VA Asked to Explain Marine Suicide

[sabra]

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,123822,00.html

VA Asked to Explain Marine Suicide

<snip>

U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, a Hawaii Democrat and chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, also wants to know what the Department of Veterans Affairs is doing to prevent tragedies similar to Jonathan Schulze's.

"I am concerned that reports of VA's failure to respond to Mr. Schulze's request for help may indicate systemic problems in VA's capacity to identify, monitor, and treat veterans who are suicidal," Akaka wrote in a Jan. 29 letter to Dr. Michael J. Kussman, the acting undersecretary for health with the VA.

Schulze, 25, of New Prague, Minn., told a staff member at a VA hospital in St. Cloud two weeks ago that he was thinking of killing himself and asked to be admitted, Jim and Marianne Schulze, his father and stepmother, have said.

They said Schulze, who left the Marines in 2005, was told that he could not be admitted that day. The next day, a counselor told him by phone that he was No. 26 on a waiting list.

Four days later, on Jan. 16, police found Schulze hanging from an electrical cord.

[uppityperson]

1. k&r for vets benefits.

"thank you for your service" means squat without actions to back it up.

[Rick Myers]

2. If the Boy King and his minions would FUND the VA

These troops WOULD get the care they need. Right now the Minneapolis VA is quadruple booking lab appointments and double booking clinic appointments. Give the VA the cash dumped into 'the Iraqi Invasion' in a day or two and the VA would operate!!! The VA is doing all it can do, but the bastards in charge would rather give cash to Halliburton and Blackwater than help the troops that have served in their sick enterprise.

[atreides1]

3. The Boy King Doesn't care

And neither do his minions in Congress or the "American" people who still support him! And as long as this "Democratic" controlled Congress continues to throw fluff with their non-binding resolutions
he'll continue not to care.

All he has to say is "look, the Democrats could have come at me, but they chose to not put their jobs on the line by making any decisions that could have made thins easier for the troops."

We all know that's the direction this whole thing is going in!!!!

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. I still can't get over that Bush was planning to march us off to perpetual war,

at the same time that he was cutting veteran medical benefits.

How the f**k did this sob become president? He can't even sell ice cream cones on a hot global day in June.

[Monkeyman]

5. This is happening across the Country

Plus descharging kids on a PD discharge instead of real problem PTSD

http://vawatchdog.org