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

Category: Veteran Health Care

  • It’s not ALWAYS the DVA’s fault

    I have to tell you that I’ve read this article no less than five times, and I still don’t understand what the Hell these people are talking about. But I will preface my opinions with the fact that it’s been my experience that Desert Storm veterans who stayed far from the fast-moving battle are the biggest crybabies on the planet. I, personally don’t believe in the “Gulf War Syndrome” because most of the people who complain of the vast, unrelated symptoms were far from the front. But here are my latest reasons to disbelieve;

    One solider trying to get help from the Veterans Administration for combat-related injuries says he has been turned down, because his records are missing. He says he has all the medical records for the time he was in the states, but the records for everything that happened outside of the country are gone.

    I don’t know what this ass clown is talking about. When I deployed, this time was like every other time I deployed – my medical records deployed. When I went back to my home station, the medical records jacket went back, too. Do you have any idea how labor intensive it would be for clerks to pour through every records jacket and pluck out the pages which referred to medical treatment for the time period of Desert Storm and destroy just those few pages just to save space?

    So, does he have his medical records, or does the VA have his medical records. See how I can get confused?

    When I had my second heart attack, the ambulance took me to the VA hospital. I didn’t have an ID card or anything. They checked my SSN and verified that I was eligible for treatment. So why is everyone else having all of these problems except me? I’m not saying the VA is infallible, I’m just saying there’s a right way and wrong way to do things.

    This Gulf War veteran served 20 years in the Army. The Veterans Administration has documentation he served in the 82nd Airborne division as an Army ranger and made 125 parachute jumps. All of his claims, including hearing loss, ankle and back injury, have been denied because efforts to obtain service medical records for all potential sources were unsuccessful. He says all his medical records are gone.

    Why would the VA have records of this guy being a “Ranger” in the 82d as well as his jump log? When I retired, the Army sent my MEDICAL records to the VA, the VA didn’t need to know where I served and what my job was (and the last time I checked, there was no “Ranger” duty position in the 82d – so what’s up with that?). My personnel file went to Record Center in St Louis, not the VA. The Army helped me file my claim with the VA before I retired and the claim went to the VA with my records.

    In the beginning of this article, the author explains that none of the soldiers wanted to give their names to the story because they know “what the government is capable of doing” insinuating that the government will send bureaucratic ninjas after them and kill them when they’re sleeping with wire-guided nuclear throwing stars. I’ll wait for the movie.

    Yeah, I know, I’m supposed to support all veterans all of the time, but sometimes I just can’t wade through the bullshit without saying something. I just think the story would have ended up differently if the “journalist”, Mike Deeson, would have checked out his interviewees more closely, rather than just printing what he wanted to hear.

  • Giffords to get TBI treatment Tricare refuses for troops

    ProPublica reports that Representative Gabrielle Giffords will receive treatment for head wound that Tricare has refused to approve for troops who suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury;

    If Giffords does end up receiving it, she’ll be getting a treatment that many troops don’t. As we’ve reported, the Pentagon’s health program, Tricare, has refused to cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy for the tens of thousands of service members who have suffered brain injuries in the line of duty. Tricare, which provides insurance-style coverage to troops and many veterans, does cover speech and occupational therapy, which are often part of cognitive rehabilitation.

    Though top brain specialists have endorsed cognitive rehabilitation as an effective treatment for brain injury, Tricare officials have said that scientific evidence does not justify providing it comprehensively to troops.

    I think I’ve proven beyond any doubt here that I’m no brain surgeon, but it seems to me that if this treatment is good enough for a congresswoman, it’s good enough for the troops.

  • Gates targets retiree health care

    The New York Times warns us that the Defense Secretary is coming for our health benefits…once a-fucking-gain;

    Of nearly 4.5 million military retirees and their families, about three-quarters are estimated to have access to health insurance through a civilian employer or group. But more than two million of them stay on Tricare. As the costs of private health care continue to climb, their numbers are only expected to grow.

    Now, as part of a broad offensive to cut Pentagon spending, that group is once again in the sights of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is seriously considering whether to ask for Tricare fee increases in next year’s budget — and perhaps start one of the last fights of his public career.

    See, the problem with raising Tricare fees, is that it not only impacts retirees, but also active duty recruiters, active duty ROTC instructors and, the last time I checked, the whole base at Fort Drum. Since there’s no hospital on Drum, the active duty troops there (about 10,000) and their families go downtown to the Watertown Hospital…and pay co-pays for their treatment.

