This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veteran Health Care

  • Gas plume caused Gulf War Syndrome?

    USAToday reports that a study has concluded that a US attack on Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapon facility caused a plume of poisonous gas which blew back on US troops and may be the reason for the Gulf War Syndrome;

    The Jan. 18, 1991, bombings of the munitions plants in Nasiriyah and Khamisiya blew a plume of sarin gas high above a layer of cold, still air — also called the boundary level — and into a swift wind stream that carried the gas to Saudi Arabia, said the study conducted by researchers Robert Haley and James Tuite and published in the journal Neuroepidemiology.

    The gas plumes, the researchers said, can be blamed for symptoms of Gulf War illness, the mysterious ailment that has affected more than 250,000 veterans of the war.

    The gas set off repeated chemical weapons alarms at U.S. troop points in Saudi Arabia, the report said, but commanders said they were false alarms, because if the troops had been hit with sarin gas, there would have been casualties. There were no casualties, although U.S., Czech and French systems all detected traces of sarin and mustard agent.

    I guess this would explain why many Gulf War veterans are being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS/Lou Gehrig’s Disease) despite the fact that they have no family history of the disease.

  • WaPost supports Tricare hikes

    Chief Tango and Pat sent us a link to the Washington Post’s editorial today in which the Post advocates jacking up Tricare costs for military retirees.

    Yeah, big surprise that the liberals at the Washington Post, who support Obamacare on the false premise that it will lower everyone’s healthcare costs, is willing to jack up healthcare costs for Tricare participants.

    …[T]he administration plans cuts, including shrinking the Army and the Marine Corps. This is risky, given the potential threats the United States faces. Unfortunately, Congress is compounding the problem by protecting expensive items that inflate personnel costs without any corresponding payoff in defense readiness.

    We refer to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s refusal to accept an administration proposal to trim Tricare, the military health-care program for which 9.7 million active and retired military personnel and family members are eligible. Obviously, those who serve or served their country deserve generous health benefits. But Tricare goes well beyond that. The service is free for active-duty service members and their families except for some prescription copayments. For retirees under the age of 65, many of whom are in the work force and eligible for employer-provided benefits, Tricare costs at most $1,000 per year out of pocket — less than a fifth of civilian plans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

    Um, “without any corresponding payoff in defense readiness”? How about retention? Isn’t retention a readiness issue? Who the hell is going to reenlist if we can’t trust the Pentagon to keep their promises?

    Of course, their argument is that many retirees work and can afford health care, but then that’s not the point is it? We paid for our healthcare with our youth and our blood and sweat, based on promises that were made to us. That’s why it’s called a benefit. I don’t care if Tricare costs $.05/year – it’s too much, because that’s what we stayed in the service for.

    The Post supports quadrupling Tricare enrollment fees;

    The maximum fee would quadruple to $2,000 — still far less than most civilian plans. Most beneficiaries would not pay even that much.

    I really don’t care how much less than civilian plans it would cost, that’s not the point. We were promised free healthcare in exchange for our youth and commitment. Now that we’ve fulfilled our end of the bargain, they want to renege on their promise.

    No doubt America’s military retirees are a powerful lobby, their might enhanced by the basic justice of their claim to have given much to their country. At the moment, however, debt is one of the main threats to future U.S. national strength and security, and it makes no sense to deal with it in ways that would also undermine military readiness.

    Oh, so now we’re a powerful lobby? Like the NRA or something? And, yes, the national debt is a security threat, but I don’t see the Post recommending a spending cut anywhere else but for military retirees. You’d think that if they were so concerned about the debt, they’d be urging the administration to make cuts in entitlement programs, like House GOPers are recommending, rather than trying to convince Congress to break their promise to veterans.

    The modest cuts in Tricare benefits that Mr. Obama seeks are abundantly justified by the national interest. His Office of Management and Budget announced Thursday that the president’s advisers will urge a veto of a defense bill without Tricare reform; they would be right to do so.

    You can call them “modest cuts” as much as you want, anything over “free” makes the government a liar. How many young soldiers are looking at this battle over their futures and deciding that it’s not worth their lives and the lives of their families to fight a battle with the government over every little benefit. And you don’t think that has an impact on military readiness?

  • Obama to make Tricare better

    Jason was concerned when we reported that the Obama Administration planned on cutting a few hundred thousand veterans out of the Tricare Prime program in April, so he wrote the White House with his concerns and here’s how they responded;

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I have heard from many military families concerned about TRICARE, and I appreciate your perspective.

    Over the past 3 years, I have worked to address the growing cost of health care by implementing efficiencies in Government spending that will improve TRICARE and ensure military families have access to high-quality medical care. These efficiencies include the creation of virtual lifetime electronic health records that will follow service members from military to civilian life. Additionally, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, military hospitals received funding for much-needed facility improvements.

