VA Mistakenly Tells Vets They Have Fatal Illness 108
An anonymous reader writes "Thanks to a computer glitch and bad diagnosis coding, the VA sent a letter to thousands of veterans telling them they have Lou Gehrig's Disease. Some were right, but many were mistakes. From the article, 'Recently, the VA determined ALS to be a service-connected disability and generated automatic letters to all veterans whose records included the code for the disease. However, since the coding contained both ALS and undiagnosed neurological disorders, some of those letters were erroneous.'"
Re:it happens, (Score:2, Funny)
The VA is basically the government health care system for veterans.
Oh veterans, not veterinarians. That's a really unfortunate use of an abbreviation.
"Close Enough for Government Work" (Score:3, Funny)
An especially scary phrase when it applies to healthcare, no?
Re:Very low accuracy mailing... (Score:4, Funny)
You are most likely not suffering from any fatal neurological conditions.
Re:Not "vets" but "veterans" (Score:5, Funny)
"Vet" means a veterinary doctor, not a veteran. Stupid title.
Slashdot is an American website, and as such, Vet most certainly does mean Veteran sometimes. When? When it does.
If you don't like the Americanisms, fine. But don't try to correct us. You can't even fucking spell Aluminum [wikipedia.org]. "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound." That's right, you convinced the whole world to ignore the original name in favor of creative license! The English language is poisoned with the deliberate, poetickal misspellings of Chaucer and his contemporaries because when the dictionaries were Laid Down From On High by some pompous brits, the works were in fashion, and so every dictionary I open I have to see a bunch of made-up shit.
Complaining about American English on an American website is stupid, and you are a stupid person for doing it. Go suck a calamansis lime.