POTUS committed an evil act pretending to care about disabled veterans!

Vietnam Veterans Woke Up To Attack
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 29, 2018

The "duty and honor" words have just turned into words for millions of our disabled veterans and families. They did their part, lived up to the oath to "protect and serve" this country. Yet the obligation this nation owes them has just been torn apart by the whims of the Commander-in-Chief.

What am I talking about? Treating veterans as if the promises made to them can be broken as easily as cowards breakup on Facebook or Twitter.

Right now, on Vietnam Veterans Day, as President Trump gloats for signing the Bill into law last year, he has chosen to begin the biggest assault against them.

Apparently he has decided our veterans should be treated just like all other citizens having to deal with private health care. 

"President Trump suggested Thursday that he fired David Shulkin as his secretary of Veterans Affairs because Shulkin wasn’t adequately aligned with his desire to quickly give veterans more options to get VA-funded care in the private sector."

“We made changes because we want them taken care of, we want them to have choice so that they can run to a private doctor and take care of it, and it’s going to get done,” Trump said during a speech in Ohio. “It’s going to get done. We’ll always protect the people that have protected us. We have to.”

That obligation this nation promised them has just been broken! Sending them into the mess the rest of us deal with is evil! They prepaid for their care the day they ended up with wounds they will carry the rest of their lives.

He also decided that older veterans should no longer be guaranteed the benefits they were told would be "permanent and total" should be cut because they are too old to work.

Any clue what these two things are doing to them? Any clue what kind of unjustified assault this is for them?

If we allow this to happen, then every generation should be terrified of what else they will take away after you put your lives on the line serving this country!

Congress has allowed all this to happen to you because far too many of them agree that you are no longer worth treating like you did something worthwhile by making sure this nation remained free!

Congress has had the jurisdiction over how all of you are treated since 1946. We all need to be asking why it is the VA has gone from one crisis situation to another while veterans suffered, waiting for the promises to be fulfilled.

In order to destroy the VA, they allowed all the suffering to continue and they got away with it because too many were pretending they cared about those who dared to risk their lives. 

If you think this is political, you're right because all politician have been dismissing the IOU we owe veterans!
Time to honor the IOU
by
Chaplain Kathie
March 23, 2009


There are wounds you can see with your eyes.

Then there are wounds you can see part way with your eyes.

His hair will grow back in and cover the scar of his head wound, but you will not see what has happened to his life after.

But there are also wounds that cut so deeply you never manage to see what is right in front of your eyes.

You need to see these wounds, these hidden casualties of war, with your heart.


Sometimes they grieve and the pain fades while memories linger. For far too many the pain feeds on the sensitive soul within the heart of the warrior.

They come home, try to return to friends and family but they are not the same. They want to excuse it as everyone else has changed instead of them until they finally stop denying the nightmares and flashbacks have managed to change the way they think and react to others.

Paranoia takes over and trust erodes. They cannot trust what friends tell them or even what their spouse tells them anymore. They cannot trust strangers. When it's the government they cannot trust, it hits them like a knife in the back.

Imagine if you served your country, followed orders, did what you would not do of your own accord for the sake of others, risked your life and ended up finding that the war came home with you, but the government decided to ignore all of it. They ignore what they promised you to take care of your wounds and provide for your family when you were not able to. This would cause a deeper wound within you as well as resentment. It would eat you away. It would make any shred of hope within you evaporate. You would find it unnecessary to wake up in the morning because everyday would be one more never ending nightmare.

For too many, PTSD has been allowed to fester like gangrene on their soul. Every relationship they had begins to fall apart. They are blamed for all the turmoil in the family and financial difficulty. They are blamed for drinking too much or turning to drugs to kill off feelings they can no longer bear on their own. They are then abandoned by family and friends they used to have before the wound of PTSD took control over their lives.

Abandoned by the government they thought they could trust, by family they thought would love them no matter what, friends they thought they could trust, what's left? Faith? Faith in what or whom? Faith in God? Could you hold onto faith in God when everyone has turned their back on you? Could you hold onto faith when you believe that you've been judged and are being punished for what you had to do? Wouldn't you wonder where God is when everything is happening to you and inside of you without anything or anyone coming to help you? Pretty impossible when you think of all that is involved in claims denied or trapped in a backlog with hundreds of thousands of others reduced from human to a number.

When claims are denied while the veteran carries the wound inside of them, it entraps every part of the veteran's life. There is nothing that is not being consumed by PTSD. This is a battle against evil for the sake of the good but the good end up being disarmed by everything that comes with PTSD.