    And so what if retirees skip their employers’ health care plan and opt for Tricare instead. We earned it. If you were anything like I was, you knew the monthly payments were going to be shit and you planned on the free healthcare to be worth the twenty years of shit-pay, shit-hours and shit-lifestyle. We paid upfront for our “free” health care. Unfortunately, we thought the government was serious when they offered it to us, now every time a Democrat weasels his way into the White House, we have to fight for them all over again. Remember Bill Clinton threw all retirees over 65 onto Medicare and pulled your military health care?

    Just like we do without a COLA increase this year, we’re also going to get another broken promise of health care. Gates only has a year left in his office, so guess how soon he can inflict this abomination on us?

  • Vets for hire

    The good folks at the PBS station KCET in Los Angeles asked me to show you this video about some of the problems returning veterans are having finding and keeping their jobs. The resources and employers mentioned in the video are listed at the SoCal Connected web page related to this video.

    I’m glad to see that some in the media are taking this subject seriously and not piling on veterans to make them look like wild-eyed lunatics as they’ve done in the past. I think it’s encouraging that the media is also reaching out to the blogs to get their message out. Thank you KCET and SoCal Connected for the excellent report and for including us in your audience.

  • HBO’s Wartorn 1861-2010

    Yesterday. HBO sent me a DVD of their upcoming documentary “Wartorn 1861-2010“, an hour long look at Post Traumatic Stress and it’s relationship to soldier suicides with a few examples from history. They asked me to review the documentary based on a thirty-second trailer and some photos. I said I wouldn’t do that because you know as well as I know how Hollywood sets out landmines for us when it comes to the “crazy vet” image. So they over-nighted it to me – I’m giving them points for being persistent.

    I’ve watched the documentary three times now and I think that’s about how many times someone needs to watch it in order to understand the documentary. You’ll see what you want to see in the film – if you want to blame the military culture, it’s there. If you want to blame war in general, there are plenty of reasons. If you want to blame the Department of Veterans’ Affairs there’s always something. If you want to blame the victims, some of the people they interview will give you cause.

    If you’re queasy, there are scenes which chase you out of the room peppered throughout the film. I’m not really sure why they bothered to put those pictures in, because it doesn’t add much to the story they’re trying to tell. Other than that, it was as well made as a documentary on this subject could have been produced.

    The documentary began with recounting letters of a young soldier, Angelo Crapsey, and his optimism at his enlistment in 1861 until he committed suicide in 1864 while hunting after his forced discharge. Then they jump back and forth in history through the wars since the Civil War and how soldiers of different eras dealt with PTS. Walter Reed Chief of Psychiatry, Col John Bradley, admits that very few don’t “carry something with them”.

    The line that struck me hardest was from World War I veteran, Herbert Hayden who wrote “my friends, my country, spoke a different language. Back, yet not back at all.” After I heard that line in the movie, I went back and watched the entire thing twice more. And that’s what I took from the whole thing – it’s not the
    military’s fault, or the VA or the veterans’ themselves. It’s those people who send us into the world’s shit holes and then expect us to be the same people we were when we left.

    I recommend this program, I think it’s important that these types of documentaries get widespread attention. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the people who really need to see it, won’t, which will only perpetuate the problem. I guess they’re all expecting Walter Reed to invent a switch so they can turn us off and on when they need us.

    But I encourage everyone to see Wartorn and recommend it to the folks who you think need to see it. And if I can throw my two cents in to this review, the best chance that veterans with problems have to sustain themselves is other combat veterans who’ve carried on in the aftermath of their experiences. It’s not the experience of war that causes this epidemic of suicides, it’s the coming home part.

    But watch “Wartorn” tomorrow night at 9:00 (that’s 2100 hours for some of you) Eastern time. I’ll be watching it for the fourth time with you. Bring a friend.

  • Dirty instruments at another VA facility

    Someone emailed us this morning to remind me that I haven’t criticized the Department of Veterans’ Affairs lately. And since TAH is daily fare for Eric “Black Beret” Shinseki (I’m told) I found this story from Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger which reported that a whistleblower reported dirty instruments at the DVA’s hospital in Jackson. Apparently, the Office of the Inspector General, some of whom are friends of this blog, verified the whistleblower’s allegations;

    Among the findings were that dirty and rust-stained instruments such as scalpels, blade handles, tissue and nail clippers and bone cutters were issued for use within the facility.

