Las Vegas Victims Fund Raised $31.5 Million

$275K going to family of each person slain in Vegas shooting
Associated Press
By KEN RITTER AND ANITA SNOW
Published: March 2, 2018

Victims fund spokesman Howard Stutz said the nonprofit expects to pay 100 percent of the funds raised, with payouts beginning Monday.

Manuela Barela passes crosses set up to honor those killed during the mass shooting in Las Vegas. GREGORY BULL/AP

Police say 851 people were hurt by gunfire or other injuries while fleeing. LAS VEGAS — A $31.5 million victims' fund that started as a GoFundMe effort announced plans Friday to pay $275,000 to the families of each of the 58 people killed in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The Las Vegas Victims Fund said the maximum $275,000 also will be paid to 10 other people who were paralyzed or suffered permanent brain damage in the Oct. 1 shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.

The nonprofit posted a chart projecting payments on a scale to a total of 532 people, including more than $10 million divided among 147 people who were hospitalized.
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Choice Providers "know little about the military or veterans"

Study: Private sector may not be ready for new veteran patients
Military Times
Leo Shane
March 2, 2018

Only about one in three providers met the study’s “minimum threshold for familiarity with military culture,” and only one in five routinely asked patients if they had a military background.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers appear poised to send tens of thousands of veterans in the private sector for health care in an effort to provide quicker, more convenient appointments for an array of medical needs.

But a new study casts doubt on whether private care providers can do that.

Researchers from the Rand Corp. on Thursday released a new study of New York state medical providers that noted the majority of physicians working outside Veterans Affairs programs “know little about the military or veterans, are not routinely screening for conditions common among veterans, and are unfamiliar with VA.”

Though restricted to one state, the findings echo concerns among critics of the White House push to send more veterans outside the VA’s medical system to receive care: that easing access for veterans appointments may bring with it a host of other, unintended problems.

House and Senate lawmakers are currently crafting separate but similar measures which would ease access for veterans to receive health care from doctors in their communities at the federal government’s expense.
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PTSD Retired Police Officer and Veteran's Dogs Missing

Woman asks for help locating service dogs who assist her husband with PTSD
WMBF News
Friday, March 2nd 2018

CONWAY, SC (WMBF) – A Conway woman is asking for the public’s help in locating two lost service dogs that her husband relies on daily.

According to Tillman, her husband, Chris, is a retired police officer and Army veteran who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The registered service dogs help him to feel secure, she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Tillman at (843) 340-6611 day or night.
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Yale Law School giving PTSD veterans fighting chance for justice

Suit Calls Navy Board Biased Against Veterans With PTSD
New York Times
Dave Philipps
March 2, 2018

The office that oversees discharges for the Navy and Marines, the Naval Discharge Review Board, rejects nearly 85 percent of requests for upgrades relating to PTSD, compared with 45 percent for the Army board.

Things got ugly for Cpl. Tyson Manker in Iraq. During a firefight in the confusion of the 2003 invasion, the 21-year-old Marine shot up a bus full of civilians. Later, during a chase, he dropped an Iraqi in a flowing white robe with a shot to the torso, only to discover afterward that he had hit a teenage girl. His squad beat detainees, and accidentally shot several other civilians.

After his deployment, Corporal Manker was kicked out of the Marine Corps with an other-than-honorable discharge — not for anything that happened in combat, but for smoking marijuana to try to quiet his nerves when he got home.

The military has increasingly acknowledged in recent years that there are tens of thousands of Corporal Mankers — troops whose brutal experiences left them with post-traumatic stress disorder, and who were then pushed out of the military for misconduct. Many were given other-than-honorable discharges that stripped them of veterans’ benefits.

The Army and Air Force have moved in recent years to make it easier for these veterans to get their discharges upgraded to honorable. But not the Marine Corps. read more here

Good time to be reminded of the fact, if they did not receive an "honorable discharge" and ended up committing suicide, they were not counted by anyone other than those who loved them!

And Yale fought for Army veterans too.

Veterans Clinic Files Nationwide Class-Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Army Veterans
Yale Law School
April 17, 2017

Two Army veterans, Steve Kennedy and Alicia Carson, filed a federal class-action lawsuit on Monday seeking relief for the thousands of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health conditions during their military service and received unfair less-than-Honorable discharges. The plaintiffs are represented by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic.

Since September 11, 2001, hundreds of thousands of veterans have received less-than-Honorable (“bad paper”) discharges imposing a lifetime stigma, impairing their employment prospects, and denying them access to critical government services, including the GI bill, mental health treatment, and disability benefits. Tens of thousands received these bad paper discharges as a result of misconduct attributable to conditions like PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

“As my PTSD became impossible to manage on my own, my commander told me that the only way I could receive treatment was by leaving the Army with a bad paper discharge,” said plaintiff Steve Kennedy, leader of the Connecticut chapter of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “Just like that, the Army wiped away years of distinguished service to my country and deemed it less than Honorable.”

Even worse, after their discharge the Army regularly denies these veterans a second chance, according to the lawsuit. While Congress created an agency called the Army Discharge Review Board (ADRB) to help veterans upgrade their unjustly harsh discharges after returning to civilian life, the clinic said the ADRB has systematically failed veterans for decades.
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Veterans Fight PTSD with Tai Chi

To Control Pain, Battle PTSD And Fight Other Ills, Tennessee Vets Try Tai Chi
Nashville Public Radio
Blake Farmer
March 2, 2018

The VA acknowledges that there's very little proof that tai chi — or other alternative treatments like mindfulness and acupuncture — will do any good for PTSD or addiction, though there has been research into the benefits of tai chi related to quality of life among the elderly. Still, Aaron Grobengieser, who oversees alternative medicine in Murfreesboro, says the VA will attempt to track the effectiveness by the numbers.

Zibin Guo, a medical anthropology professor UT Chattanooga, developed a seated version of tai chi and launched at UTC.

Credit Blake Farmer / WPLN

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been desperate to cut down on the use of powerful pills. So the mammoth agency has taken a sharp turn toward alternative medicine. The thinking goes that even if it doesn’t cure a mental or physical ill, it can't hurt.

In Tennessee, treatment for veterans is beginning to include the ancient martial art of tai chi. Zibin Guo leads a weekly session at the Alvin C. York VA hospital in Murfreesboro. He guides vets through slow-motion poses as a Bluetooth speaker blares a classic tai chi soundtrack.

"Cloudy hands to the right, cloudy hands to the left," he tells the veterans, seated in wheelchairs. "Now we're going to open your arms, grab the wheels and 180-degree turn."
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Someone needs to tell the VA the proof is in how they feel and if they look forward to doing it!!! They do!