"Why didn't they know what would make all this suffering grow?"

Lives on the line, Congress writes more bills but veterans keep paying the price

Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 14, 2019

"Tester introduces veterans' mental health bill named after Helena man" was the headline for yet one more bill named after another veteran/service member who were also failed by previous ones. 

The bill carries Hannon's name because of his service as a Navy SEAL and as an advocate for the National Alliance of Mental Illness in Helena, where he retired after 23 years of military service. Hannon was dealing with post-traumatic stress, a traumatic brain injury, depression and bipolar disorder after he ended his military service. He was active in veterans' issues and helped develop a group therapy for veterans involving rehabilitating birds of prey at Montana Wild. Hannon died by suicide in 2018.

Maybe I have been watching all of this for far too long? I have become so jaded by them that the evaporation of hope forces me to ask, "Why didn't they know what would make all this suffering grow?"

Who was Commander John Scott Hannon?

Scott was open about his invisible wounds of war, and found solace and recovery in many of the causes that also allowed him to give back to his fellow veterans and his community. He was passionate about improving veterans’ access to mental health care and integrating service animals into mental health care. Scott worked closely with Montana Wild and VA Montana to develop a group therapy program for veterans that involved birds of prey. Scott was embraced on his journey to recovery by his family, friends, and community. He died from his invisible wounds of war February 25, 2018.

Ranking Member Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., speaks during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. in September 2018.

A handout from Tester's office said expanding rural veterans' access to telehealth care and investment in "gender-specific specialists, services, and research" were part of the bill's overarching goals. If passed, the bill would also fund a study to see if there is a higher risk of suicide for veterans living at high altitude. Funding would also provide alternative treatment paths for veterans, including agricultural and animal therapy, yoga, acupuncture and meditation.

While we knew decades ago what works, it seems as if no one bothered to learn any history. It also seems that Senator Tester has not explained why the outcome is still devastating families across the country, especially when in 2009, the Montana National Guard program was touted as the best thing going and pushed across the same nation to address the same problem...veterans and military members killing themselves.

The Montana Guard's Yellow Ribbon program has become a model that the rest of America should adopt, said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. 

"We're getting terrific responses to the program from the families of our soldiers, but also some great suggestions," said Col. Jeff Ireland, chief of manpower and personnel for the Montana Guard. "For instance, we were told it would be useful to have a special breakout session for spouses.
Ireland said officials believe the session was a great idea. 

"We plan to act on it and other suggestions until we meet all the needs we're aware of," he added. 

With the approval and funding of the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C., the Montana National Guard is adding five positions and spending approximately $500,000 to fund the Yellow Ribbon program, Ireland said. 

The core of the program is twofold: mental health assessments every six months after deployment and crisis response teams that can be activated immediately to check out concerns about the emotional wellbeing of a soldier. 

"The genius of the Montana screening model is that it happens every six months," Matt Kuntz, Dana's stepbrother, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last week during testimony in Washington.

Current suicides within the military have also increased...but hey, why bother about reviewing the failures of the past?

So why do we know that suicides in the Veterans' Community have gone up, but even as more members of Congress use the names on more bills, they remain disconnected to what the result of their other efforts produced?

Apparently they have not been notified that current military suicides have also risen.

Rep. Don Young wrote to Lt. Gen. Nadja West requesting an inquiry into suicides at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, The Daily News Miner reported Tuesday. "As the number of military suicides continues to climb in Alaska, it is clear that the battle is far from over."

Advocates, like me, continue to fight to educate them and families, but it is a constant battle because members of Congress have failed to listen to us.

As we watch suicides in every branch and in every state, claim more lives, they have eviscerated all hope we placed upon their shoulders. 


As more and more members of Congress are taking about what they are doing, we are watching to see what they keep repeating and, honestly, we are fed up!

WASHINGTON — A Department of Veterans Affairs analysis of its suicide prevention programs touted mostly “positive outcomes” of the efforts even though they didn’t translate into fewer veterans dying by their own hand. Now, as the White House launches a new year-long effort to find solutions to the problem, outside advocates want to make sure that bureaucrats aren’t going to repeat the same mistakes in how they look for those answers.“We’ve already seen four years of wasted time. It’s not a partisan mistake or problem. We’ve see this across administrations. But we seem to be doing the same things over and over again.”  Joe Chenelly, executive director at AMVETS.

But perhaps the most damning part of all of this came with this statement.

“More than 24,000 veterans have died by suicide since the passage of the Clay Hunt Act,” said group National Commander Rege Riley in a statement. “God willing, we won’t be stuck with the same system we have not in 2023, with a new report that highlights only that what (they) keep doing continues not to work.” 

People like me have advising them to do everything that veterans like Clay Hunt did in order to heal, like Scott Hannon, but lost his battle too.

The Senate voted 99-0 to pass the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act on Feb. 3, while the House voted 403-0 in favor of it last month. Obama signed the bill on Thursday...The bill is named after a Marine Corps veteran who killed himself in 2011 after he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder following deployments to Iraq and in Afghanistan. After his service, Hunt volunteered in Haiti to offer relief following the 2010 earthquake, and worked with other veterans who were dealing with the physical and mental tolls of war. He worked to address his own difficulties coping, but lacked adequate resources – he reportedly waited months to see a psychiatrist, and an appeal of his disability rating did not come through until five weeks after his death."By the time the severity of his condition was recognized, it was too late," Obama said. 

One of the first bills was the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act 

Specifically, this Act requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to develop a program that includes screening for suicide risk factors for veterans receiving medical care at all Department facilities, referral services for at-risk veterans for counseling and treatment, designation of a suicide prevention counselor at each Department facility, a 24-hour veterans' mental health care availability, peer support counseling, and mental health counseling program for veterans who have experienced sexual trauma while in military service.