First came denial. They were told they could train their brains to deal with the traumas they would face in combat. They were told that only the weak would fall prey to the wound of the mind. They were told this by people without a clue that it is not really a wound to the mind and that the mind cannot be trained to do something it was never intended to do. PTSD is a wound to the soul. It is a wound that strikes the sensitive and sets off changes in how the mind functions protecting itself from further harm. If they are changed by trauma it has to be their fault. Unable to think of themselves as weak, they believe they can get over it if they try hard enough. After all, they know they are not weak and they know they are not a coward. They know they are just as strong as everyone else they served with. They'll just have to get over it, bury it inside of themselves and never allow anyone to see their wound. There can't be anything "wrong" with them.

Then comes anger. They can't get over it. They can't stop the flashbacks and nightmares. They can't calm their nerves. They are quick to react with anger because that is a sign of "toughness" masking the pain inside. They get angry with themselves because they cannot move on the way everyone else they know did. They take out what they see as their own weakness on everyone around them. They push friends away and disconnect from family as walls are being built brick by brick around their soul.

When someone finally gets to them to help them heal, when they finally understand PTSD is not a sign of weakness and it is not their fault, they must find the courage to seek help. They need to talk to strangers about what is in their hidden world of pain. The walls begin to come down because relief restores hope of healing but soon they discover the same government they risked their life for is denying ownership of everything that is happening to them. Claims are denied. They are chastised for being weak by commanders. They are punished for drinking or doing drugs to relieve the pain. They are discharged with the wound disregarded. They are told they will no longer have their base housing. They are told they will no longer have their basic needs taken care of. They are told they are no longer worthy of any of it and they are told their service to the nation is no longer needed. They have lost everything they had including themselves.

When PTSD is disregarded until they become a combat veteran civilian, they arrive at a point where they are able to seek help from the VA. They know they can no longer function on a job because of the gangrene of their soul, nightmares robbing them of rest and flashbacks draining them of strength. They turn to the VA to be treated so they can heal and financially compensated for when they cannot work but end up being told whatever is happening to them is not the fault of the government. They find their claims denied and any responsibility the VA doctors tell them belongs to the government is ignored by the government.

This is what we face when we finally get to them. This is what we face when we finally get them to the point where they understand PTSD is a normal reaction to the abnormal world of combat. How can we offer them any hope of healing when it is being denied and their lives are still falling apart? How can we tell them the devastation of their lives goes on with these denied claims but they need the government to treat them?

I can come up with videos to get them to understand PTSD is a wound. I can email back and forth with them and their families until my fingers are ready to fall off but all the education I can offer, all the hope I can demonstrate from coming thru the darkness in my own family, will do them virtually little good when the help they need is being denied to them.

I cannot replace hope when it is being denied by someone else. I cannot tell them to trust the VA or the DOD to take care of them when they are telling them "no" all the time. All the hope that is there for them is impossible for them to get to when doors are shut and they are told the responsibility for their state of life belongs to someone else.

It's time we paid the IOU we gave them the day they were sent to serve. It's time the DOD stopped telling them they can train their brain to be tough enough to take it when it is their soul that is attacked by the horrors of combat. Stop doing the same research that was done 30 years ago. Stop asking the same people the same questions settling for the same answers they heard 30 years ago.


We still owe Vietnam veterans the truth. We still owe them the knowledge they were denied over 30 years ago and compensate them for the wounds they brought home with them. It’s too late to save most of their families from falling apart but it’s not too late to restore relationships they had. In many cases it’s too late to save the homes they lost because they couldn’t earn income to cover their mortgages as PTSD claimed more parts of their lives but we can provide them with the compensation to secure their futures. In doing so, we will honor the debt that should have been pain long ago but we will also restore within them the belief their service was honored, their sacrifice was worth it because this country honored it.

Vietnam Veterans Day is March 29. The last accountable death was in May of 1975 but the fatalities truly connected to the Vietnam War are still happening today. They die from Agent Orange exposure related illnesses. They die on the streets and in shelters across this nation. They still die from reaching for alcohol and drugs to cope with untreated wounds. They die when they can no longer find the strength to carry the burden their service caused by their own hand. None of their deaths are counted as the price paid by them. We need to get this right for them and stop ignoring them within the growing numbers of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan flooding the system seeking the same help that was not available when Vietnam veterans came home. None of the accomplishments reached for veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder would have been begun had it not been for Vietnam Veterans fighting for it and all other veterans.

We can build them monuments from coast to coast but if we do not honor the living monuments of sacrifice to this nation they are all reduced to hunks of rock. We can give them parades and all the flags in the world, but until their sacrifice to that flag is truly honored, they are all empty gestures. We can place all the flowers we want at their graves but until we honor all the living the lives already gone will have disregarded.

