Junk Science Behind Michael Savage's Attacks On Military Troops With PTSD

I can't write some of the words used by veterans when we talked about Michael Savage attacking veterans. I got about as bad as I could get when I posted Veterans Fed Up With Michael Savage After PTSD Rant

There is an article over on Media Matters that pretty much summed up where the crap Savage came up with came from. No, it wasn't in his own delusional-dysfunctional head. It is nothing more than, as Lisa Reed put it, "junk science" we've all been fighting against for the last 40 years.

The Junk Science Behind Michael Savage's Attacks On Military Troops With PTSD
Media Matters
Lisa Reed
October 26, 2014

Last week, Michael Savage leveled his latest in a long string of attacks on Americans with mental illness and the medical community that works to help them. After a veteran caller with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) expressed support for the city of San Francisco naming a bridge after the late Robin Williams, the right-wing radio host announced that he is "so sick and tired of everyone with their complaints about PTSD, depression," asserting that it's a sign of a "weak, sick, broken nation."

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), approximately 5.2 million adults have PTSD within a given year. As of 2012, mental illness was the leading reason for active-duty hospitalizations in the military, and the VA estimates that up to 20 percent of veterans who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since 2001 suffer from PTSD. For veterans who left the military between October 2002 and July 2011, nearly 200,000 had a provisional diagnosis for PTSD, not including those who went undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. And the Institute of Medicine reported in June that "PTSD is the third most common major service-connected disability after hearing loss and ringing of the ears."

PTSD isn't just a combat-related injury. It can result from various traumatic incidents, ranging from child abuse to car accidents to muggings to sexual assault. A fight-or-flight response can be triggered by things that remind the survivor of her trauma, or things that catch the person off-guard, like bright lights or loud noises. Often those with PTSD experience flashbacks, where memories and feelings associated with past trauma come rushing back as if the trauma was happening all over again.

In an interview with CNN, former U.S. Navy Seal Brandon Webb said that he had observed significant improvements in the way PTSD is reported and discussed within the military, but pointed out an even larger challenge that veterans face:

WEBB: Most of the veterans and active duty folks I speak to, actually their biggest fear is that this stigma is created in the media and elsewhere that these veterans, as they're transitioning from active duty to civilian life, that there's this stigma that they're damaged goods.

Webb also pointed out the positive qualities that veterans, even those with PTSD, can bring to the civilian working world that are often overlooked by the media: "They're leaders, they can think on their feet, and make incredibly tough decisions under extreme amounts of pressure." read more here

I wonder if Savage has the balls to tell off a Navy SEAL and tell him he's a crybaby while explaining how exactly he celebrates weakness.

Community Makes Home Better for Wounded Afghanistan Veteran

Community rallies to help soldier wounded in Afghanistan
Northwest Georgia News
October 26, 2014

ADAIRSVILLE — A community has rallied to ready a home for Army Spc. Eugene Perry Young, who was paralyzed last year by a suicide bomber a little more than four months into a nine-month deployment in Afghanistan. Young has been in a Veterans Administration hospital in Tampa for more than a year.

He and his family had planned to build a home there until June, when Young returned to the Adairsville-Calhoun area for the first time since the bombing.

“I actually never thought I was going to come back home. It’s a small town and kids want to get away, do something on their own,” Young said. “But when I got injured and I came back here, I just felt drawn to this place like this is where I should be.”

Young and his wife, Samantha, found a home in Adairsville, but the VA said it was not equipped to handle his needs.

Bartow County Emergency Management Agency Director Paul Cuprowski knew Young would need a ramp. He needs a wheelchair after a roadside bomb injured his spinal cord.
read more here

Terrible Love the Movie for Veterans with PTSD

Behind Terrible Love Story Real Families
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 26, 2014

Life for veterans and families with PTSD can be terrible at times. So much so that it makes all the talk show tales of troubled marriages look easy. Speaking as a wife of a veteran with PTSD for 30 years, the movie Terrible Love comes as close as a civilian can get to seeing what our lives are like. Beyond the headlines there is real heartache.

Our lives are harder than most will ever know. Christopher Thomas wanted to tell our stories condensed in the story of a National Guardsman and his loving wife as their world fell apart. Our lives are complicated by the emotional rollercoaster corrupts even the strongest bond and while we fight to help our husbands/wives heal, we battle our own inner conflicts of wanting to stay and fight for the sake of those we love or walk away for our own futures. Can we do it? Can we fight hard enough and long enough to make it all work? Can we go on never knowing one moment to the next that will happen to us or because of us if we react wrongly?

