Years show no progress for veterans

I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at what was being reported around this time last year. I've been making the same noise with my mouth my Mom did when I was growing up and was in trouble yet again.

The Veterans Affairs Department has spent about $2 million on Facebook advertising to lure new followers and maintain ties with existing followers on the social media site, a government official who asked not to be named told Nextgov.

Newest bill addresses rural access to care but been there and down this road to waiting before.

“VA wants to be sure that all Veterans, including those who live in rural and remote areas, can receive the health care they have earned through service to our country,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “State Veterans Agencies and VSOs will now be able to employ innovative approaches to transportation services for Veterans in our highly rural areas. The end results will include better service and better health care for Veterans.”

VSOs and State Veterans Service Agencies may apply for grants up to $50,000 to fund transportation of Veterans to and from VA medical centers and other facilities that provide VA care. If specified in the application, the services may be provided under agreements with contractors, such as private bus or van companies.

Most of us just read in the news about Captains getting their layoff notices from the DOD while deployed into Afghanistan but that is tied to Congress and sequestration. The press however will not remind folks of the shut down or the lack of congress to get things done. Much as they are reluctant to remind folks of what they reported on in so many other cases.

A total of 650,000 civilian employees are now being furloughed at U.S. military bases in response to sequester cuts -- but the Department of Defense is still spending millions to protect fuzzy critters.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington state just received a $3.5 million department grant to purchase land around the base in an effort to protect the Mazama pocket gopher, a species that has not even been listed as endangered or threatened.

A year before in 2013 it was this

Over 30,000 veterans took their own lives since 2007
UPDATE DoD does not know if PTSD programs work

One of the hardest things I do is work on a suicide report. It rips me up inside. Today is one of those dark days when I have to read the stories all over again but I know for whatever pain I feel, the families feel it a lot worse. They are the reason I do this. For most of us we read the suicide numbers in headlines across the country. For the families and friends, they were more than numbers. If we are ever going to stop other families from suffering at the grave of someone they did not have to lose, it will be due to these families coming out and talking about someone they loved. I got as far as May of this year and had to stop. It dawned on me that since this blog started, over 30,000 veterans took their own lives if we believe the 18 veterans a day number. The only problem with that number is, if they are not in the VA system, they are not counted by them and if they have been discharged, the military doesn't count them. The only people counting them are the ones left to remember them and grieve.

Reporters jumped all over the latest flash that the DOD doesn't know if their PTSD programs are working or not,

Report: DoD does not know if PTSD programs work
By Patricia Kime
Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jul 13, 2012

The Defense Department has a woeful lack of information on the effectiveness and related costs of its post-traumatic stress disorder treatment programs, despite having spent millions on various initiatives to address psychological health and traumatic brain injury, a panel of top scientists concluded in a report released Friday.

In a review of DoD and Veterans Affairs Department PTSD treatments mandated by Congress in 2010, an Institute of Medicine panel found fewer than half of all service members and veterans who screen positive for the disorder’s symptoms — 40 percent — have received referrals for care, and of those, just 65 percent actually go on to get help.

They didn't work in 2014 or 2013. This ended up being repeated a year later because nothing was done in 2012

DOD and VA Can't Prove Their PTSD Care is Working, Study Claims The Defense Department and the VA cannot say if their own doctors are successfully treating hundreds of thousands of troops and veterans with PTSD because neither agency is adequately tracking long-term patient outcomes, the Institute of Medicine said Friday.

Combined, the two departments spend $3.3 billion annually on medications and therapies meant to curb or cure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But physicians at the DoD and Veterans Affairs Department also don’t share with one another information on the medical hits or misses they’ve documented from their differing attempts to ease PTSD symptoms, IOM members claim in a new report.

This one of the reasons veterans are just fed up with the Congress.