As we try as a nation to honor the IOU to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, we must pay the original debt we owed to the Vietnam Veterans. This is not an option. Taking care of them is not something that can be put off any longer or we further assault their service to this nation. We further deny them justice. We further allow them to pay a price for a debt we owed to them.

Veterans Deserve Better Than Having to Make a Choice! 
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 27, 2018

Members of Congress need to remember that veterans were disabled serving this nation and risked their lives for this nation. Honoring that should never be a "choice" but must be regarded as an obligation!

You'd think they would already know that, but they have not taken action to make sure the VA was able to fulfill their needs.

Congress? Yes! It has been their job since 1946, so if there is anything veterans are not getting, it is their fault. 

As for the "choice" that some members of Congress are pushing, remember, they are the same ones telling civilians how bad our system is. Why on earth would they think it was a good idea to toss veterans out of the VA and send them into this mess?

We seem to have our answer, and it is not a good one. Greedy people want to make a lot of money off our veterans! Tell them we owe veterans, we do not own them. Stop trying to sell them off!

White House meets with veterans groups amid tension over Shulkin, Choice program
CVA is backed by Charles and David Koch, billionaires who seek to roll back government bureaucracy. The group has been one of VA's most vocal critics since the agency's 2014 wait-time scandal was exposed. Its profile has grown during the Trump administration, with one of its former senior advisers, Darin Selnick, serving as veteran affairs adviser inside the White House.

Which is more BS if you look up the history of the VA and backlog of claims. By June of 2009 they were up to a million in the backlog. Go back and check for when Bush was President too, but don't stop there. Veterans have had to come home and protest for promises to be kept since the Revolutionary War!!!!!

VA paid out roughly $1.1 billion to break promises

VA wants $782 million for electronic health records overhaul...still? may have shocked you, but the GAO has an even bigger shocker.

The Government Accountability Office found that VA paid out roughly $1.1 billion between fiscal 2011 and 2016 to contractors working to update the agency’s outdated Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture system. The agency has relied on the platform to manage health records for its 9 million beneficiaries since the 1980s.

The department gave the bulk of the billion to 15 contractors—one of which is getting a sole-source $10 billion contract to try again.
NextgovJack CorriganDecember 8, 2017 
The Veterans Affairs Department wasted more than a billion dollars over six years attempting to upgrade its electronic health records system before scrapping the projects in June, according to a congressional watchdog.
Fifteen individual contractors received about two-thirds of the money spent during that period, and the remaining funds were distributed among 123 other firms. The VA has since announced plans to give one of those 15 major contractors, Cerner Corp., another crack at modernizing the agency’s health IT with a sole-source $10 billion contract to rebuild its medical record management platform.
read more here

And what did veterans get out of all that money? Backlog of claims, missing records and misery!

What they sure didn't get was an apology from members of Congress.

"The VA has betrayed our veterans" But members of Congress did it first

OMG! I need to stay out of social media. Yet again I was reading about someone ignoring the fact that all the problems the OEF and OIF veterans have with their claims and treatment from the VA is new. 

"The VA has betrayed our veterans." Paul Sullivan Veterans For Common Sense said after his group filed a lawsuit because veteran were waiting too long for medical care and compensation. Here is a little history lesson, because if we ignore it, nothing will change. 

Injured Iraq War Vets Sue VA

Frustrated by delays in health care, injured Iraq war veterans accused VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in a lawsuit of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment. 

The class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad changes in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on numerous fronts. It contends the VA failed to provide prompt disability benefits, failed to add staff to reduce wait times for medical care and failed to boost services for post-traumatic stress disorder. 

The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.

"When one of our combat veterans walks into a VA hospital, then they must see a doctor that day," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, which filed the lawsuit. "When a war veteran needs disability benefits because he or she can't work, then they must get a disability check in a few weeks."

You may think that just happened. You need to think again because if you just started to pay attention to all of this, you're wrong. That report came out July 23, 2007. There was a budget crisis.

Yet, the lawsuit says, Nicholson and other officials still insisted on a budget in 2005 that fell $1 billion short, and they made "a mockery of the rule of law" by awarding senior officials $3.8 million in bonuses despite their role in the budget foul-up.

And while our veterans and families were suffering after decades of promises from members of Congress, they never once apologized for any of it.

"The performance of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs has contributed substantially to our sense of national shame," the opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals read.Nicholson abruptly announced last week he would step down by Oct. 1 to return to the private sector. 