They made all kinds of speeches back then too...but it was signed by President Bush in 2007~

How long will it take before anyone cares that while lives are on the line, more and more members of Congress get applauded for naming bills after the dead they already failed...but veterans keep paying the price with their lives on the line? 

Did you know that bankruptcy can cost you VA benefits too?

Bankrupt vets can lose their disability benefits. This new effort would protect them.

Reboot Camp
By: Joshua Axelrod
March 7, 2019

Two senators just introduced a bill designed to shield veterans’ disability benefits from debt collectors.

When a disabled vet declares bankruptcy currently, the law allows debtors to count a veteran’s disability benefits as disposable income, allowing them to seize the benefits.

Yet Social Security disability benefits are exempted by law from being lumped into a person’s disposable income in bankruptcy filings, and disability benefits in any form aren’t taxable and therefore generally not considered disposable income.

This state gives vets and their families free college tuition — without touching their GI Bill benefits The Honoring American Veterans in Extreme Need (HAVEN) Act seeks to create the same immunity in bankruptcy cases for benefits provided by the VA and Department of Defense to disabled veterans and their surviving spouses.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced the bill, which has already been endorsed by 10 Republican and 10 Democratic senators. It has also earned the support of organizations like the American Legion, Disabled Veterans of America and the American Bankruptcy Institute, among others.

“Right now, veterans and their families are forced to dip into their disability-related benefits to pay off bankruptcy creditors,” said Baldwin during an unveiling event for HAVEN in her Senate office. “And that’s not right. This reform will protect veterans’ disability benefits when they fall on hard times.”
read more here

VA Lacks Data to Track Mental Health Progress,, Still

Nothing has changed in decades. How many times do members of Congress get to listen to problems before they finally fix the VA once and for all veterans? It is exactly the same as it was in the 80's and 90's!

Watchdog: VA lacks data to track mental health progress
Stars and Stripes
By Heath Druzin
Published: October 28, 2015

Navy veteran Dean Maiers, broke down in tears while telling the committee about his struggles after his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, which included a suicide attempt. He said the VA treatment he finally received saved his life, but that the VA’s narrow appointment schedule means finding time for treatment is difficult.

Navy veteran Dean Maiers covers his eyes to hold back tears Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015 before a Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where he emotionally told of how he tried to kill himself before receiving mental health care.
CARLOS BONGIOANNI/STARS AND STRIPES

WASHINGTON – Department of Veterans Affairs officials are using two different wait-time standards for veterans seeking mental health evaluations and could be underestimating how long it takes to schedule those appointments because they lack consistent data, according to a report from a government watchdog.

The report was released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office and dovetailed with a hearing on veterans mental health by the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, where veterans talked about their continued struggles to get help from the VA in sometimes emotional testimony.

Former Marine Nicholas Karnaze, who served two tours in Afghanistan, said it took him one year to enroll in the VA system. When he did seek mental health care, he said he was bounced to two different phone numbers that both ended in voicemail. He didn’t get a call back.
read more here

Open Letter to Sen. Joe Donnelly to Open Your Eyes

UPDATE
Considering the DOD released their suicide numbers for the second quarter it pretty much proves the point DoD releases 2nd quarter suicide figures on Army Times

Suicides among active-duty service members rose by 20 percent in the second quarter of this year to 71, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Defense Department.

The Marine Corps had the highest percentage increase, 12 suicides, up from three the previous quarter.

The Army had 28 active-duty suicides, the Air Force, 17, and the Navy, 14, according to the report.

Over the first six months of 2015, 130 active-duty troops took their own lives, along with 89 reserve members and 56 National Guardsmen. In the second quarter, the reserve component experienced 47 suicides and the National Guard, 27.

Trained to Fight, Trained to Suffer in Silence
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 1, 2015

Suicide Prevention month is over and evidently did little good to prevent them.

I just read the headline with Donnelly Says Military Still Has Work To Do To Help Prevent Suicide and after reading about your efforts, I think you may really want to do something to save lives. Your answer is right here.

“You have to be able to ask for help – and it’s okay to ask for help," Frost said. "And that stigma that existed, really a lot in what is that Army tough, Army strong, we’re soldiers, we’re hooah…that has really started to melt away.”

I have over 30 years crammed in my brain but since we're running out of time, and frankly, I ran out of patience long ago, I will be blunt but I mean you no disrespect. I am just tied of all of this getting worse when the reason behind it was predicted back in 2009.

If you promote this (Comprehensive Solider Fitness) program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

Overwhelmed VA didn't happen overnight but then again if you fail to factor in the obvious crush of younger veterans against the already long line at the VA, this was a predictable catastrophe, or it should have been.

Wounded Times has documented all the ups and downs members of Congress have let happen. While the press seems to forget, veterans remember, especially since it is their lives we're talking about. Somehow members of Congress have managed to get away with just blaming the person in the Chair of the VA even though you've all held hearings and promised changes only to turn around every time the press reports on another crisis and veterans get more promises.

Here's a blast from the past with Senator Bernie Sanders as he and Senator Daniel Akaka were calling for more funding for the PTSD Center Funding. It came out in 2008, a year after Congress had the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill passed and signed into law in 2007.

In recent years, the Center for PTSD has been called on to dramatically expand its mission and conduct research on a larger scale. At the same time, an increasing number of servicemembers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD. However, the Center's budget has increased by less than 10 percent in the past half-decade. Due to limited funding, the Center's capacity to continue its work is severely restricted, and staff levels have been reduced since 1999.

