July 31, VCS in the News: VA Struggling to Get Ready for New Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans
Sydelle Moore
Medill Reports
Aug 01, 2008
As the VA struggles to revamp itself, groups like Veterans for Common Sense say wounded veterans are being turned away or asked to wait too long for care — especially mental health care. "If your child was in a car accident you would expect that they would be taken care of immediately," said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense," We know that divorce rates are up among veterans, spousal and child abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, crime and homelessness. .. All of the indicators that say that these people need help are flashing red… We've got to do something now."
July 31, 2008, Washington, DC - Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan face longer waits to get health care because of backlogs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA has been rolling out new programs to deal with the influx -- but a government report says their efforts may be too little, too late.
The average veteran who files a claim for VA care has to wait more than four months—not including appeals, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative agency of Congress. In 2003, the wait was about three months.
The number of veterans asking for VA services has shot up 50 percent since 2003, when the first round of veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began to return home.
But the HealtheVet program-- designed to modernize recordkeeping at the VA to speed the claims process -- won't be ready until 2018, according to the GAO report released this week. The original due date for HealtheVet was 2012 and even that timetable was criticized by veterans groups, citing a backlog of health claims by Vietnam-era veterans.
go here for more
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/10801
This should not be tolerated by anyone. The best minds are put to work to train them to go into combat. The best minds are put to work to develop weapons and sometimes even the best products to protect them. Let's not forget about the helmets it took a grassroots group to come up with the inserts for them, or the vests that not doing their job or the pants that split at the crotch. When it comes to sending them, the best minds are supposedly fully engaged but when it comes to them coming home wounded, we have the blind leading the lame right off a cliff. We know that the sooner treatments begins the better the healing rates are. Yet time is being wasted while they have to fight for their claims to be approved. The best mind possible for them is a treated mind.
Plans to invade Afghanistan were in the works right after 9-11. Didn't they plan on any of the troops getting wounded considering how many Russian forces were wounded and how long they were there trying to get Afghanistan under control? Didn't they take any of the warfare history of Afghanistan into consideration on any of their plans? Common sense would tell them they were about to enter into a very long campaign that would produce a lot of wounded, but no one brought the DOD medical staffs up to speed on any of this. No one got the VA geared up for any of this when they were already dealing with a backlog of claims from older veterans who came home needing their wounds taken care of. Seven years later, they are still coming home wounded and waiting to excuses.
When the report of the suspect in the anthrax attacker committing suicide, people began to ask questions as to how was trying to link the attacks to Iraq. The shocking part is that John McCain was captured on tape discussing the "connection" in October of 2001. This clearly showed things were being geared up for the invasion of Iraq as far back as then. Did they ever contemplate the prospect of dealing with any of the wounded who would need to be taken care of if any of the claims about WMD were really believable? Think about the fact the claims were made that Saddam had tons and tons of weapons of mass destruction all waiting for the troops. If the DOD and the VA have been unable to keep up with the wounded with no WMD causing more wounded, then that is a very telling fact. No one even planed on them getting wounded by the WMD they claimed were there. What if they were right but did nothing to plan for the wounded?
Why is it that as bad as things are for the wounded no one is seeing that everything should have been ready to take care of them as well as the older veterans already being subjected to delays and endless cycles of claims and appeals?
Whenever this nation commits to war, there are several things that have to planned for and one of them is just as important as the tactical plans. That is taking care of the wounded. While one group is planning to invade another group must be planning for the medics in the field, military hospitals and veterans hospitals. Even if they believed Rumsfeld's claims of quick a war, "It may take six days, six weeks,,,,,I doubt six months" the notion of WMD hitting the troops would have caused a lot of deaths and wounds. Didn't they think of any of that? Apparently no.
As both occupations claimed more and more lives, limbs and minds, the DOD and the VA were doing what? As the wounded were filling up beds what were they doing? As the reports came out that we were losing more lives because of suicides and untreated PTSD wounds, what were they doing? Trying to cover it up instead of doing whatever it took to take care of them? Going to Capitol Hill to demand increased funding? What was Bush doing? Was he asking congress for more money to take care of the wounded? What was Nicholson doing?
The fact is, Bush managed to cut back funding so there were less doctors and nurses working with two occupations than there were after the Gulf War. The fact is Nicholson was not only asking for less money than the VA really needed but he also managed to return money in 2005 unused.
Listening to all the hearings taking place since the Democrats took the majority of the House and one up in the Senate, you'd think that all these problems just happened. You'd think that it was all some kind of a shock and no one suspected anything was wrong. You'd think that if you never paid any attention to any of the news reports coming out until Dana Priest and Ann Hull did their reporting on the conditions at Walter Reed for the Washington Post. The problem is there were already hundreds of reports from all over the country trying to raise awareness of what was not being done. Then there is the simple fact we should have known that no one was planning for any of this. One more deplorable statement of the nation oblivious to what wars really cost. They do not end when deployments end. They are not calculated simply in terms of fatalities in theater. The price tag goes up and up until all the wounded have lived out their lives.
As bad as the facts are with the wounded coming home and not being taken care of what we need to fully understand is that this is just the beginning. Seven years into warfare and we will not see the need begin to level off until at least 5 years after both occupations end. Maybe even longer if history is a good gauge. We had many seeking help for PTSD in recent years from WWII and Korea along with Vietnam and the Gulf war. Most of them came home knowing there was something wrong with them but didn't know what it was or that the VA was responsible for not only treating the wound but providing compensation for the incomes they lost and lives being destroyed. At least we have a lot more advocacy going on informing the wounded that what is wrong with them is classified as a wound and maybe, just maybe, we will see them seeking help a lot sooner.
In all of this, the time for excuses ran out a long time ago. The time for action has been delayed far too long and it's really time to start asking so very serious questions or we are doomed to repeat all of these mistakes again. The media should be asking what was planned for and when it was planned for and then open their eyes to what should have been planned for if any of the original claims were really taken seriously. The evidence so far proves otherwise.
Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
