120 OIF/OEF Vets Committing Suicide a Week

This article is from the San Francisco Chronicle.  I am not sure I agree with all of it, but they are quoting emails that have been discovered from the VA.  Read below.. Post what you think in the forums.
D/C

VA stalling on care, judge told at S.F. trial

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

He said veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day - a number acknowledged by a VA official in a Dec. 15 e-mail - and the agency’s backlog of disability claims now exceeds 650,000, an increase of 200,000 since the Iraq war started in 2003.

Justice Department lawyer Richard Lepley countered that the VA runs a “world-class health care system.” He said the changes the plaintiffs seek in their lawsuit - better and faster mental health care, and more rights for veterans appealing denials of benefits - are beyond the judge’s authority.

“Of course we’re obliged to provide health care,” Lepley said, but “the court does not have standards to determine the speed or the scope or the level of that care.”

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti is presiding over the nonjury trial, scheduled to last two weeks. Conti, a conservative jurist and World War II veteran appointed to the bench by former President Richard Nixon, ruled in January that the case could go to trial. In doing so, he rejected the government’s argument that civil courts have no authority over the VA’s medical decisions or how it handles grievances.

If the advocates can prove their claims, Conti said in his ruling, they would show that “thousands of veterans, if not more, are suffering grievous injuries as the result of their inability to procure desperately needed and obviously deserved health care.”

He also ruled that veterans are legally entitled to five years of government-provided health care after leaving the service, despite federal officials’ argument that they are required to provide only as much care as the VA’s budget allows in a given year.

But at a later hearing, Conti indicated he was uncertain about his authority to require spending on particular types of health care. The lawsuit plaintiffs - Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, a Santa Barbara group with 500 members - want him to order the VA to provide immediate treatment for suicidal veterans and prompt care for those suffering from post-traumatic stress.

The trial follows publication of a Rand study last week that estimated 300,000 U.S. troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, or 18.5 percent of the total, suffer from major depression or post-traumatic stress.

The lawsuit is a proposed class action on behalf of 320,000 to 800,000 veterans or their survivors. The advocacy groups say the VA arbitrarily denies care and benefits to wounded veterans, forces them to wait months for treatment and years for benefits, and gives them little recourse when it rejects their medical claims.

“The time delays are staggering,” Erspamer, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, told Conti on Monday. Although the VA says it decides the typical claim for benefits in six months, he said, the agency takes far longer to review post-traumatic stress claims, and four years or more for the government to hear veterans’ appeals of denied treatment.

Veterans who seek benefits within the VA’s grievance system have no right to a lawyer and no right to demand records or question opposing witnesses, Erspamer said. The plaintiffs want Conti to grant those rights and to require the agency to set a timetable for deciding claims.

Lepley, the government’s lawyer, said the VA has undertaken a “huge staff increase” - 20 percent in mental health, 25 percent in claims processing - and now provides one mental health staff member around the clock at every VA center, as well as a suicide-prevention hot line.

For those who do not need immediate care, he said, the agency has a policy of scheduling a mental health appointment within two weeks, and has reached that goal at 80 percent of its facilities.

“These kinds of medical decisions are not something that this court can inject itself into,” Lepley said. He referred to the plaintiffs as “single-interest groups” and said the legal rights they seek in the VA benefit system, such as the involvement of lawyers, are “not in the patients’ interest.”

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

 

 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/22/MNQK109AA7.DTL

Army Wants “STOP-LOSS” until 2009

AP report from the San Francisco Chronicle.

(04-21) 13:35 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) –

It will be more than a year before the Army can end the unpopular practice of forcing soldiers to stay in the service beyond their retirement or re-enlistment dates, a top official said Monday.

Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, deputy chief of staff for operations, said he hoped that wartime demand for troops will decline enough by around the fall of next year to end “stop-loss.” He said there are more than 12,000 currently serving under the practice — an action that critics have called a “backdoor draft.”

Thurman also said that as officials continue to increase the size of the Army, it could be possible by the fall of 2011 for troops to be home two years for every year they are deployed.

The two issues of stop loss and long tours of duty have been among the Pentagon’s most disliked practices among troops. Thousands have been forced to stay in the service beyond their contracts since the start of the global war on terrorism. And tours of duty were increased to 15 months from 12 months a year ago so the Army could come up with the extra forces President Bush ordered for the troop buildup in Iraq.

Now that most of the extra troops are being drawn down by the end of July, Bush early this month ordered the tours cut back to 12 months, a move Thurman said would help the Army begin to restore its balance.

“We want to reduce the strain and stress on our soldiers and our families,” he told a Pentagon news conference.

There are currently 17 Army combat brigade teams deployed — 15 in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. Two are scheduled to come out of Iraq in the drawdown.

Though that allows officials to shorten tour lengths, it will be a while before they also can end stop-loss, he said.

“As the demand (for troops) comes down, we should be able to get us weaned off of stop-loss … it’s our intent to do that,” Thurman said.

“But the demand exceeds supply right now,” he told a Pentagon news conference.

He said he hoped, but couldn’t promise, that if demand stabilized at around 15 brigades, the use of stop-loss could be ended by the end of budget year 2009, or beginning of budget year 2010.

Those currently being held even though their service is supposed to be finished include more than 6,800 active-duty Army, about 3,800 in the Army National Guard and close to 1,500 in the Reserves, he said.

The high tempo of operations in recent years has not only strained troops and increased separations and stress on their families, but prevented troops from training for the full range of possible operations. They have focused training on counterinsurgency operations and neglected other skills because counterinsurgency is what’s needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Though the Pentagon is expected to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan sometime next year, Thurman said he had not been asked for such troops.

“Could that happen? Yes,” he said.

The United States now has about 31,000 troops there — the most since the war began in October 2001 — and also has been pressing the allies to contribute more.