    However, the report noted that generally when dirty instruments were distributed, staff replaced them with clean instruments before use.

    Well, that makes me wonder, if they were replaced before they were used, why they even kept rusty scalpels around if they never intended to use them. I mean they saw the things, why didn’t they throw the damn things out?

    A Pre-Clinical Risk Assessment Board that reviewed the situation at the podiatry clinic determined the risk to patients was negligible and there was no need for notices to be sent to patients about exposure to possible infection.

    Yeah, if a private hospital had done that, we’d be reading about it across the country as headlines. But its the DVA and the patients were just veterans, so what’s the big damn deal?

  • Tammy Duckworth, dunce

    I always get in trouble when i write about combat veteran amputee Tammy Duckworth, but usually when I write about the woman, it’s because she does such stupid shit and says such stupid shit that i can’t help myself because she infuriates me so much. For example, COB6 sent me this link from Bryan Preston at Pajamas Media a veteran himself, who writes about a visit that Duckworth made to wounded veterans in Illinois where Duckworth once served as the director of the state veteran agency;

    One of the veterans at the session, Jason Wheeler, 39, of Champaign, was injured eight years ago in training at Fort Polk, La. In a wheelchair, he still suffers from a nerve condition that makes it feels as if his hands and legs “are on fire,” he said.

    “There’s not the same help for the guys who were injured stateside,” Wheeler said.

    “This unfortunately is the result of dollars. It’s money,” Duckworth said. “I think that we as a nation would want to take care of all of our veterans. But it means that we’re going to have be willing to get the folks in Washington to spend the dollars on all of our veterans. And as long as there aren’t enough dollars, then they are force to prioritize veterans.

    “And combat-connected, disabled veterans are the highest priority. That is why when you and I go to the VA they will take care of me first because I am combat-connected,” noted Duckworth, who lost both of her legs when the helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq in 2004 was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

    “The difference is how did you get hurt. Unfortunately that’s just the way that … it’s a bureaucracy that was put into place in previous administrations in order to prioritize veterans because they didn’t spend enough to take care of everyone,” Duckworth told Wheeler.

    Stupid shit, no? If Duckworth had actually paid attention during her military career, she’d know that training for war is just as dangerous as actual war. I can’t count the number of times we evacuated soldiers from the training area, some dead, some maimed for life – just as dead and just as maimed as a combat casualty. Requiring the same long term care as a similar combat injury. And the DVA knows that.

    Duckworth, the DVA official who should know how to correctly answer the soldier, told him a lie. There is no priority system for the geographical location of the occurrence of an injury. An injured veteran gets the same level of care for any injury. Duckworth should have known that, she probably knew that. As Preston points out, it was probably a “Blame Bush” moment.

    It should have been a Blame Duckworth moment since she was supervising veteran care in Illinois before she went to the federal veteran care agency. She might have her ass in a wheelchair, but that’s no excuse to act like her brain has been amputated, too.

  • Ex-soldier takes hostages at Fort Stewart

    Yesterday, an unnamed former soldier walked into the hospital at Fort Stewart armed with two handguns and two semi-automatic rifles and took hostages according to the Savannah Morning News;

    An Army psychiatric nurse spotted the gunman and approached him to talk, Phillips said. That nurse was then taken hostage along with a behavioral health technician who refused to allow the gunman through a locked door to the patient area.

    Still, the nurse — an Army major — was able to start calming the man.
    “Working together, they maintained the situation, kept the gunman out of the territory where he could harm someone else and bought time for someone else to get there,” Phillips said.

    Military police soon arrived and surrounded the hospital. Army investigators trained in hostage negotiations worked their way to the floor.

    In less than two hours, they persuaded him to put down his weapons and surrender.

    According to news reports, the former soldier was upset at the quality of care he was receiving at the Army hospital.

    “He broke the law, obviously, and he threatened people” and would have to face the consequences, [fort spokesman Kevin] Larson said. “But we are going to get him the help for behavioral health.”

    In no way do I condone this soldier’s methods, however it seems to me that Army mental health professionals should have seen this coming and done something before it reached this point. I agree that the soldier needs to be punished, but I don’t think jail time will help anyone.