He has repeatedly defended the agency during his 2½-year tenure while acknowledging there was room for improvement.More recently, following high-profile suicide incidents in which families of veterans say the VA did not provide adequate care, Nicholson pledged to add mental health services and hire more suicide-prevention coordinators.

A year later the VA Budget was $3 Billion short! Paul Sullivan continued the fight and was demanding some accountability when more veterans were committing suicide while waiting in a backlog of 600,000. Veterans were telling employees they were suicidal and were put on a waiting list.  

Now that may seem as if that was new but it happened to Vietnam veterans in the 80's and 90's. Not that it mattered since Congress did nothing about it. After all, when it reached the point where President Bush had to fight against veterans in court, no one put the blame on Congress.

During an interview given in November for the original CBS story, Dr. Katz told reporter Armen Keteyian that "There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem." When pressed for an answer to explain the VA's inability to come up with any suicide statistics among veterans, Katz replied "That research is ongoing." 

However, "After a public records request, the VA provided CBS News with data that showed there were a total of 790 attempted suicides by VA patients in the entire year of 2007." This number does not match up at all with a private email sent by Dr. Katz to a colleague in which he states that the VA has identified "about 1000 suicide attempts a month in patients we see at are medical facilities," a far cry from his public estimate of 790 a year.

PS, that really hasn't changed either. As you can see, not much has changed.

POTUS Is Too Old To Not Know Better

When Does Accountability Actually Happen?
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 24, 2017

"Responding to an Obama-era scandal in which veterans died waiting for doctor’s appointments" is just too sickening to be funny at this point. 

President Donald Trump displays the “Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017” after signing in the East Room of the White House, Friday, June 23, 2017

Responding to an Obama-era scandal in which veterans died waiting for doctor’s appointments, Mr. Trump said the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 will “make sure that the scandal we suffered so recently never, ever happens again.”

“What happened was a national disgrace, and yet some of the employees involved remained on the payrolls,” Mr. Trump said. “Our veterans have fulfilled their duty to this nation, and now we must fulfill our duty to them.”

Gee that sounds really good and what happened with the last President was really bad. It sounds that way but it is pure political bullshit!

History has shown that none of this is new but it also proved that all the speeches about them giving a crap in the first place, have produced too little changes for the better.

Last week we had to battle to make sure that senior veterans did not get hit by the "unemployable" portion of their comp being cut. Well, veterans actually won that part because folks paid attention and fought back. The problem is, it wasn't the first time veterans had to fight for what they should have been able to count on.

Here is a little blast from the past
This is from just before the last President took the oath in 2009

Wounded Warriors in Beetlejuice altered universe

Getting benefits for post-traumatic stress, for losing flexibility, for being in the kind of shape in which you want to work but can't do what you once did — these are the kinds of injuries backlogging the system. 

"We're combating an archaic VA system," said LeJeune, who has been in contact with the state's congressional delegation about his concerns. 

Congress introduced a bill signed into law in December 2007 that increased veterans' funding to help reduce the 400,0000 backlogged claims and 177-day average wait, according to information from U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter's office. 

"It has become an adversarial system," said Shea-Porter. "It certainly isn't supposed to be that way. The frustration we're hearing is accurate. Congress is aware of it. Part of the problem is, we didn't have resources; we were forced to make these terrible unfair decisions." 

LeJeune has been fighting to get his disability rating at 100 percent. It is now at 90 percent. 

"Two-thousand seven hundred dollars a month total disability," Worrall said. "That ain't a lot to live on, (along with) Social Security. I used to make $85,000 a year on the job. I'll be fine because I've planned for retirement. My ability to make that kind of money is gone. What happens to these kids who never had a career? You're going to make them live on three grand a month?" 

That cut was nothing new. Politicians have been pulling that stunt for decades. Veterans had to fight to stop Congress from cutting $75 million from homeless veterans. Oh, almost forgot to mention that was back in 2011.

Then again, historical facts hardly ever get mentioned anymore when the press does a report that should actually matter enough for us to get the whole truth. Messy business telling the truth is. When you are up against popular folks telling you what they want you to know, they somehow manage to trip you up with nonsense.


Time for history lesson  
Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:586-591 Copyright © 1991 by American Psychiatric Association
Suicide and guilt as manifestations of PTSD in Vietnam combat veterans
RESULTS: Nineteen of the 100 veterans had made a postservice suicide attempt, and 15 more had been preoccupied with suicide since the war. Five factors were significantly related to suicide attempts: guilt about combat actions, survivor guilt, depression, anxiety, and severe PTSD. Logistic regression analysis showed that combat guilt was the most significant predictor of both suicide attempts and preoccupation with suicide. For a significant percentage of the suicidal veterans, such disturbing combat behavior as the killing of women and children took place while they were feeling emotionally out of control because of fear or rage.