The movie was intended to let families know we are not alone and what we are going through is our normal even though it is all abnormal to the rest of country.

We have to decide to keep fighting the VA for what they need and fighting to hang onto hope that it can get better or give up on all of it.

During the filming and editing Christopher struggled with getting the story right. He wanted to go beyond showing us we are not alone into reaching citizens trying to understand us when all they get are news reports on stories when it has been too late to do much good for anyone.

We were the audience he dedicated three years of his life to without being one of us. We were the people he spent countless hours and sleepless nights trying to get it right for and he achieved it. I've been reading reviews on Terrible Love but this one made me cringe

"The big problem with this type of story right from the outset is that no matter what tricks a director employs, we will never know what it is like to go through something like that unless we actually do."

(You can read more of this review below)

He learned what it was like because we spent countless hours on the phone and email Q and A for three years. He watched the videos I made, read the stories on Wounded Times and asked me about what he did not understand. He wanted to know about us as well as all the families I worked with over the years trying to get them to a point in their lives when loving them didn't feel so terrible.
After reading the review, this is the comment I had to leave.

Wounded Times Blog
I was the consultant on the PTSD part of this film. After 3 years of Christopher's heart invested in this project along with everyone else, I have mixed feelings about this review. I take your point on the music and the rest of the comments as truthful however it would have been more honest to also add in that this was his first movie and he did it out of love, not for his own glory.

Three years ago he called and wanted to learn about PTSD, what far too many were going through, because he wanted to do something to help. He wanted to tell a real story of what life was like but didn't have connections to make it happen. He did what he could with very little support, so what he managed to do with Terrible Love showed not only his talent, but his commitment to our veterans and families.

Christopher told a story of what life is like for many veterans and for the families they come home to. Lost and confused, wanting to help but not knowing what to do. Our lives are very hard but few others dared tell what it is like.

Did he hit all the Hollywood grades? No but the veterans community is grateful he did what really matters, He made Combat PTSD real for everyone to understand and be touched by it.

'Terrible Love' (2014) Movie Review
While it features some powerful moments, the film is too overwrought to fully resonate.
Rope of Silicon
Mike Shutt
FRIDAY, OCT 24, 2014

Movies about soldiers coming home from war and trying to acclimate back into regular society can be very tricky. They are often too sentimental, too alienating, or too histrionic. It is difficult to make a situation like that exist outside of cliché and feel honest. Directors try so many different things to visualize PTSD, from flashes of the soldier's moment of trauma to screaming fits to being unable to do a certain task. The big problem with this type of story right from the outset is that no matter what tricks a director employs, we will never know what it is like to go through something like that unless we actually do. Soldiers who suffer from PTSD are changed people in every way, and we can only observe how the react. Terrible Love, the debut feature of director Christopher Thomas, tries to have a natural take on the situation, complete with totally improvised dialogue, but in postproduction, the emotional manipulation gets turned up far too high for the drama to breathe and sink into its audience.

Amy Urbina and Rufus Burns play, well, Amy and Rufus (all the characters have the actors' names), a married couple reuniting after Rufus's year-long deployment in the Middle East. He is returning home two weeks early after his humvee hit a land mine, causing him to completely lose eyesight in his left eye. Initially, their reunion is joyous, filled with a lot of montage kissing, but after a few days, things for Rufus start to go very sour. He gets night terrors, gets very distant from his wife, has small triggers that lead to big episodes, and struggles with taking care of himself and their daughter Aubrey (Aubrey Davis-Williams). Amy tries to accommodate, but day after day, the strain between them becomes greater and greater.
read more here

The end of the movie does not have to be the end of their story. It isn't the end for any of us as long as we get the help we need to stay and fight for them side by side. Because people like Christopher Thomas are out there, we're a lot closer to changing the conversation from headlines to our reality.

UPDATE Review Austin Film Festival
"Terrible Love" and PTSD and what happens when we are closed versus what happens when we are open
Film Colossus
by Chris Lambert

So Terrible Love's Rufus is one of the most tragic characters I've seen in a film. Why?

Because he is incapable of expressing his pain.

Which is what makes Terrible Love so fascinating to me.

The premise of Terrible Love is that Rufus (Rufus Burns) is an American soldier who leaves, shortly after his wedding to Amy (Amy Urbina), for a tour in Iraq. Eventually, Rufus is injured and discharged. PTSD will happen.

