VA system ill-prepared for residual effects of war

This only tells part of the story.

Back Home: VA system ill-prepared for residual effects of war
News21
By Staff
August 25, 2013

Editor’s Note: This story is part of the News21 multi-media project, “Back Home: The Enduring Battles Facing Post-9/11 Veterans.” Twenty-six News21 fellows from 12 universities conducted an investigation over 10 weeks under the leadership of ASU Cronkite School professors Jacquee Petchel and Len Downie.

In the 12 years since American troops first deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 2.6 million veterans have returned home to a country largely unprepared to meet their needs. The government that sent them to war has failed on many levels to fulfill its obligations to these veterans as demanded by Congress and promised by both Republican and Democratic administrations, a News21 investigation has found.

Many of these combat veterans, returning from war with what will be lifelong illnesses and disabilities, are struggling to get the help they were promised in the form of disability payments, jobs, health care and treatment for such afflictions as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, physical disabilities and military sexual trauma.

But there is so much more to it.

As people playing some kind of political game scream for heads to roll now, others were screaming back in the early years of the two wars when the VA was not prepared or properly funded.

November 27, 2005
SECRETIVE VA LAUNCHES NEW PTSD REVIEW
By Larry Scott

Just six days after canceling one PTSD review, the VA "sneaks in" another - Culture of secrecy makes agency designed to help veterans their biggest foe. Over the past year, the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA), led by Secretary Jim Nicholson, has turned a deaf ear to veterans and quietly made numerous decisions designed to strip veterans of benefits and compensation.

Secretary Nicholson came to the VA with no understanding of veterans' advocacy and no experience in the healthcare sector. He had been Chairman of the Republican National Committee and Ambassador to the Vatican. As one pundit put it, "Jim Nicholson can write a good political bumper sticker and knows how to kiss the Pope's ring. That's about it."

But, with Secretary Nicholson at the VA helm, veterans have come to feel isolated from the agency's decision making processes. And, recent developments have done nothing quell that uneasy feeling.

Earlier this year, veterans were surprised by the VA's "second signature required" (SSR) policy. SSR applied to approved claims for many "high-dollar" disabilities and stipulated that the claim be re-approved by another VA staffer. However, if the claim was denied by the first staffer, there was no second review.

Veterans' groups claimed that a SSR policy should apply to all claims for any condition whether they were approved or denied. The fact that the VA chose to apply SSR to disabilities with "high-dollar" compensation was proof to many veterans that the agency was just trying to save money by denying benefits.

In February of 2005 the GAO said PTSD among returning Vets could overwhelm the VA. But that was only supported by over 30 years of research done on PTSD. The fact that the stigma associated with PTSD is still as strong as it was when nothing was being done should prove to anyone that the money spent, the years wasted on claims made by the DOD and the VA are worthless. Consider the numbers on veteran suicide statistics we already knew back in 2005. We had enough data on Vietnam veterans to know what was coming, or at least, we should have, but didn't put the data to good use. Vietnam veteran suicides were between 150,000 and 200,000.

In 2006 as the numbers grew the Pentagon denied the crisis situation even though US army suicides in Iraq three times the usual rate. Yet as bad as this was as soon as they were forced to do something, they turned around and spent billions of programs that RAND Corp found did not fit with military culture. The evidence proved RAND right and the DOD wrong. The VA proved RAND right as well when this was released.

Number of troops needing help threatens to overwhelm Veterans Administration
Kansas City Star
May 02, 2006

The number of troops back this year from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder could be five times higher than the Department of Veterans Affairs predicted.

Instead of 2,900 new cases that it reported in February to a veterans advocate in Congress, the increase could be 15,000 or more, according to the VA.

At the Kansas City VA Medical Center, only nine vets from current combat were diagnosed with PTSD in 2004.

Last year, it was 58. In just the first three months of fiscal 2006, the hospital saw 72.

“It’s absolutely incredible,” said Kathy Lee, at the Missouri Veterans of Foreign Wars.

A former Army nurse in Vietnam who works at the hospital, Lee said, “Every single Iraq vet who comes in, I give them a list and say, ‘How many of these (PTSD) symptoms do you have?’ It’s almost nine out of 10.”

A top VA mental health official said it was difficult to predict the number of new PTSD cases because of unknown factors like the troop discharge rate and how many veterans will use the VA.

So as Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story. What veterans and the troops have been dealing with kept getting worse no matter how much real data was out there. Pretending it didn't happen and no one knew what was coming will make it worse tomorrow.