While all of you were blaming Shinseki, veterans noticed this going on,

In a departure from the rhetoric Shinseki has used before Congress, Shinseki said at the American Legion's National Convention that he's not afraid of the claims backlog that has grown to about 600,000 -- a sore point when Senators and Congressmen question him on Capitol Hill. The VA secretary said he doesn't regret opening the opportunity to issue disability claims to nearly a million veterans of wars going back more than 60 years. He only wishes the decision had been made sooner to give the VA a head start.

We also remember this, Obama to order VA to add staff, see suicidal vets within 24 hours from Stars and Stripes reporter Megan McCloskey on August 30, 2012

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will sign an executive order Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand mental health services and suicide prevention efforts. The president will make the announcement in a speech to troops at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he’ll also hold a roundtable with soldiers and their families. Much of what's outlined in the executive order are initiatives that were previously announced earlier this summer by the VA. Obama is instructing the VA to ensure that any veteran with suicidal thoughts is seen by a mental health professional within 24 hours -- a standard already set for the VA, but which the department often fails to meet. The VA has until June 2013 to figure out how to fix that issue with pay, loan repayment, scholarships and partnerships with community-based providers and training programs. The goal, announced by the VA in June, is to hire 1,900 mental health staffers.

The VA is also being told to increase the veteran crisis hotline capacity by 50 percent by the end of year and to develop a national 12-month suicide prevention campaign that would help connect veterans to mental health services.

The president ordered the Pentagon to review and rank its mental health and substance abuse prevention programs by quality and effectiveness. “By the end of Fiscal Year 2014, existing program resources shall be realigned to ensure that highly ranked programs are implemented across all of the military services and less effective programs are replaced,” the order states. That forces the Pentagon to take ownership of the programs military-wide instead of allowing each service to decide on its own what programs to use. Reviewing the vast and disparate programs will be a big task and could lead to kickback from the services, which are protective of their programs.

In addition, the president is convening a Military and Veterans Mental Health Interagency Task Force to present him with recommendations in 180 days on how to improve treatment services.

We also knew that the Pentagon hadn't even spent the money they were already given to prevent suicides and that came out during a U.S. House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing a month after President Obama made his announcement.

In July, the McDermott-Boswell amendment that would increase critical funding for suicide prevention for active duty military by $10 million passed with strong support in the House Defense Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2013.

“The Pentagon hasn’t spent the money that it has for suicide prevention for this year – and that money wasn’t nearly enough money to reach all the soldiers who need help. Now we are hearing about bureaucratic technicalities at the Pentagon that are preventing them from acting. This is unconscionable,” said Congressman McDermott. “The Pentagon is funded to help soldiers and needs to do much more on the epidemic of suicides. As we commemorate National Suicide Prevention Week, we are calling on the Pentagon to move much faster.”

So we've been watching and waiting for our elected officials to wake up and change what has been proven to be wrong. We keep reading about this bill and that bill while veterans pay the price for their service as they get speeches. Enough it enough! Before you try another attempt at writing yet one more bill, ask yourself "Why it has gotten worse as Congress has done more than ever before?" and then toss in the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of charities all over the country collecting billions a year after veterans did everything possible to make it home from war alive but cannot survive right here at home.

Want to remove the stigma of PTSD? Then get to the original problem. Some yahoo decided a research project designed to give school aged children a better sense of self worth would be just fine and dandy for service members. That is what Comprehensive Soldier Fitness was. Take and look at what RAND Corp had to say about this and then hold folks accountable for doing it. Dark Side of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

There seems to be reluctance and inconsistency among the CSF promoters in acknowledging that CSF is "research" and therefore should entail certain protections routinely granted to those who participate in research studies. Seligman explained to the APA's Monitor on Psychology (link is external), "This is the largest study - 1.1 million soldiers - psychology has ever been involved in" (a "study" is a common synonym for "research project"). But when asked during an NPR interview (link is external) whether CSF would be "the largest-ever experiment," Brig. Gen. Cornum, who oversees the program, responded, "Well, we're not describing it as an experiment. We're describing it as training." Despite the fact that CSF is incontrovertibly a research study, standard and important questions about experimental interventions like CSF are neither asked nor answered in the special issue. This neglect is all the more troubling given that the program is so massive and expensive, and the stakes are so high.

We also know this,

The Defense Department runs 900 suicide prevention programs, yet the number of military suicides has more than doubled since 2001, the head of the Pentagon’s suicide prevention office told lawmakers Thursday.

Jacqueline Garrick, acting director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon has identified 291 suicides in fiscal 2012 with investigations into another 59 pending. This is up from 160 in 2001. She said the suicide rate for 2012 is expected to increase once death investigations have been completed and a final manner of death determination is issued.

When suicides went up instead of down, it would have been helpful if you guys started to ask why what you already failed before you just did more of it.

The worst thing is none of you seemed to notice that for veterans in general, they are double the civilian population rate, which is really bad, but when they looked at the percentages for younger veterans, the ones who got that "training" their rate was triple their peer rate.

The suicide rate among young male veterans continues to soar: ex-servicemen 24 and younger are now three times more likely than civilian males to take their lives, according to a federal study released Friday. Former troops in that high-risk age group — who were also enrolled for care at veterans' hospitals — posted a suicide rate of 79.1 per 100,000 during 2011, the latest data available. In contrast, the annual suicide rate for all American males has recently averaged about 25 per 100,000, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports. During 2009, the suicide rate for veterans 24 and younger was 46.1 per 100,000 — meaning the deadly pace increased by 79 percent during that two-year span.

Seems like one of your staffers should have paid attention to all of this since we did.

