Bill will aid wounded soldiers

Bill will aid wounded soldiers
The Monterey County Herald
Posted: 07/20/2012

We were pleased to see the U.S. House, once again, approve an amendment to a bill that would expedite innovative treatments for military veterans and active-duty soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. Now it is time for the Senate to do the same.

The action would allow those suffering from serious brain maladies to obtain new treatment techniques from private sources when such treatments are not offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

North Bay Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, has been one of the prime forces behind this amendment. Thompson, who was wounded during a combat tour in Vietnam, is co-chairman of the bipartisan Military Veterans Caucus. He teamed with Republican colleague Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas to shepherd the amendment through a successful House vote twice.

Back in May, the amendment was successfully attached to the National Defense Authorization Act, but the Senate failed to act on it, so last week Thompson and Sessions managed to get the treatment-expansion initiative tacked on to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act.

As Thompson explained to us, the premise behind the amendment is that brain-injured soldiers deserve the best treatment possible, but sometimes that treatment lies outside the federal system.

His legislation could make that treatment available to those soldiers who desperately need it.

The incredible stress of fighting two wars for nearly 10 years has dramatically increased the number of soldiers who need such treatment. In the past 11 years, more than 230,000 service members have been diagnosed with TBI and up to 18 percent of U.S. military personnel returning from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD symptoms.
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Glad they're happy,,,,,

Congress wasting more money on troops and failures