    Under the Affordable Care Act, all features of TRICARE remain in place. The law does not affect health insurance coverage received through TRICARE in any way, and the Department of Defense maintains exclusive authority over providing the highest quality care to our service members, retirees, and their families. In fact, many of the key reforms put in place by the Affordable Care Act are already common practice in TRICARE—including coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, access to preventive care services with no cost sharing, and no annual or lifetime caps on coverage. The Affordable Care Act also makes clear that those who are covered by TRICARE will meet the law’s minimum coverage provision.

    One benefit addressed by the Affordable Care Act, but not already in place under TRICARE, was allowing young adults up to age 26 to remain on their families’ health plans. As of January 2011, the Department of Defense now offers similar benefits to young adults with a parent enrolled in TRICARE through the TRICARE Young Adult program.

    TRICARE will continue to provide affordable care to over nine million service members and their families. When Americans answer the call of duty and serve in our Armed Forces, a sacred trust is forged. From day one of their enlistment through retirement, the United States must always support those who serve and have served in uniform. These men and women risked their lives to protect our freedoms, and we must do all in our power to provide them with the benefits they have earned, including comprehensive health care. For more information or assistance with TRICARE, please visit www.TRICARE.mil.

    Thank you, again, for writing.

    Sincerely,

    Barack Obama

    So, I guess that by getting rid of Tricare Prime that will make the system better somehow. Whoever wrote the letter didn’t even acknowledge that Tricare is being shut down in some western states in April. So, I guess we should stop worrying about it and start watching the squirrels instead.

  • Jimmy Carter’s second term

    To say that I’m disappointed in the results of the election is probably a bit of an understatement. What is most disappointing is to see my “friends” on Facebook who are veterans celebrating a second term of the President. I can’t figure out what they’re celebrating about. Retirees in five western states are being forced out of Tricare Prime and into Tricare Standard which means that, unless they live near a military treatment facility, their healthcare are going to skyrocket. What’s to celebrate?

    And I put the blame for this loss of veterans squarely on the shoulders of the Romney team. When I brought the above subject up to John Noonan, Romney’s defense advisor, he responded that he hadn’t heard the Obama camp mention it in the campaign – so I guess he thought it wasn’t going to happen. It’s going to happen in April, whether Noonan has heard about it or not. A moment’s Google would tell him that.

    The Obama Administration has raided our healthcare premiums to pay for other defense projects. If a corporation had done that to it’s retirees, the Obama Administration would be crawling up their ass with a microscope.

    And what about the most egregious decision of the Afghan war? The one that forbade US troops from having loaded weapons when they were in the company of our “allies” just to make them think that we trusted them. That bit of brilliance cost us more than 50 young lives this year before they finally reversed the decision this summer. And let’s not forget that this Defense Department ignored a report last year that predicted an increase in “insider” attacks this year.

    While we’re talking about the war, how about the overall strategy – what is the overall strategy if it’s not solely to withdraw? It’s a rush for the exits and a dependency on drones. The lowest infantryman understands that an Army doesn’t control anything that doesn’t have a soldier standing on it. Air attacks from several thousand feet above the battlefield doesn’t win anything, and this administration was unwilling, for purely political reasons, to put the number of boots in Afghanistan that a winning strategy required.

    But the troops are coming home. If Desert Storm taught us anything, it was that if you don’t complete the mission, you’re going to end up fighting the war all over again.

    While we’re at it, let’s talk about the Veterans’ Affairs Department which has squandered it’s increased funding. the rolls of veterans awaiting a decision on their claims for service-connected relief has grown despite the promises of the Department. They promised to end homelessness among veterans and they’re not really any closer than they were when they assumed office. Veterans are loosing money everyday when ever a college term begins because the VA can’t pay them in a timely manner.

    All of that without even mentioning sequestration, which the Obama Administration claims won’t happen. I’m not sure how they think it won’t happen because it’s a law.

    And then to top it all off, folks in Afghanistan wrote yesterday to tell us that TAH has been blocked in Regional Command (South) because we’re “extremist”. I guess it’s extremist to point out the things that no one else will, the failings of the Big Army leadership. The fact that the Defense Department is screwing over veterans and the troops and blaming them for the failures of their own leadership.

    So yeah, your guy won, but who is going to pay for your jubilant celebration? It’s not American Idol or a sports contest. There is a real cost to real people out here in the real world.

  • Balancing the budget on the backs of veterans

    The president told the American Legion Convention in 2011 that he wouldn’t balance the federal budget on the backs of veterans, yet, here’s the Department of Defense shutting down Tricare Prime in the western states which gets replaced with Tricare Standard.