Anyone can get PTSD after trauma, but not everyone went into traumatic events willingly. They put their lives on the line for each other but couldn't talk to each other about needing help to heal from it. That is the real problem behind all of it. They were trained that way.

VA rationing new hepatitis C drug to treat Agent Orange Vietnam Veterans

Sky-high price has VA rationing new hepatitis C drug
Jacksonville Daily News
December 26, 2014

Senator Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., used one of his last hearings as chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to review how VA has had to ration a break-through medicine that cures hepatitis C, a liver virus infecting 174,000 veterans, because a course of treatment — 84 pills over 12 weeks —- costs VA almost $50,000 per patient.

Sanders said the biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, Inc., of Foster City, Calif., stands to earn more than $200 billion on a new drug called Sovaldi. When combined with still toxic antiviral medicines including interferon injections, Sovaldi cures hepatitis C at a 90 percent rate, and does so faster and with fewer side effects than past drug regimens.

That a cure has been found is good news, Sanders said, especially for veterans who are infected with hepatitis C at three times the rate of the general population. Vietnam War-era vets are hit particularly hard because of battlefield blood exposure, non-sterile vaccination routines, wartime sharing of razors, drug abuse and recruit demographics from the last draft era.

What’s disturbing and “astounding,” Sanders said, are pill prices set by Gilead. VA has budgeted $1.3 billion to buy Sovaldi over the next two years to treat mostly patients with advance liver disease or liver cancer, said Michael Valentino, chief consultant for VA Pharmacy Benefits Management Services.

There’s money enough for 25,000 to 30,000 patients, he said.
read more here

Veterans Harder Hit By Hep C

At The Crossroads, Part 6: Veterans Harder Hit By Hep C
Rhode Island NPR Radio
By KRISTIN GOURLAY
December 5, 2014

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) chairs the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs. At a hearing Wednesday, Dec. 3, Sanders wanted to know why new hepatitis C drugs cost so much and how the VA was going to pay for them.
Credit Screenshot of live stream of hearing

Dennis was a young Marine training at Camp Pendleton, ready to deploy.

“I was on my way over, I was in what they call staging,” said Dennis. “13, 16, 17 days, then send you over to Okinawa, then Vietnam. I got lucky.”

That is, if you call blowing a knee out lucky. It saved him from going to Vietnam. Soon after that, Dennis isn’t sure when or how, he got infected with the hepatitis C virus.

“I didn’t do any intravenous drugs or anything like that,” Dennis said. “My ex had it, I don’t know if I got it from her.”

Dennis is 63. He’s from Providence. He doesn’t want us to use his last name because of the stigma hepatitis C can carry. It’s a disease he’s been living with for decades. That’s partly because, until this year, his treatment options were pretty grim. But the years of hoping for something better to come along are over. Doctor Alexis Pappas gives Dennis the good news in an exam room at the Providence VA.

“So as you’ve probably heard in the news,” Pappas explained, “there’s a lot of new treatments for hepatitis c and the VA has all those available now for your genotype.”

Pappas tells Dennis she’ll start him on treatment right away. And chances are excellent that after 12 weeks he’ll be cured. But that cure comes at a price. One new hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, costs $84,000 dollars for a full course. The VA managed to negotiate that down to about $50,000 dollars.

But with more than 170,000 veterans living with hepatitis C, the price is still too high for strained budgets.

“So most of our veterans have been carrying disease for the past three, four decades,” said Promrat. “And now it’s the time when the full-blown manifestations of chronic liver injury come to light. And we’re now dealing with that, right now.”

Dealing, he says, with a ten-fold increase in the number of patients with liver cancer. Rising numbers of patients needing liver transplants. More veterans with cirrhosis and liver failure. All consequences of untreated hepatitis C.
read more here

Congress blaming the VA is like horse blaming the ground

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 22, 2014

You should get some Imodium before reading this. It has got to be the biggest load of crap I've ever heard! It comes from MedPageToday titled "Senate to VA: Save Our Suicidal Veterans" as if Congress had absolutely nothing to do with the processions of needlessly filled coffins for the last 40 years. Doesn't everyone get it is the job of our elected officials to actually earn their pay and benefits?

For Congress to blame the VA it is like a horse blaming the ground for the mess it left behind.

The list of members of the House and the Senate sitting on the Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Committees are responsible for all of this clusterfuck!

Sorry but I read a long time ago that profanity was a great stress relief and in the words of Ouiser Boudreaux "I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for the last 40 years!" but in my case, it has just been 30+ years.

One More Hearing

On Wednesday, the Committee on Veterans Affairs questioned directors of mental health and suicide prevention services at the VA about efforts to improve the quality and timeliness of mental health care.

During the hearing, senators criticized the VA for long wait times, limited access to mental health resources, and poor tracking of returning soldiers, particularly those diagnosed with a mental health condition.

Burr said VA officials had earlier told the Senate of its efforts to provide evidence-based care, but Burr said a review of VA outcomes raised serious questions about the validity of such care.

He cited an American Legion survey of around 3,100 veterans, the majority of whom felt that their symptoms were either not improving or worsening after psychotherapy or medication that was prescribe by the VA.

"If more than half of our nation's veterans don't think they're getting better, I believe the focus on whether evidence-based treatment is provided might be misguided."

They can have all the hearings they want but that in no way, shape or form, indicates they are actually listening or even understanding what people have been telling them for decades.

This was followed by even more bullshit!

More Problems Than Solutions

Kudler described a joint suicide data repository developed by the VA and the Department of Defense to track patterns of suicide among veterans and service members. He said that data could be used to identify and replicate the most effective suicide prevention programs.

Ritchie added, "If you come from working at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay or the detainment facilities in Bagram you don't necessarily get a whole lot of pats on the back, and we need to recognize that type of service as well."

