Posted on 07/29/2011 8:08:31 PM PDT by JohnBrownUSA
A class action settlement announced Friday between the federal government and a group of disabled veterans will award lifetime health-care benefits to more than 1,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were discharged from the service because of post-traumatic stress disorder.
In a motion filed Thursday with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the National Veterans Legal Service Program and the government jointly asked the court to approve lifetime disability retirement benefits to 1,029 veterans with PTSD who were denied those benefits upon discharge from the military following their wartime service.
“It’s getting your dignity back,” said one of the plaintiffs, Air Force veteran Aimee Sherrod, who served three deployments in Iraq and Pakistan from 2001 to 2005 and was subsequently given a diagnosis of PTSD. “It’s a huge relief.”
The NVLSP’s lawsuit in 2008 alleged that the military services violated the law by failing to assign a 50 percent disability rating to those discharged for PTSD — a rating that entitles the veteran to disability retirement benefits.
“The veterans covered by this agreement were exposed to highly traumatic events during deployment, only to return home and be shortchanged on benefits after the military found they suffered from PTSD that was so severe that they needed to be discharged,” said Bart Stichman, co-executive director of NVLSP, which filed the class action lawsuit in 2008.
“Today, a terrible wrong to our nation’s war veterans is being righted.”Stichman added.
The settlement must be approved by a judge before it is final.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Are you confident in your assertion that the there is an incentive to diagnose PTSD?
Let me know after you read this.
Here’s a letter from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (“CREW”) and VoteVets.org that alleged that “a mental health professional on the VAstaff told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD and consider instead the alternativeand less costly diagnosis of adjustment disorder.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52001426/CREW-v-Army-Re-PTSD-Diagnoses-5-28-08-VA-IG-Letter-Final
As a former VA psychologist, let me clear the air. We (not psychiatrists who only push pills) provide differential diagnoses that the VA evaluates to determine Service Connection disability. We have an incentive to differentiate legitimate from phony PTSD claims because the phony claims take money away from those who legitimately suffer. As in any field, some are better than others when it comes to getting at the truth.
Veterans who are deserving of disability benefits are rarely healthy enough to fight for them.
Veterans who scam the system don't have that problem.
You can call me a liar and claim I am full of shit untill you eventually get banned from this website, or hell freezes over.
I don't lie.
Perhaps you need to spend a a few hours in private introspection before you man your keyboard.
Because I promise you, I never back a keyboard warrior over a real one.
And I also don't back down just because a liar accuses me of lies.
Oops-I just retaliated and called YOU a lying piece of shit!
The problem with anecdotes and layman opinions is that it often doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.
I’ll not argue against any of your personal military experiences, but instead offer up to you a RAND report about a research study done on PTSD, Major Depression, and TBI. It’s very illuminating, and it might change your mind about your perception on PTSD.
Enjoy!
Invisible Wounds of War -
Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG720.pdf
So reform the individual cases of abuse, rather than trimming down the benefit system across the board like a crew cut.
I know of a female vet who collects for hypothyroidism.
But these PTSD vets have a real claim, I’m sure.
Yes, I’m confident there is an incentive to diagnose PTSD and other ‘disabilities’. Why?
1 - I know bureaucracies. You don’t expand your program, get funding and get recognition by getting people OFF the program, but ON.
2 - When I retired, I had a counselor try to talk me in to filing for ‘disability’ for hearing loss from 25 years around jet engines. I told him to stuff it - I chose to live that way, and would still be flying if the USAF would let me do so.
3 - I think my son-in-law is on full disability. While he refuses to have anything to do with PTSD - and he went thru things that could well give him a completely legitimate diagnosis of it - he is on disability for back, neck, shoulder and knee damage. However, he also rides dirt bikes, and I’m not convinced anyone who can ride dirt bikes for hours is fully disabled.
4 - My sister’s two daughters are both married to Marines. Both have been encouraged to apply for disability, although both have refused. Good on them!