    As of April 1, as many as 30,000 Prime beneficiaries — retirees, Active Guard and Reserve troops, and family members — in Iowa; Minnesota; Oregon; Reno, Nev.; and Springfield, Mo., will have to switch to Tricare Standard, a traditional fee-for-service health plan, according to a source with knowledge of the reorganization.
    […]
    Under the changes that will start April 1, as many as 170,000 Prime enrollees across all three regions eventually may have to drive longer distances to see a Prime provider or switch to Tricare Standard, which has no enrollment fees but carries greater out-of-pocket costs:

    The point I’ve made in the past is that Obamacare was supposed to reduce healthcare costs for Americans, yet, the single opportunity that the government has to control healthcare costs, they jack up costs to retired American veterans. That’s probably because we earned the benefit of healthcare instead of standing with our hands out.

    And I’m not convinced that a Romney/Ryan presidency would reverse the Obama Administration’s actions against veterans, because I can’t get an answer from the campaign.

    Thanks to all of you who sent us the link over the last few days,

  • Free Hunting Licenses to Disabled Vets

    I like it when my state government does something right. Governor Rick Snyder (R-MI) signed a few bills into law recently.

    House Bill 5292 allows disabled veterans to get hunting and fishing licenses at no cost, according to the governor’s office.

    There were two other bills related to Veterans as well…

    • House Bills 5159 and 5162 allow circuit and district courts to create supervised treatment programs for veterans suffering from mental illness or drug or alcohol dependency.

    Hey, if the V.A. is too backed up, the state will do it. One thing that I was glad to see in all 3 bills, there was not a single “Nay” vote. Every Republican and every Democrat voted for these bills.

  • How the Affordable Healthcare Act doesn’t help veterans

    TSO sent us this link with his question “Remember when Vote Vets said that the health care law would help military retirees and their families?” Why, yes, I do. I also remember asking the crew at the now-defunct VetsVoice blog a slew of questions they couldn’t answer about how the Affordable Healthcare Act wouldn’t adversely affect veterans on Tricare. VoteVets was tooting Obama’s horn and telling us that we’d all be taken care of under the AHA. Well, it seems that the AHA isn’t beneficial to us at all.

    First, let me explain how I arrived at the decision to continue my military career until I retired. I knew my pay would be low, but I accepted that because I knew that my family and I would have that low pay offset by having no healthcare expenses. My son had just been born before my first reenlistment and I realized how much I had saved by having him in a military hospital. So, yes, the free healthcare had played largely into my decision.

    As my kids moved out of the house, I knew that they would have Tricare to help them through their transition years into their own healthcare plans and I had prepaid for it with my service.

    Well, it seems that the AHA is changing all of that, according to the Wall Street Journal. Their article is behind a paywall, so here are some excerpts;

    Families covered by Tricare, the health program for active and retired members of the military, must pay as much as $200 a month to let an adult child stay on their plan until age 26. Most families in private plans now pay no fee to extend such coverage. Military families are starting to complain about the disparity, saying they can’t afford those premiums and have let their children go uninsured.

    […]

    Initially, Tricare wasn’t affected by the health law, which meant it which was focused on traditional private insurance plans that didn’t have to allow children to stay on their parents’ plans past age 21, or 23 if they were full-time college students. Once the provision became popular with consumers, lawmakers passed separate legislation requiring Tricare to adopt it.

    The final legislation directed the Department of Defense to charge families for the full cost of the additional coverage. Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.), an author of the legislation, said the fee was included because legislators wouldn’t support providing the coverage free of charge. Looming defense cuts have put pressure on Tricare and overall military spending.

    That fee is either $176 or $201 a month for each young-adult dependent who wants to be covered through a parent’s insurance, depending on the type of plan. Tricare says the premiums are based on data for medical costs incurred by similar dependents and administrative expenses. Next year, premiums will fall to $152 or $176 a month.

    Nick Papas, a White House spokesman, and Cynthia Smith, a Defense spokeswoman, both said Tricare differed from private insurance plans because it didn’t charge members a premium that could absorb the additional costs of covering the young adults. They pointed to Congress’s role in including the fee in the legislation.

    So, like I’ve said before, the Affordable Healthcare Act was supposed to bring down health care costs for all Americans, well, except veterans. It’s a good thing they’re not balancing the budget on veterans’ backs, huh?

  • Smoke and Mirrors at Veterans’ Affairs

    So we’ve heard from our friends at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs about the great work they’re doing over there, about how this is the best administration in history on veterans’ healthcare. Well, let’s take a closer look at the numbers, shall we?