Vincent Vanata, a retired master sergeant with the U.S. Marine Corps and Combat Stress Recover Program participant with the Wounded Warrior Project from Cody, Wyo., said the VA's problem is a lack of outreach. "From my perspective the VA is not engaging with these returning veterans and letting them know what's available," he said.

If they don't actually understand what the fuck has been happening any more than they get how long it has been going on, then they need to decline the invitation to sit in the chair!

The problem is not lack of outreach. It is lack of getting what they needed to be prepared for the increase in wounded/disabled when troops were sent into Afghanistan and Iraq while there was already a waiting line at the VA of Gulf War Veterans, Vietnam Veterans, Korean War Veterans, WWII Veterans and remaining WWI Veterans! You know, the veterans sent into combat without the VA being ready for them either.

How do I know about the long lines? I saw it first hand with my Dad, a 100% disabled veteran and my husband another 100% disabled veteran. In other words, I spent my life witnessing what veterans had to go through to have their claims approved as well as really great care once they did from fantastic employees for the most part. Most of the time I was scratching my head wondering why all veterans didn't get what they needed or why things weren't ready for them when they needed it. My Dad had to go to the DAV for help with his claim in the 70's and so did my husband in the 90's. We had to fight for 6 years before it was approved making sure we met all the deadlines.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee put their behinds in the chair in 1946.

Legislation Within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs
Veterans' measures generally.
Pensions of all the wars of the U.S., general and special.
Life insurance issued by the government on account of service in the Armed Forces.
Compensation, vocational rehabilitation, and education of veterans.
Veterans' hospitals, medical care, and treatment of veterans.
Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief.
Readjustment of servicemen to civilian life.
National Cemeteries.
Complete Jurisdiction of the Committee

The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee has been holding hearings as well as the House.

The Veterans' Affairs committee was created in 1970 to transfer responsibilities for veterans from the Finance and Labor committees to a single panel. From 1947 to 1970, matters relating to veterans compensation and veterans generally were referred to the Committee on Finance, while matters relating to the vocational rehabilitation, education, medical care, civil relief, and civilian readjustment of veterans were referred to the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.

To this day there have been members of Congress using the term of "public welfare" as a way of cutting the VA budgets and not having to acknowledge that in the case of veterans, they paid for it when they signed over the blank check up to and including their lives.

They got away with it because we have reporters with the national media more interested in the headline than the history behind it. I don't talk to them anymore when they call to make their lives easier. They never understand there is a long history of politicians getting away with pretending they care when the results prove they don't have the slightest interest in fixing anything.

Veterans groups have a totally different conversation going on than the public does because we don't rely on the press to tell us anything. We live it! We lament over funerals while they play political games pitting one group against another. Veterans risked their lives for each other no matter what party they belonged to so if one of them has been betrayed, they all feel it.

Civilians talk about celebrity news and reality TV shows. We talk about heroes and the reality of living as a veteran every day of the year while they turn Veterans Day into a pre-Christmas sales day. They don't understand that they actually sold out veterans a long time ago.

Unless they know someone in the military they can't even show up for the parade unless it happens to be covered on TV like in New York.

"That they receive the recognition and support they so richly deserve on this 95th anniversary of the Veterans Day Parade."

The VA has had problems for decades but no one in any of the congresses fixed the problems. They just spent money without knowing what was needed, what would work and then turned around awarding money to repeat the same mistakes. Year after year, family members sat in front of them telling their heartbreaking stories and year after year, they were followed by more and more families telling the same stories over and over again. Nothing has been fixed.

We have less than 4 million veterans compensated for disabilities yet more deserve it. They don't for help simply because they have heard all the horror stories and battles they have to fight to get what they earned fighting for the country while in their uniforms. First the DOD failed them then the VA was blamed for failing but the fault belonged to members of congress with the responsibility to ensure both lived up to their promises.

Watch the parade. Hear the words. Hear them talking about the new groups as if they were the only generation fighting for what they need. Millions a year collected to do what the DOD and the VA have been delivering for decades to all veterans and other groups fighting for all veterans equally because they know how long all of this have been going on. Veterans didn't fight for themselves in combat and they fight for each other afterwards.

While the OEF and OIF veterans get the attention of the press, older veterans have suffered longer waiting for the same care and attention the new veterans receive. Why? Why the hell should one group matter while other groups don't anymore?

Who decided to forget about Gulf War Veterans? Who decided to forget about Vietnam Veterans? Who decided to forget about Korean War, WWII and the lesser publicized battles fought by the men and women who came before?

Most of the established groups have been fighting for decades while they told members of congress exactly what was going on yet over and over again members of congress decided they had other placers to be so they walked out of the hearings that got them attention. Watch CSPAN videos and you'll see empty chairs.

We see them get up and leave. We see empty chairs at our tables when our veterans get up and leave their lives before they had to. We see the tears, trembling bodies and screams in the night. We see the hope vanish from their days as one day gets harder than easier. When one day it is harder to stay alive here than it was to fight the battles on foreign lands.

If you think losing more after combat than during it is a new thing, then think again because the majority of the veteran suicides are 50 and over.

We didn't get it right for them and we won't get it right for the newer veterans getting the attention today because Congress didn't get it right yesterday.

Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees Snow Job

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 5, 2014

The longer problems for veterans goes on, the more it seems as if the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees are pulling a snow job on veterans.

A new poll from NBC says voters are not happy with congress. Majority disapprove of their own House member but the other part of this is, "Americans’ frustration with Congress is reflected in other polls, too: just 3% said they thought Congress had been “very productive” this year in a recent NBC News/Marist poll."

