Returning Troops Face Obstacles to Care

[babylonsister]

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/14/ap3612741.html

Returning Troops Face Obstacles to Care
By HOPE YEN 04.14.07, 3:25 PM ET



Injured soldiers returning home for medical treatment face an unacceptable maze of paperwork and bureaucracy, leaders of a presidential commission on veterans' health care said Saturday.

At its first public meeting, the nine-member commission heard from veterans, spouses and advocacy groups who decried what they said was a failed system. The commission pledged to work quickly to find solutions rather than assign blame.

"This is not going to be a witch hunt," said former GOP Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, one of the heads of the Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors.

Dole said the commission planned to build upon the work of at least nine congressional committees and other government panels that are investigating veterans' health care problems. Those inquiries followed disclosures in February of squalid conditions and poor outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Their reviews in recent weeks have pointed to inadequacies with the treatment of brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as outpatient care.

Donna Shalala, health and human services secretary under President Clinton, said the commission planned a report by late July that would be pragmatic and "solution-driven."

"Our timeline for action is very short," she said. As a result, she said commissioners may not be able to visit every military hospital and Veterans Affairs Department clinic to examine conditions.

During the hearing, the commission heard stories of confusion and frustration as veterans navigated the Pentagon and VA's vast health care network. Veterans complained of bureaucratic doublespeak when they sought help and said the problems extended beyond Walter Reed.

Veterans must take on "mammoth bureaucracies," said Bobby Muller, president of Veterans for America. He said the government has been slow to respond to brain injuries and other medical problems from the Iraq war.

more...

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Depleted uranium and the mystery of sick and dying Gulf War vets

Thwarted Warrior: Depleted uranium and the mystery of sick and dying Gulf War vets
by Robert C. Koehler


"It's not about me," Doug Rokke said, and only reluctantly rattled off his laundry list of symptoms: fibromyalgia, broken teeth, radiation-induced cataracts, gastrointestinal pain.

And I know it's not about him, any more than it's about you or me. "It." The war, the consequences. The environmental consequences are beyond calculation, and perhaps for that reason little discussed, never "debated." What does it matter that we went into Iraq on lies, faulty intelligence, whatever? Surely the most elaborately justified of invasions would not have been worth, well . . .

We know about the VA scandal, the great betrayal, but what almost no one talks about are the numbers. According to Veterans Administration figures from last November, 205,000 GIs who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, a third of the total, have sought medical care, for such problems as malignant tumors (1,584), endocrinal and metabolic diseases (36,409), nervous system diseases (61,524), digestive system diseases (63,002), musculoskeletal diseases (87,590), and mental disorders (73,157), among many other conditions. One of the largest categories is "ill defined," a.k.a. mystery conditions (67,743). In comparison, a relatively small number (35,765) have sought VA care for injuries.

The staggeringly backlogged Veterans Administration, which takes on average six months to process a claim and two years to process an appeal, cannot begin to cope with this onslaught of need and misery, but in contemplating the unconscionable lack of planning that resulted in this disaster, let's not forget to ask a more basic question: Why are all these GIs getting sick? And with even more urgent moral imperative, especially in the context of the invasion's justification, we must also ask: What about the Iraqis? Count on it, if our vets are sick, so are the Iraqis' children, their elderly, and they're making do with a shattered health-care infrastructure that makes our own look positively First World.


SNIP

Think about those numbers again. Several hundred thousand sick from the current wars, another several hundred thousand Gulf War 1 vets ailing and dying.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6731

[Monkeyman]

2. yep

[JohnyCanuck]

3. kick n/t

[bigtree]

4. we need more hospitals and vet centers which aren't necessarily at the hospitals

kind of like the Motor Vehicle Administration Express centers

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.