Average Veterans Asking Questions on VA Scandal

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 8, 2014

If you only get your news from national press or cable news, then you may think you know all you need to about the VA scandal. What is reported is a fraction of what needs to be told and veterans tell the rest on a daily basis. Some veterans came out against Shinseki right away but most did not. They knew better.

If you read Wounded Times then you get to read what is happening all over the country on a "local" level. Here is one example of the letters to the edior newspapers have been receiving.

Letter: Local VA hospital offers good care, staff shows ‘great respect’
Shelton Herald
By Dick De Witt
on June 7, 2014

To the Editor:

The West Haven Veterans Affairs (VA) Hospital serves many thousands of veterans from World War II to Iraq, Afghanistan and the present.

The doctors and nurses at West Haven are highly skilled. Every man and woman working in the hospital shows great respect and care for each veteran.

I visited the hospital a few days ago and felt a solemn chill in the lobby. A large photo of Gen. Eric Shinseki, who just stepped down as U.S. secretary of veterans affairs, was still displayed on the side of a photo of President Barack Obama.

Obama met with Shinseki and said “if such cover-ups were true it would be dishonorable … I will not stand for it.” The president sent his deputy chief of staff to Phoenix to check on the allegations that government workers falsified data to hide long lines of veterans waiting to see doctors.

The media jumped on the story and Obama made a rush to judgment to remove Shinseki, a four-star general.

Why haven’t we heard names and facts about the guilty government workers who hid this information from Shinseki?
read more here

The veterans' community have a lot of questions no one seems to answering like the question about who did what to the veterans. They want to know how long they did it as much as they want to know who and why.

Other questions they ask are;
What group of veterans died while waiting?
Were they disabled veterans?
Or were they priority 7 and 8 veterans?
What wars did they fight in?
Had they been seen recently or have they been going all along?
The biggest question is, "Did they die because they were not seen by a doctor or not?" and once that question is answered, "Would it have made a difference if they had been seen?"

This scandal is not as big of a story as we have been led to believe. There were many veterans who did in fact end up dead because the VA turned them away. They were suicidal veterans told to come back because there were not enough beds or staff to take care of them. They were told if they couldn't wait to go to a civilian hospital for emergency care.

In 2007 McClatchy News released a report on PTSD care being inconsistent state to state. At the time there were 934,925 veterans treated by the VA but PTSD units for these veterans were not treating veterans equally.

In fiscal year 2006, the reports show, some of the VA's specialized PTSD units spent a fraction of what the average unit did. Five medical centers — in California, Iowa, Louisiana, Tennessee and Wisconsin — spent about $100,000 on their PTSD clinical teams, less than one-fifth the national average.

Some may want to assume these were Afghanistan and Iraq veterans but they were only part of the suffering going on. It was a perfect tsunami no one thought to plan ahead for.

The war in Iraq has caused an increase in the number of local veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety illness that can make it difficult -- or even impossible -- to lead a normal life.

But relatively few of those seeking treatment fought in Iraq. Instead, the televised images of war -- and daily news of bombings and deaths -- have caused the disorder to surface in Vietnam and Korean war veterans who have been off the battlefield for decades.

At Fresno's VA hospital, 190 new patients are referred for treatment of PTSD each month. Up to 80% are older veterans who served in Vietnam and Korea and suffer from anxiety, anger or depression.

They did not seek treatment before because they didn't know they had the disorder or they didn't want to ask for help, say VA officials.

They believe the trend is seen elsewhere as well, and will continue as the war in Iraq progresses. Dr. Cara Zuccarelli Miller, a clinical psychologist at the Fresno VA, said many older veterans only become aware that they have PTSD because they recognize their symptoms in those returning from Iraq who have been diagnosed.

The Associated Press reported in 2007 that 31% of veterans going to the VA in Arizona had PTSD. In just under a year, there were 462 veterans diagnosed in Southern Arizona.

CBS reporters David Edwards and Muriel Kane ended a 5 month study of suicides in the VA.

CBS News has now completed a five-month study of death records for 2004-05 which shows that the actual figures are "much higher" than those reported by the VA. Across the total US veteran population of 25 million, CBS found that suicide rates were more than twice as high as for non-veterans (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide accounted for 32,439 deaths in 2004).

CBS also reported in 2006

According to a recent report from the Veterans Administration, more than 50,000 vets from Iraq and Afghanistan are believed to be suffering from mental health problems — nearly half of them from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. It's well documented and, says the Pentagon, well treated both in the field and at home. But CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports that at least in one large military base in Colorado, soldiers are saying members of the Army Command are simply paying lip service, at best, to PTSD — hindering their treatment and upending their careers.

In Dallas the VA psychiatric ward had to close after 4 veterans committed suicide in less than a year.

In Oregon this report came out from the Portland Tribune

• In 2005, the last year for which complete Oregon data has been compiled, 19 Oregon soldiers died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. That same year, 153 Oregon veterans of all ages, serving in various wars, committed suicide.

• The rate of suicide among Oregon men who are veterans is more than double that of Oregon men in general — 46 suicides out of every 100,000 compared to 22 out of 100,000 — according to the Oregon Department of Human Services Center for Health Statistics.

• Nearly one in three Oregon suicides, according to Kaplan, is a veteran.

Vietnam Veterans of America sounded a loud warning about all of this back in 2005.

The Budget Resolution passed by both houses of Congress will result in staff reductions in every VA Medical Center at a most inauspicious time—as veterans return from the war in Iraq and as increasing numbers of veterans need care from the system, said Thomas H. Corey, National President of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA).

The impact will be significant among those returning troops who suffer from mental health issues such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), those who have sustained loss of limbs, and other serious injuries.

In addition to devastating decreases in the availability of care for veterans that will result from such budget cuts, the VA seems determined to contest even long-standing disability compensation for PTSD from veterans currently receiving VA benefits and health care. A recent VA Inspector General's (IG) report concluded that following a brief review of certain grants of service-connected benefits for PTSD, the "subjectivity" involved in such determinations has resulted in over-granting of benefits.

As a result, the VA will be reviewing PTSD grants between 1999 and 2004, with an eye toward revoking benefits if the claim was adjusted incorrectly. "VVA believes that the "subjectivity" offered to the IG report is a euphemism for poor training and quality control of VA adjudication staff.

"We must make it crystal clear to Congress that the budget appropriation for fiscal year 2006 year is at least $3.5 billion less than what is needed to fund the VA medical programs adequately," Corey said. "This is a critical time. Without these resources, veterans will have longer waits to see specialists, much-needed maintenance will be deferred, and medical equipment will not be purchased.

We kept reading their stories but families kept recovering their bodies. Year after year the suicide rate went up. Year after year, one excuse followed by claims of congress fixing the problems yet claims led to where we are today. We've heard it all before.

Taking care of the men and women serving and those who have served in the military is one way to define a nation. It requires honesty as much as it requires planning. The worst thing is, this nation should have seen all of this coming before troops were sent into Iraq. No one planned for the wounded coming home from there or Afghanistan. No one planned on much at all even though they knew how many would suffer. It was all predicted after the Gulf War but reporters were not interested in reviewing what they had already reported on much like today and how they had been telling these stories all along. None of it was fixed. More suffered. How long do we need before the next crisis hits?

Veterans have so many questions but no one seems really interested in what they want to know more than anything else. Why do more die after combat than during it?