Well, my fellow Americans, welcome to the world veterans have lived in for decades. They haven't been happy in, well, forever.

As much as I frankly do not like the national news stations, especially cable news, CNN did do a pretty good job of trying to explain how long veterans have suffered while members of congress just promised them everything, usually around election time and they needed the votes. Here are some highlights.

The VA's troubled history

CNN) -- Scandal, controversy and veterans care in the United States have gone hand-in-hand for virtually as long as there's been a republic.

After the Revolutionary War, for instance, payments promised by Congress to disabled veterans were left up to the states, and only a few thousand of those who served ever received anything, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

1932 -- Thousands of World War I veterans and their families march on Washington to demand payment of promised war bonuses. In an embarrassing spectacle, federal troops forcibly remove veterans who refuse to end their protest.

1984 -- Congressional investigators find evidence that VA officials had diverted or refused to spend more than $40 million that Congress approved to help Vietnam veterans with readjustment problems, the Washington Post reports at the time.

2003 -- A commission appointed by President George W. Bush reports that as of January 2003, some 236,000 veterans had been waiting six months or more for initial or follow-up visits, "a clear indication," the commission said, "of lack of sufficient capacity or, at a minimum, a lack of adequate resources to provide the required care."

2009 -- The VA discloses that than 10,000 veterans who underwent colonoscopies in Tennessee, Georgia and Florida were exposed to potential viral infections due to poorly disinfected equipment. Thirty-seven tested positive for two forms of hepatitis and six tested positive for HIV. VA Director Eric Shinseki initiates disciplinary actions and requires hospital directors to provide written verification of compliance with VA operating procedures. The head of the Miami VA hospital is removed as a result, the Miami Herald reports.

We can also rely on CSPAN and their video coverage. While listening to members of congress talk can be less attractive than going to the dentist, these videos are vital to anyone wanting to know how we got where we are. Think of them as a GPS to let you know how to get away from the big rig on bald tires. JULY 10, 1989

Agent Orange Studies The subcommittee held a hearing on Agent Orange studies. Witnesses from the Office of Technology Assessment, the VA and the Air Force testified that numerous Agent Orange studies

JUNE 9, 1994

Gulf War Veteran Benefits Secretary Brown spoke about the administration’s decision to afford Gulf War veterans benefits for the "Gulf War Syndrome"

MARCH 6, 2001

Veterans Affairs Budget Witnesses testified about veterans issues and funding needs for the department. Among the issues they addressed were benefits claims procedures and delays,

JUNE 10, 2003

Veterans Affairs Operations Officials testified about recent reports of fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in the Veterans Administration. Among the topics they addressed were absentee doctors

SEPTEMBER 11, 2003

Veterans' Hospitals Consolidation and Closure Witnesses testified about a proposal to scale back, consolidate or close selected Veterans' Administration health care…

Yes you read that right! By this time troops were in Afghanistan and Iraq yet these yahoos were talking about closing down VA hospitals.

FEBRUARY 4, 2004

Fiscal Year 2005 Veterans Affairs Budget Witnesses testified about the fiscal year 2005 budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Among the topics they addressed were services provided, efforts to make delivery of service more efficient, and moving away from hospital based health care.

DECEMBER 12, 2007

Veterans Mental Health Care The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs held a hearing to examine and identify mental health challenges within the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system, including increasing numbers of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide, substance abuse, and homelessness. Witnesses included the parents of Specialist Tim Bowman (U.S. Army, Illinois National Guard, Bravo Troop, 106th Calvary), who committed suicide, authors with personal connections to the problem, and representatives of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Due to the length of testimony some other witness were deferred to a later hearing.

Penny Coleman is the author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, And the Lessons of War, published by Beacon Press, Ilona Meagher is the author of Moving a Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America’s Returning Troops, published by Ig Publishing.

MAY 6, 2008

Suicides of Veterans Department of Veterans Affairs officials testified about charges the department had misled the public about the numbers of suicides committed by active duty personnel and veterans. Committee chairman Bob Filner accused the agency of criminal negligence in the handling of data about the number of veterans who have committed suicide of being more concerned about how data was interpreted than the health of veterans. Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake told panel members the agency is actively reaching out to veterans to encourage them to get help if they are at risk for suicide.

JULY 31, 2008

Veterans Administration Spending Practices The Veterans Affairs Committee held an oversight hearing on the issue of overspending at Department of Veterans' Affairs. Witnesses testified about lapses in competitive bidding, poor auditing programs, and lack of financial mechanisms to control spending.

There are a lot more of these videos but as with everything else, it all boils down to what they really intended to achieve. Was it to take care of veterans or was it to pretend they were doing enough to get their votes again?

This video is from a hearing on disabled veterans. It is from February of 2014 months before the "crisis" House members decided they would scream about. FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Disabled Veterans Officials from the Disabled American Veterans organization outlined their 2014 legislative priorities at a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees. In opening remarks, the organization’s national commander Joseph Johnston said the highest priority was to make advanced appropriations for all Veterans Affairs Department funding accounts, including mandatory disability payments. Topics during questioning included the backlog of veterans benefit claims, veterans' homelessness, and VA infrastructure funding.

Summing this up think of it this way. There are some folks doing whatever they can to avoid going to the dentist. Lose a filling, they take Super Glue and stick it back in the hole. While this may look ok on the outside, it erodes the rest of the tooth and by the time they are forced to do the right thing, so much damage is done, the tooth gets pulled leaving a hole. That is what congress has been doing. Filling the whole long enough to get past the next election hoping what they "did" will hold long enough so one on notices they didn't do the right thing in the first place. In the long run, more pain is caused and it costs a lot more money to fix the problem. All too often, it is beyond repair. Are we really going to let them do this to the VA and our veterans?