CONCLUSIONS: In this study, PTSD among Vietnam combat veterans emerged as a psychiatric disorder with considerable risk for suicide, and intensive combat-related guilt was found to be the most significant explanatory factor. These findings point to the need for greater clinical attention to the role of guilt in the evaluation and treatment of suicidal veterans with PTSD. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/148/5/586


Although the link is from 1991 it applies even more now.

From Senator Akaka 2006

In addition, a March 20, 2005, article in the Los Angles Times pointed out how concerned veterans' advocates and even some VA psychiatrists are with VA's handling of PTSD services, saying VA hospitals are "flirting with disaster." The article highlighted the situation at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, specifically the Los Angeles VA hospital, which last year closed its psychiatric emergency room. A decade ago, VA hospitals in Los Angeles had rooms to treat 450 mentally ill patients each day. After a series of cutbacks and consolidations, however, the main hospital can now accommodate only 90 veterans overnight in its psychiatric wards. During the same 10-year period, the overall number of mental health patients treated by the VA Greater Los Angeles increased by about 28 percent, to 19,734 veterans in 2004. Mr. President, if this is how VA handles PTSD care for our veterans at the nation's largest VA hospital, how does that bode for the rest of the nation?

VA Cuts 2006
WASHINGTON, May 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Budget Resolution passed by both houses of Congress will result in staff reductions in every VA Medical Center at a most inauspicious time—as veterans return from the war in Iraq and as increasing numbers of veterans need care from the system, said Thomas H. Corey, National President of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA).
The impact will be significant among those returning troops who suffer from mental health issues such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), those who have sustained loss of limbs, and other serious injuries.

Military Suicide 2005
Gordon Smith: "It's a tragedy to ever lose a soldier for any cause, but it just seems extra cruel when the cause is suicide. They're defending our country, America's interests and if we can't give them mental health assistance when they're in harm's way, we're really falling down on the job."Preventing suicide is a very personal issue for Oregon Senator Gordon Smith -- his own son Garrett committed suicide. 88 active duty soldiers killed themselves in 2005, a number that was up 13% over 2003 and more than 70% over 2001.

PTSD CASES LEAP FAR BEYOND VA ESTIMATE 2006

VA officials agreed that the earlier estimate of 2,900 new cases for all of fiscal 2006 was an “underestimate.” Indeed, it was even lower than the 3,600 cases the VA diagnosed in the last three months of fiscal 2005.

VA Budget request in 2006

"This budget request indeed has glitter," Bock said. "But I am not yet sure how much of it is gold. It is a budget request that appears to table long-needed construction dollars, particularly in the area of grants for state veterans homes and leaves CARES (Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services) under-funded again. It takes a $13 million bite out of VA research. It also fails to provide sufficient funds for staffing and training in the Veterans Benefits Administration to address a claims backlog fast approaching one million."

Bock said he sees the estimate of 109,000 new VA patients in 2007 from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as a step toward better forecasting. "The under-estimated number of VA patients from the ongoing war contributed mightily to the $1.5 billion budget shortfall for VA health care in 2005," Bock said. "This appears to address that." He also applauded a requested increase in mental-health-care funding, from $2.8 billion to $3.2 billion.


Wait time to process claims in 2006 145 days
Although the Bush administration expects the backlog to continue rising, its 2007 budget proposal calls for decreasing the staff that directly handles such cases - 149 fewer workers, from the current year's 6,574.

The VA has long wanted to reduce its backlog to less than 250,000 claims. But the department's most recent projections have it rising to nearly 400,000 by the end of 2007.

Those are just a few reports from my old site. You know what is on this one.


Wait time 180 days in 2008 and 69,000 veterans waited more than 30 days for an appointment.

“For the 400,000 veterans, including combat-wounded vets, who are having to wait too long to have their [health] benefits cases reviewed, this bill means over 1,800 new VA caseworkers to reduce the unacceptable delays in receiving earned benefits,” Edwards said. “For veterans with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, mental health care issues, and lost limbs, this bill means renewed hope to rebuild their lives.”

President Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 today, handing over an extra $3.7 billion to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Bush had to sign the act by Jan. 18, or VA would have lost the promised extra funding, which will be used to hire and train people to process the backlog of more than 600,000 benefits claims, said Dave Autry, spokesman for Disabled American Veterans. Some of the money also will go toward medical research for conditions such as traumatic brain injuries. 

That was reported on Army Times January 17, 2008 and the link is still on Wounded Times

Veterans dying waiting for care in the news

29 Patients at Marion VA January 2008 and there were more, and more, and more.

Ok, and now for accountability: Exactly when does that happen?

