a law firm. During one decade, I worked at about a hundred different places as a temporary secretary. I worked for hospitals, banks, manufacturers and others, including the county government. I quit the District Attorney’s Office to manage a gas station; it was more honest work. After Bob’s death, I started taking antidepressants. Following doctor’s orders, I took them every day for twenty-six years. During that time, I attempted%2

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1 Response to VESID, CPEP/CPAP, Medicaid & Malpractice: Answers to More Questions

Edmond Holway says:

October 8, 2012 at 1:29 am

Sleep problems should be resolved as soon as possible since they can result into more health problems. `.“,

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