When do we hold them accountable?

Veterans get attention again during "election-year firestorm"

How many more years do they plan on putting veterans first right before an election cycle? How many times do we have to face crisis after crisis only to see it all repeated again and again?

National News APNewsBreak: Tentative deal reached on VA reform
Associated Press
By MATTHEW DALY
July 28, 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees have reached a tentative agreement on a plan to fix a veterans' health program scandalized by long patient wait times and falsified records covering up delays. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., scheduled a news conference Monday to talk about a compromise plan to improve veterans' care.

Miller chairs the House veterans panel, while Sanders chairs the Senate panel. A spokesman for Sanders said Sunday the men have reached a tentative agreement. The deal requires a vote by a conference committee of House and Senate negotiators, and votes in the full House and Senate.

Miller and Sanders said in a joint statement that they "made significant progress" over the weekend toward agreement on legislation to reform the Veterans Affairs Department, which has been rocked by reports of patients dying while awaiting VA treatment and mounting evidence that workers falsified or omitted appointment schedules to mask frequent, long delays.

The resulting election-year firestorm forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign in late May. The plan set to be announced Monday is intended to "make VA more accountable and to help the department recruit more doctors, nurses and other health care professionals," Miller and Sanders said. Few details of the agreement were released, but the bill is expected to authorize billions in emergency spending to lease 27 new clinics, hire more doctors and nurses and make it easier for veterans who can't get prompt appointments with VA doctors to get outside care.

Louis Celli, legislative director for the American Legion, the nation's largest veterans group, said the deal would provide crucial help to veterans who have been waiting months or even years for VA health care. "There is an emergency need to get veterans off the waiting lists. That's what this is all about," Celli said Sunday.
read more here

Obama didn't need to be briefed in 2008 because he was on the committee

New American slanted report on VA problems just goes to show when it comes to doing the right thing and political games, games win while veterans continue to lose.

First is that Obama knew about what was going on in the VA since he was on the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee

This is one of the first bills he introduced showing what kinds of problems he knew about.

S.692 -- VA Hospital Quality Report Card Act of 2007 (Introduced in Senate - IS)
S 692 IS
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 692
To amend title 38, United States Code, to establish a Hospital Quality Report Card Initiative to report on health care quality in Veterans Affairs hospitals.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
February 27, 2007
Mr. OBAMA introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs
A BILL
To amend title 38, United States Code, to establish a Hospital Quality Report Card Initiative to report on health care quality in Veterans Affairs hospitals.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `VA Hospital Quality Report Card Act of 2007'.
SEC. 2. PURPOSE.

The purpose of this Act is to establish the Hospital Quality Report Card Initiative under title 38, United States Code, to ensure that quality measures data for hospitals administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs are readily available and accessible in order to--
(1) inform patients and consumers about health care quality in such hospitals;
(2) assist Veterans Affairs health care providers in identifying opportunities for quality improvement and cost containment; and
(3) enhance the understanding of policy makers and public officials of health care issues, raise public awareness of hospital quality issues, and to help constituents of such policy makers and officials identify quality health care options.

SEC. 3. VA HOSPITAL QUALITY REPORT CARD INITIATIVE.
(a) In General- Subchapter III of chapter 17 of title 38, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section:
`Sec. 1730A. Hospital Quality Report Card Initiative
`(a) Not later than 18 months after the date of the enactment of the VA Hospital Quality Report Card Act of 2007, the Secretary shall establish and implement a Hospital Quality Report Card Initiative (in this section referred to as the `Initiative') to report on health care quality in VA hospitals.
`(b) For purposes of this section, the term `VA hospital' means a hospital administered by the Secretary.
`(c)(1)(A) Not less than 2 times each year, the Secretary shall publish reports on VA hospital quality. Such reports shall include quality measures data that allow for an assessment of health care--
`(i) effectiveness;
`(ii) safety;
`(iii) timeliness;
`(iv) efficiency;
`(v) patient-centeredness; and
`(vi) equity.
`(B) In collecting and reporting data as provided for under subparagraph (A), the Secretary shall include VA hospital information, as possible, relating to--
`(i) staffing levels of nurses and other health professionals, as appropriate;
`(ii) rates of nosocomial infections;
`(iii) the volume of various procedures performed;
`(iv) hospital sanctions and other violations;
`(v) the quality of care for various patient populations, including female, geriatric, disabled, rural, homeless, mentally ill, and racial and ethnic minority populations;
`(vi) the availability of emergency rooms, intensive care units, maternity care, and specialty services;
`(vii) the quality of care in various hospital settings, including inpatient, outpatient, emergency, maternity, and intensive care unit settings;
`(viii) ongoing patient safety initiatives; and
`(ix) other measures determined appropriate by the Secretary.
`(C)(i) In reporting data as provided for under subparagraph (A), the Secretary may risk adjust quality measures to account for differences relating to--
`(I) the characteristics of the reporting VA hospital, such as licensed bed size, geography, and teaching hospital status; and
`(II) patient characteristics, such as health status, severity of illness, and socioeconomic status. `(ii) If the Secretary reports data under subparagraph (A) using risk-adjusted quality measures, the Secretary shall establish procedures for making the unadjusted data available to the public in a manner determined appropriate by the Secretary.
`(D) Under the Initiative, the Secretary may verify data reported under this paragraph to ensure accuracy and validity.
`(E) The Secretary shall disclose the entire methodology for the reporting of data under this paragraph to all relevant organizations and VA hospitals that are the subject of any such information that is to be made available to the public prior to the public disclosure of such information.
`(F)(i) The Secretary shall submit each report to the appropriate committees of Congress.
`(ii) The Secretary shall ensure that reports are made available under this section in an electronic format, in an understandable manner with respect to various populations (including those with low functional health literacy), and in a manner that allows health care quality comparisons to be made with local hospitals or regional hospitals, as appropriate.
`(iii) The Secretary shall establish procedures for making report findings available to the public, upon request, in a non-electronic format, such as through a toll-free telephone number.
`(G) The analytic methodologies and limitations on data sources utilized by the Secretary to develop and disseminate the comparative data under this section shall be identified and acknowledged as part of the dissemination of such data, and include the appropriate and inappropriate uses of such data.
`(H) On at least an annual basis, the Secretary shall compare quality measures data submitted by each VA hospital with data submitted in the prior year or years by the same hospital in order to identify and report actions that would lead to false or artificial improvements in the hospital's quality measurements.
`(2)(A) The Secretary shall develop and implement effective safeguards to protect against the unauthorized use or disclosure of VA hospital data that is reported under this section.
`(B) The Secretary shall develop and implement effective safeguards to protect against the dissemination of inconsistent, incomplete, invalid, inaccurate, or subjective VA hospital data. `(C) The Secretary shall ensure that identifiable patient data shall not be released to the public.
`(d)(1) The Secretary shall evaluate and periodically submit a report to Congress on the effectiveness of the Initiative, including the effectiveness of the Initiative in meeting the purpose described in section 2 of the VA Hospital Quality Report Card Act of 2007. The Secretary shall make such reports available to the public.
`(2) The Secretary shall use the outcomes from the evaluation conducted pursuant to paragraph (1) to increase the usefulness of the Initiative.
`(e) There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this section such sums as may be necessary for each of fiscal years 2008 through 2016.'.
(b) Clerical Amendment- The table of sections at the beginning of chapter 17, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 1730 the following new item:
`1730A. Hospital Quality Report Card Initiative.'.