Hint: It won't happen until we actually pay attention enough to know when what happened and who did it first!

Shame on us for creating a subclass of disabled veterans!

Stop Tolerating Veterans Being Pushed Back Into Subclass
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 14, 2017

Remember Memorial Day weekend? There was a lot going on especially for the majority of our veterans. There were lots of ceremonies around the country showing how much the American people care at the same time in Washington, news was getting through the crowds gathered that senior veterans were once again being subjected to subclass veteran status.

The budget submitted by POTUS called for senior veterans to take a huge cut in their disability checks. Why? Because they are collecting Social Security? 

Ok, then no one bothered to explain to these veterans why "permanent and total" meant nothing. After all, since most disabled veterans were receiving the equivalent of 100% with the "unemployable" part, they did not bother to clog up the system to get their service connected rating upgraded. 

After all, they knew about the backlog of claims the younger veterans were facing, much the same way they did when no one cared about them, so they let it go.

Most of these senior veterans were unable to work for a decade, or in many cases, decades, meaning they were not able to pay into Social Security. Ever wonder what that does to the amount of money they pay?

This is a chart from Social Security

This is the Compensation rate from the Department of Veterans Affairs

Most stopped working well before the age of 62 because they couldn't, not because they didn't want to.

Retirement is a dangerous time for them instead of their golden years.

Vietnam Veterans Experience PTSD in Retirement for the First Time 
WGCU NPR News 
By MICHAEL HIRSH
MAY 30, 2017 
"Vets have more time to think. They may have been using work as a way to cope. They were self-medicating by turning into workaholics. Now, that coping mechanism is no longer available, and any number of events can trigger symptoms. Even something as simple as going to an Asian restaurant, even though the vet may have eaten at the restaurant throughout their working life."

It is also clear when you ignore all the "awareness raisers" running around the country talking about veterans committing suicide. Aside from getting the numbers wrong, they totally ignore the fact that 65% of the suicides they know about were veterans over the age of 50!

"Approximately 65 percent of all Veterans who died from suicide in 2014 were 50 years of age or older."

Now you can no longer ignore any of this when you hear about what this plan to cut their compensation is doing to them! We have created a subclass of veterans. 

While they do not want to see anything taken away from younger veterans, imagine what it is like for them to fact this, on top of everything else! 

Caregiver stipend is not for them. It is only for younger veterans even though their "caregivers" managed to do it all with absolutely no help or recognition at all. 

The charities popping up all over the country and handing disabled veterans free homes, are not doing it for them, nor have they ever done it, yet now these veterans are worried about losing the homes they struggled to get and keep.

They have waited longer, fought harder for all generations to make sure no generation ever left another one behind, but that is exactly what we just did to them. If you think a coin, a lunch saying "Welcome Home" will make up for any of this, you are pretty much out of your mind.

How about you actually do something for them? One more thing to consider is that these veterans have lived for decades after facing combat, yet after these decades, the war they had to fight alone at home all this time is still trying to destroy them!

Problems With the VA, What Congress Knew--And Let Happen

There are a lot of stories in the news lately that make it all seem like new problems. None of them are new and here's just a sample of proof to let you know that none of this was taken care of when it needed to be, so it all got worse for our veterans.

2007 Veterans-Suicide and What Congress Knew

The hearing was prompted in part by a CBS news story in November on suicides in the veteran population that put last year’s number of veteran suicides at over 6,000. VA officials refuted that number, questioning its validity. But a VA Inspector General report released in May of 2007 found that as many as 5,000 veterans commit suicide a year—nearly 1,000 of whom are receiving VA care at the time.

2007 PTSD VA Claims and What Congress Knew

The senators also requested a detailed report on how the military monitors other psychological injuries. Recent media accounts indicate that the number of service members seeking care for PTSD from the Veterans Administration (VA) increased 70% over a 12-month period, or an increase of some 20,000 cases. In addition, reports of the total number of cases of PTSD treatment at the VA since 2001 – 50,000 cases – far exceed the number of wounded documented by the Pentagon.

2008 Backlog of Claims and What Congress Knew 

Bush had to sign the act by Jan. 18, or VA would have lost the promised extra funding, which will be used to hire and train people to process the backlog of more than 600,000 benefits claims, said Dave Autry, spokesman for Disabled American Veterans. Some of the money also will go toward medical research for conditions such as traumatic brain injuries.

And this which ties into the claim about the VA and DOD linking up data.

