Category: Veteran Health Care

In the The Washington Post, David brown joins the ranks of folks who are finally telling the truth about PTSD and TBI. In his article “Link between PTSD and violent behavior is weak“, Brown writes;

Veterans with PTSD are two to three times more likely to be physically abusive of their wives and girlfriends than those without the diagnosis. They’re three times more likely to get into fistfights when they go to college. One study showed they are especially prone to “impulsive aggression,” but that “premeditated aggression” — the kind of act Bales is accused of — was far more common in veterans without PTSD than in those with it.

“The closer we get to trying to understand how PTSD relates to extreme violence, the more we get anecdotal,” said Paula Schnurr, deputy director of the Department of Veterans Affairs’s National Center for PTSD, in Vermont.

Kudos to Brown for actually talking to experts for his article and then having the courage to publish it, despite the popular culture’s demand that we denigrate veterans and create monster out of soldiers who suffer from the disorder and their injuries. It’s encouraging that the facts are finally getting in the way of fairy tales.

Of course, this article from the Associated Press leans heavily on the SSG Bales case, still making believe that PTSD explains his actions two weeks ago so neatly that even the most ignorant journalist can understand. But this time they make it sound like the Army just packs them off while ignoring their problems. And do they bother to talk to the mental health professionals who work with people afflicted with PTSD? No, they ask lawyers;

Critics say the Army has a history of bandaging the problem and rushing troops back into combat by loading them up on prescription drugs. Military courts also do not recognize PTSD as a legitimate defense, said attorney Geoffrey Nathan, who has represented a number of court-martialed troops.

“They’re still in a state of denial as to what combat soldiers go through in the field of battle,” Nathan said.

If I were a journalist, and I most certainly AM NOT, I would ask Geoffrey Nathan, since this is not the Civil War and soldiers in this day and age aren’t merely cannon fodder in battles that depend solely on the weight of numbers to defeat the enemy, what would the Army have to gain by sending injured soldiers into battle if they aren’t capable of performing to the level of professionalism and expertise that today’s highly technical military requires from it’s trigger pullers? Nathan is the one in a state of denial, because he doesn’t understand the nature of combat. But he has found a defense that no one will be able effectively counter – which means from a legal aspect, that everyone he defends with this vacuous defense will be found not guilty.

However, in the end, it only muddies the waters surrounding PTSD, so while Nathan and Bales’ attorney John Henry Browne, have no interest in the number of people who aren’t their clients and who actuallly suffer from PTSD, their intellectually stinted defense of their own methods in the long run only damage the perception of Americans have of the people who fight their wars.

For some Americans, Bales is the epitome of a soldier afflicted by war’s psychological wounds, pushed by the Army beyond his limits.

Bales’ attorney says he does not know if his client suffered from PTSD but his initial statements appear to be building a possible defense around the argument that the horrific crime was the result of a 10-year military veteran sent back to a war zone for a fourth time after being traumatized.

Browne “doesn’t know” if his client suffered from PTSD, but he’s more than willing for PTSD to be the first words out of his mouth at a press conference.

Some troops treated for PTSD yearn to return to the battlefield where they feel more comfortable surrounded by their fellow troops and on a mission than in the unsettling quiet of their home life, mental health professionals say.

But Bales’ attorney said that was not the case with his client.

John Henry Browne of Seattle said Bales had suffered injuries during his deployments, including a serious foot injury and head trauma and did not want to go on a fourth tour.

So, because Bales doesn’t fit the mold of a typical soldier with PTSD, he must have it. Maybe it was his fricken injured foot that caused him to go into the village and murder 16 people. Folks with injured feet don’t usually go in to town and shoot everyone up, either. It’s as plausible as PTSD, at this point in the discussion.

I’ve read some of the comments here from lawyers who have said that they would use the same defense for a client in similar circumstances. Just because the defense would work, doesn’t make it right to use. Your jobs are to get your clients out of a sentence they deserve. My job, on the other hand, is to do my level best to prevent lawyers from sentencing perfectly innocent people to a lifetime of carrying the burden that lawyers and journalists are so eager to heap upon them.

Our president, who owes all of his policy successes to the military, has sent a bill to Congress that will increase our healthcare premiums several times over the next five years. In a link that several of you sent me over the last few days from the Washington Free Beacon (sorry I didn’t use it sooner, but I didn’t trust it until I saw Bill Gertz’ name attached to the article), the Obama Administration admits that the reason they want to jack up the costs is to force veterans into Obamacare;

Administration officials told Congress that one goal of the increased fees is to force military retirees to reduce their involvement in Tricare and eventually opt out of the program in favor of alternatives established by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

“When they talked to us, they did mention the option of healthcare exchanges under Obamacare. So it’s in their mind,” said a congressional aide involved in the issue.

So where are those brainless turds who told me four years ago that no one would ever raise healthcare costs on veterans? I remember dicksmith telling us how good Obama was for veterans and our healthcare system. And Paul Rieckhoff is too busy getting his petition signed for a parade through New York City that will pass by his office to give a tiny rat’s ass about veterans’ healthcare.

Significantly, the plan calls for increases between 30 percent to 78 percent in Tricare annual premiums for the first year. After that, the plan will impose five-year increases ranging from 94 percent to 345 percent—more than 3 times current levels.

According to congressional assessments, a retired Army colonel with a family currently paying $460 a year for health care will pay $2,048.

The new plan hits active duty personnel by increasing co-payments for pharmaceuticals and eliminating incentives for using generic drugs.

Active duty people will get hit as well. That makes complete sense. So those drugs you’ve been getting for PTS, are going to cost you now.

Where is Dave Rehbein when we really need him?

We discussed Sean Duvall whose call to a veterans hotline had him facing charges for manufacturing a crude gun with which he’d planned to kill himself. It seems that he won’t be going to jail for the offense, according to the Washington Post;

Prosecutors initially argued they had every right to charge Duvall, who admitted to being armed with a gun when he called the hotline from the campus of Virginia Tech. But during a hearing Monday, the government changed course and recommended that Duvall be admitted to counseling overseen by a new Veterans Treatment Court. If completed, the charges, which carried a prison sentence of up to 40 years, would be dropped.

OK< the rest of the article celebrates the decision made by DVA Administrator Eric Shinseki's son-in-law, Timothy Heaphy, the prosecutor, but the fact remains that a supposedly private phone call to a helpline resulted in an arrest in the first place. Heaphy claimed that he didn't factor in the fact that Duvall was a veteran, even though Duvall spent a week in treatment before he was arrested by the Federal prosecutor while he was in a veterans' treatment facility. You'd think the son-in-law of the guy who is the number one veteran advocate would indeed take the man's veteran status into account. Well, that's the way I see it. I don't think there will be a flood of calls to the veterans' hotlines for immediate help if veterans have to clear the immediate area of anything that might get them arrested.