Top that off with the fact that all the problems had existed before Obama took over and no one did much before to fix it. This is what veterans have been dealing with for decades. Presidents point their fingers at Congress and Congress points their fingers at Presidents and both parties fail.

You can look up what happened and when but when you think that you're getting the real story from anyone, think again and look it up! As for McCain, we all know what he's been doing and none of it has been good especially when it comes to veterans in his own home state while he not only ignored them, he denied they were having problems all along.

Obama Administration Had Been Briefed on VA Problems in 2008
New American
Written by Raven Clabough
21 July 2014

As if the Obama administration is not in enough hot water over the disastrous Department of Veterans' Affairs, reports now reveal that the administration had been warned about waiting times and fraud immediately after the president was first elected in 2008.

The Veterans Administration has been under harsh scrutiny after reports exposed that the Phoenix facility had been altering its scheduling books and that at least 40 veterans had died while awaiting care. Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said though the scandal began in his home state, it has since become a national crisis. "Altogether, similar reports of lengthy waiting lists and other issues have surfaced in at least 10 states," according to the Washington Times.

What's worse is that the Obama administration had been briefed on the weaknesses of the VA and did nothing to address them.
read more here

Senate Veterans Affairs Committee forgot about CSPAN

This hearing by the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee shows how long the problems with the VA has been going on, or at least, in recent time. The fact is, veterans have always had a harder time dealing with getting their care taken care of. Simple as that. While members of Congress have been able to pacify the press, pretending they were shocked by the recent crisis, the truth is far from it.

Members of the House and Senate have gotten away with the Sgt. Schultz excuse (Hogan's Heroes) of "I see nothing, I was not here and I didn't even get up this morning."
Fiscal Year 2007 Veterans' Affairs
The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee held a hearing on the Fiscal Year 2007 Veterans' Affairs budget. Secretary of Veterans' Affairs Jim Nicholson and other officials testified about administration funding requests, the needs of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the operation of the department.

"Forced to take drastic measures to make ends meet."

Force other veterans out of the system.

Mandatory overtime and contracted out care plus cuts in research.

Budget for VBA, (Veterans Benefits Office) Not enough and the warning was given for increased need.

18,000 OEF and OIF veterans needing lifetime care. Medicare callers were told to go to the VA. Vietnam veterans entering into the system. Employers not providing health care.

Let's start with then Senator Obama now, President Obama.

.04% Increase in veterans spending last year then followed by needing $1 billion in emergency funds.

Significant fiasco.

$800 Million in the VA budget that was supposed to come from raising fees for veterans that the congress had turned down many times before and was not planning on doing but it was in the budget anyway.

Cuts funding for VA nursing home care and does not allow for building any more.

And then move onto Senator Lindsey Graham asking for veterans to make sacrifices.....Yes, he wanted veterans to make sacrifices if they could afford it.



You can watch the whole hearing with the link above. Here are some more you may be interested in.








FEBRUARY 8, 2007

Fiscal Year 2008 Veterans Affairs Budget

Secretary Nicholson and others testified about the proposed fiscal year 2008 budget for the Department of Veterans…

MAY 25, 2006Veterans Data Privacy Breach

Secretary Nicholson and other officials testified about a recent security breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs…

JUNE 29, 2006

Veterans Data Privacy Breach

The House Veterans' Affairs Committee held its fifth full committee oversight hearing on the recent data theft of…

FEBRUARY 15, 2005

Fiscal Year 2006 Veterans Affairs Budget

Secretary Nicholson and veterans' advocates testified about spending requests for the fiscal year 2006 Department of…

They wanted veterans to pay the price. Take a look at the folks on the Veterans Affairs Committee and then ask them how they thought they could pretend to not know what was was, what was coming and now, what happened as if they never even got up this morning.