Peake wants to reduce wait times from roughly 180 days to 145 days by the start of next year. He cited aggressive efforts to hire staff, noting the VA will have 3,100 new staff by 2009. VA also is working to get greater online access to Pentagon medical information that he said will allow staff to process claims faster and move toward a system of electronic filing of claims.
Peake promised to “virtually eliminate” the current list of 69,000 veterans who have waited more than 30 days for an appointment to get VA medical care. Such long waits runs counter to department policy, and a group of Iraq war veterans have filed a lawsuit alleging undue delays. He said VA plans to open 64 new community-based outpatient clinics this year and 51 next year to improve access to health care in rural areas.
“We will take all measures necessary to provide them with timely benefits and services, to give them complete information about the benefits they have earned through their courageous service, and to implement streamlined processes free of bureaucratic red tape,” Peake said in testimony prepared for a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Thursday. 

2008 Deaths at VA Hospitals and What Congress Knew

The VA will help affected families file administrative claims under the VA's disability compensation program, he said. Families also could sue.
...........The VA investigation found that at least nine deaths between October 2006 and March last year were "directly attributable" to substandard care at the Marion hospital, which serves veterans from southern Illinois, southwestern Indiana and western Kentucky.
Kussman declined to identify those cases by patient or doctor, though Rep. Jerry Costello, an Illinois Democrat, said those nine deaths were linked to two surgeons he did not name.
Of an additional 34 cases the VA investigated, 10 patients who died received questionable care that complicated their health, Kussman said. Investigators could not determine whether the care actually caused the deaths.

2008 Female Veterans and What Congress Knew

“Women who served this country in uniform -- whether veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the current Global War on Terror or peacetime service -- have earned our respect and thanks,” said Dr. James B. Peake, Secretary of Veterans Affairs. “They have also earned the full range of VA programs offered by a grateful nation.”
Secretary Peake also announced the Fourth National Summit on Women Veterans Issues to be held from June 20 – 22 in Washington D.C. The Summit will offer attendees an opportunity to enhance future progress on women veterans issues, with sessions specifically for the Reserve and National Guard, information on military sexual trauma and readjustment issues, after the military veteran resources and many more programs and exhibits.

By the way, if any member of Congress dares to suggest sending veterans away from the VA, remind them, if they cared, they would have done their jobs in the first place. Or actually, second place, considering veterans did their jobs first and ended up disabled risking their lives!

Villain and Vultures Want Veterans To Pay for Having Served?

POTUS wants to take away something that veterans were promised going back to WWII. Congress wants to pretend they had nothing to do with the mess at the VA, also going back to WWII. With all the crap in the news, it is a good time for a little history lesson. This way, no one can pretend they actually intended to keep their promises to our veterans.

First, if you think Concerned Veterans of America is actually putting veterans first, they aren't.

CVA wants more aggressive cuts to the fiscal 2018 VA budget

WASHINGTON — Like other advocacy groups, Concerned Veterans for America have problems with the president’s proposed Veterans Affairs budget. 
But unlike most of the veterans community, they think it doesn’t cut enough. 
The conservative group, which has ties to prominent Republican donors and several members of President Donald Trump’s administration, is releasing a policy memo this week calling for more belt tightening and increased scrutiny of the president’s $186.5 billion budget proposal, which has already drawn criticism from groups like the American Legion for too many trims. 
“We recommend that Congress aggressively seek out more savings within the VA’s budget, especially in its construction, medical facility operations, personnel, and medical compliance accounts,” the document states.

The cut against older veterans announced right before Memorial Day and all the speeches made about how much our veterans mean.

History lesson on the VA and the growing number of veterans seeking care.

On Feb. 1, 1946, Bradley reported that the VA was operating 97 hospitals with a total bed capacity of 82,241 patients. Hospital construction then in progress projected another 13,594 beds. Money was available for another 12,706 beds with the construction of 25 more hospitals and additions to 11 others. But because of the demobilization, the total number of veterans would jump to more than 15 million within a few months. The existing VA hospitals were soon filled to capacity, and there were waiting lists for admission at practically all hospitals. In addition, there were 26,057 nonservice-connected cases on the hospital waiting list. Until more VA hospitals could be opened, the Navy and Army both made beds available. To handle the dramatic increase in veterans claims, VA Central Office staff was increased in two years from 16,966 to 22,008. In the same period, field staff, charged with providing medical care, education benefits, disability payments, home loans and other benefits, rose from 54,689 employees to 96,047. When he left in 1947, Bradley reported that the VA had established 13 branch offices and 14 regional offices, and set up 721 contact offices. He noted that 29 new hospitals had been opened

Yes, it all happened before and considering 2 wars were added to the list of other war veterans in the backlog of claims, waiting for care as elected officials were attempting to push privatizing the VA, it makes sense the mess got worse. After all, if they had actually honored their promises to veterans, they'd never be able to get rid of it.