    During the years 2008-2012, the VA hired THREE TIMES more administrative staff than medical doctors. This news won’t be a surprise to any veteran who has been told to wait for an appointment.

    The VA added 3,100 medical doctors since 2008, and to “manage” their work, the VA added more than 9,000 new administration employees.

    Barack Obama is more interested in hiring paper-pushers than doctors. But paperwork doesn’t treat patients. Maybe that’s why the VA Inspector General told Congress the VA was gaming the numbers so it looks like 94% of veterans can be seen within 14 days.

    The actual number, according to the VA Inspector General, is less than 50%. How many veteran suicides occurred during the delays in reaching care? Those new administrator positions must have been mighty valuable. Barack Obama knows the VA is not getting the job done. But he doesn’t care. Maybe that’s why the VA’s so-called Performance and Accountability Report claimed 95% of veterans who asked for a mental health evaluation were seen within 14 days. The VA Inspector General called FOUL on that report and gave the real figure: 64%.

    In the Obama administration, the VA’s proverbial suicide hotline is putting veterans on hold.

    Delays in mental health care were so bad that in July 2011, Democratic Senator Patty Murray told the VA about complaints from her constituents. She asked the VA to interview their own employees about delays in receiving care. The interviews showed more than 70% of respondents said their hospital or clinic lacked sufficient mental health staff. In an April 2012 hearing, Senator Murray said the VA’s own investigation showed clinicians were “delaying follow up for months, not because of the veterans’ needs but because their schedules were too full. VA is failing to meet its own mandates for timeliness and instead is finding ways to make the data look like they are complying.”

    Senator Murray, remember, is a Democrat.

    Even more damning is the IG’s statement that the VA’s performance measure for measuring access to mental health care is utterly useless because it “measured how long it took to conduct the mental health evaluation, not how long the patient waited to receive that evaluation.”

    Senator Bernie Sanders, another Senator far friendlier to Democrats than Republicans, asked if VA administrators could explain why the VA can’t follow its own rules for scheduling appointments. The IG replied that at two different VA facilities, the clinic staff were told by supervisors to first check for an available appointment date, back out of the computerized scheduling system, then re-enter the system and indicate that the first available date was the date when the veteran wanted to return. This method makes the VA appear to have all the appointment times it needs.

    Senior VA administrators receive bonuses when veteran appointments are scheduled within the VA-mandated time frames. These instructions to the scheduling staff look like senior VA executives were gaming the system for executive bonuses.

    Every month, 950 veterans treated by VA attempt suicide. 18 veterans die every day by suicide, and about 12 of those 18 are not receiving VA care. That’s about 30 suicide attempts per day, every day, every month, and 12 deaths of veterans who are not seen at a VA. But Barack Obama doesn’t want to spend money on hiring mental health care employees, so what’s a delay of a few weeks until the next appointment. Veterans and military usually vote Republican. Maybe the White House told the VA to put a busy signal on veteran attempts to get help. We’ve all heard elected leaders complain about the Wall Street douchebags and their corporate bonuses. Wall Street’s negligence didn’t contribute to daily suicide. The same can’t be said for Obama’s VA. It’s Obama’s budget that claimed to have all the VA funding it needed.

    Under the Obama administration, the VA also fattened up their Washington headquarters, adding 885 new bureaucrats at a cost of $91 million dollars. What do these new Washington bureaucrats do for veterans? They spend taxpayer dollars on bonuses for a select few VA employees. The VA Inspector General investigated these bonuses paid to a few selected bureaucrats at VA headquarters and found 79% of the bonuses could not be justified.

    Barack Obama’s hand-picked VA Secretary defended these bonuses. A VA fact sheet explained how Obama’s chosen VA leader started a “corporate approach to executive management,” including a new human resources office exclusively for top VA executives. The VA sure got what it was looking for: special treatment for only the top VA executives, nice financial bonuses for those who are more special than VA employees whose pay has been frozen for two years, and more administrator jobs.

    Perhaps one of the new 356 employees in human resources at VA headquarters will fix this issue. Do the math: for every 10 new medical doctors hired by VA, the headquarters staff fattened by another HR employee. The VA hospitals have their own HR people; they’re included above in the 9,000 new administrative employees.

    Secretary Shinseki sure does need HR help if he added 356 new human resources employees for only 529 other new headquarters jobs. What could 356 new HR employees do all day? Evaluate each other on how well they completed yet another required training course? How many more psychologists and social workers could have been hired with that money?

    Let’s ask some of the 30 veterans who attempt suicide each day.

    Who’s losing? The veterans waiting in line at their local VA.

    Who already lost? The surviving family members of the veterans who died by suicide.

    Sources:
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