5 - Two of my kids have done tours in Iraq, and both have been told they could apply for disability. Neither is disabled in any way.
6 - My wife is a nurse. She complains almost every shift about patients getting unneeded surgery and tests on state money. She has listened to doctors discussing what procedures the state will pay for in a way that has convinced her that payment is driving the diagnosis.
My Dad apparently suffered from terrible nightmares, frequent and severe sinus pain (he flew fighters in WW2), and never ever told anyone what he went thru. If you tried to talk, he would leave the room. Yet he was an excellent husband and father. His career ended in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. The idea that he needed disability, or a medical retirement, would have shocked and offended him.
The uncle who went thru D-Day & fought as infantry in Europe was undoubtedly a PTSD case. Everyone who knew him said the war dramatically changed him. Yet by all accounts he managed to be a good family man and provider without any counseling or treatment.
The uncle who had multiple ships sunk under him seemed totally unaffected by it, other than a refusal to talk about it. He was cheerful, successful, and happy. But like my Dad, he wouldn’t say a word about his war experience.
I’m not saying PTSD doesn’t exist. I know it does. What I deny is that it merits ‘retirement’, and that the money being spent is being well spent.
“guys getting these rather lavish retirement packages”
Lavish? Really?
Show me some who are above the poverty line.
Lock out or increase fees for Department of Veterans Affairs Priority Groups 7 and 8 veterans
IF I understand the formulary, group 7 & 8 are the most expensively ill.
FREEZE MILITARY PAY, they are UNDER PAID for the job now.
Republican Budget Cuts 1.3 Million Veterans from VA Medical Care
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/whats-new/2279-tom-philpott
You are dead-on with the presumptive service-connection being looked at for budgetary cutting, and this would hurt many vets with PTSD, especially with the new 2010 law in effect helping vets achieve PTSD service-connection on a presumptive basis.
Here’s the Enrollment Priority Groups:
http://www.va.gov/healtheligibility/eligibility/PriorityGroupsAll.asp
I think these budget fiscal hawks want to eliminate Priority Groups 7 and 8 because they are for veterans who don’ have a service-connected disability. They must be thinking that Obamacare will take care of these folks, so it would be a needless resource.
I don’t buy into removing these two groups because I believe Uncle Sam should take care of all veterans, service-connected or not. It’s a moral premise for me. That those who would enlist to serve America, and be willing to sacrifice their lives and limbs ought to be treated with a degree more of respect than the average citizen who chose not to risk.
Heck, even the VA Pension is for older combat veterans who are penniless. These vets can be paid at a marginal annual income for their military wartime service, to help them survive. This is the obligation that hundreds of millions of American citizens incurred for the generosity of a few veterans who now need the help of society to live.
The freezing of military pay is ruthlessly evil. Straight up. There is no other word to describe this attempt to punish military service members as they don their combat gear and go out on patrol not knowing if they will be coming home to their loved ones.
there are a lot of retirement vested Brass who could retire, instead 0 is going after CPO’s, who are not retirement vested, not sure about the other branches. Then the lower ranks could make higher ranks.
Other Branches sing out about what you’ve heard so we can learn the extent of the Military/Vet gut we are facing.
You have paid your dues in sub par pay, and combat.
What have you heard about ration consumption control both state side and at sea? That was 1 of the Navy Times sub headlines last week as the commissary. I didn’t buy it, can’t afford it.
Hubby, 20 years of Navy Jets.....we just turn up the volume a little.
No, group numbers are assign according to service connection. Group 8 is non-service connection. Group 1 is service connected at least 50% and others such as POW’s.
He had an “entitlement mentality”.
He justified his actions to himself that because so many civilians were gaming “the system”, he deserved to get anything he could, because he was a veteran and earned when “they” obviously had not.
There are far more of his kind than most people would like to believe possible.
BTW, he is white, and a VietNam era USAF veteran, but not a combat veteran.
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