Currently, veterans eligible for the program have a 60 to 100 percent disability rating through the VA and are unable to secure a job because of their service-connected disability. The program allows them to get paid at the highest compensation rate. For 2017, the monthly rate for a 100 percent disabled veteran living alone is $2,915 per month. 

And this "unemployable benefit" goes back!

The benefit was a safety net for veterans who couldn't work because of health problems that began in the military and whose disability ratings, based on a formula combining their conditions, fell shy of 100%.

In 1945, as disabled World War I veterans continued to fall out of the workforce, the VA adopted a regulation ensuring eligibility to veterans of any age. That decision underlies much of the current growth.

More than half the 137,343 veterans approved since 2010 were 65 or older, including 13,684 who were at least 75, according to VA statistics.

The largest share served in the Vietnam era. Many joined the disability system over the last decade as the VA expanded eligibility for PTSD and diabetes, heart disease, prostate cancer and other common conditions on the presumption they were caused by exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange, used to clear jungle vegetation in the war. 

Once in the system, veterans are eligible for the unemployability benefit if their ailments are deemed too severe for them to work and their disability ratings reach a certain threshold, usually 60% or 70% depending on their mix of conditions. 

Pretty much sums up what this is all about. It is about paying to send veterans into private healthcare and treat them like everyone else. You know, the same healthcare they complain about being oh so bad for the rest of us! All these years of them saying how they want to kill "Obamacare" but now it is good enough to send veterans into that mess? Top that off with the fact that now they want our senior veterans to pay for what they do not want and you have a villain and a bunch of vultures!

Claim backlog not new and Congress promised to take care of it...New York Times reported this in 2007,

The agency’s new plan to hire at least 150 new appeals judges to whittle down the backlog, which has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000, will require $100 million more than the president requested this year and still more in the future. The plan has been delayed by the standoff between Congress and the White House over domestic appropriations.

By the following year, there was this report from Army Times

Peake wants to reduce wait times from roughly 180 days to 145 days by the start of next year. He cited aggressive efforts to hire staff, noting the VA will have 3,100 new staff by 2009. VA also is working to get greater online access to Pentagon medical information that he said will allow staff to process claims faster and move toward a system of electronic filing of claims.
Peake promised to “virtually eliminate” the current list of 69,000 veterans who have waited more than 30 days for an appointment to get VA medical care. 

And that was followed up by a backlog of claims by GovExec

VBA's pending compensation and claims backlog stood at 816,211 as of January 2008, up 188,781 since 2004, said Kerry Baker, associate legislative director of the Disabled Veterans of America, during a Wednesday hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.
Baker said VBA must have the funds necessary to upgrade its IT infrastructure to handle the backlog and a growing caseload. Anything short of an increase is "a recipe for failure," he added.
Carl Blake, national legislative director for the Paralyzed Veterans of America, said VBA needed $121 million in its fiscal 2009 budget for its information technology. According to VA budget documents, VBA requested an IT budget of $109.6 million for its compensation and benefits programs, down $23.8 million from $133.4 million in 2008. VA requested an overall 2009 IT budget of $2.53 billion in 2009, up from $2.15 billion in fiscal 2008, with the largest portion earmarked for the Veterans Health Administration. 

As foolish as it was to actually trust the press to get any of this right and put it all together so that all veterans knew exactly what Congress thinks of them, now is the time for them to make it up to all of our veterans and families!

Over the weekend, I'll do the same with the suicide numbers. Oh wait, I don't really have to since I already wrote a book about it!

Top Customer Reviews5.0 out of 5 starsAwesome bookByJames G. Youngon May 14, 2013Format: Kindle Edition|Verified PurchaseIf you have not read anything Kathie has written you are at a major disadvantage when discussing PTSD. She has a first hand account of dealing with this herself as the wife of a Nam vet, but then devoting her life to understanding the dilemma and helping others understand it as well. I consider Kathie a highly knowledgable contact with regards to this subject and have consulted her many times.
Kathie truely has the inside pulse in understanding the issues here, the denial of our govenment and the failures of the administrations to come to grips with how best to deal with it. Our govenment is trying to find a series of magic bullets (medications) that some practioners hand out like candy because they have nothing else to give and lack the compassion needed.
Straighforward, if you haven't read this book or spoken to Kathie you are at a major disadvantage. Great Book Kathie, well written and researched, should be made mandatory reading for anyone dealing with or discussing PTSD. ....