I'm sure much of the talk about this movie will revolve around its portrayal of PTSD, how accurate it is or is not. The film functions, in a way, as a critique of the poor support system for many veterans. Also for the spouses of those veterans. For example: there's a scene where Amy tells her friend, another military wife, that she's scared of Rufus. And the friend tells Amy that Amy is being dramatic and selfish. Yeesh.

I think the movie takes on a larger subject than PTSD. A simple, universal truth that is the film's real power. Openness versus Closedness. Specifically, how easy it is to be open about positive emotions and experiences, and how difficult it is to express negative emotions.

The first 20 minutes of the movie captures this in such a beautiful way that it made me cry.

The film opens with Rufus and Amy reciting their wedding vows. Plenty of friends and family are there. The bride and groom express, out loud, for everyone, how much they love one another, how much they need one another, etc. etc. This positive spirit lingers, even when Rufus heads to Iraq. His time there and Amy's time at home is captured in summary. The time they are apart takes less than 5 minutes in the film. We see them going about their lives (domestic things contrasted by graphic imagery from the Middle East), knowing they miss one another, knowing they care about one another—their wedding vows still fresh in our minds. We don't see Rufus in pain. We don't see Amy in pain. Even when Rufus's car rolls over a land mine and he's hurt: we don't see him screaming, crying or anything. In fact, we get a phone call from Rufus saying everything is okay and then cut to him coming home, to the happy reunion between him and Amy in the airport.

We follow the reunion with 8 minutes of wonderful domestic life. Amy and Rufus are both happy. We see laughter, affection, joy. Until the 16 minute mark when Rufus has his first on-camera instance of PTSD. As he hunches and cries and yells and hyperventilates, Amy asks: "Are you okay? What's going on? What is happening? Are you in pain? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

Rufus tells her nothing.
read more here

Veteran Suicide Awareness Not Even Close To Being Aware

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 26, 2014

I have grown weary of reading about suicides and PTSD tied to military service. Few have gotten it right. It seems as if everyone has become an instant expert popping up on Facebook and writing opinions with very little based on facts. Veterans end up with information overload not knowing what is opinion and what is truth.

The truth is, most awareness being raised is not even close to what is needed to be known and it is inexcusable!

I was reading an opinion piece on Triblive and my head exploded to the point where I had to leave a comment. I hate to leave comments because it takes too much time considering I read up to 50 articles a day and would be impossible to leave comments on all of them. I have to be emotionally tied to it before I type the first word.

This is the comment I left.

On the suicides tied to military service, it is worse than you may know. When President Obama was a Senator, he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee and was very aware of suicides. So much so, he escaped the national press in 2008 while running for office to go to the Montana National Guards after the suicide of Spec. Chris Dana.

He knew about them then yet when suicides went up he held no one accountable. As congress continued to spend more and more money on failed programs, he let them instead of demanding accountability. Combat PTSD has been researched for 40 years, yet the outcome is worse than ever. When do we hold politicians accountable to the men and women they send into combat?

Obama got an earful while in Montana.

Before speaking, the candidate met for several minutes with the family of Spec. Chris Dana, a Montana National Guard veteran suffering from PTSD who committed suicide in March 2007, several months after returning from Iraq. Dana's stepbrother, Matt Kuntz, became a vocal advocate for better treatment of PTSD after Dana's death.

Jess Bahr, a Vietnam veteran, drove more than 200 miles from Great Falls to hear Obama. Before being bused to the event with a veteran-heavy crowd, Bahr said the number of homeless U.S. veterans was inexcusable and that the needs of retired warriors across the country were being ignored by communities.

“In Great Falls, they're building a $6.5 million animal shelter and we don't have a shelter for veterans. What does that tell you about priorities?” asked Bahr, a 1967 Army draftee who survived the Tet Offensive, a nine-month series of battles that resulted in more than 6,000 deaths and 24,000 injuries among American and allied troops during the Vietnam War.

Then Senator Obama made a promise that if he became President he would expand what the Montana National Guards started on screenings for PTSD.

The Montana National Guard has developed a program to check its soldiers and airmen for signs of post-traumatic stress disorder every six months for the first two years after returning from combat, then once a year thereafter. The program exceeds national standards set by the U.S. Department of Defense.

He kept that promise however when the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified they were not doing all the screenings they were supposed to be doing during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, no one was held accountable.

There is no doubt in my mind that President Obama is very aware of military suicides and PTSD as well as the dysfunctional congressional politicians inability to actually learn what works instead of writing checks supporting what has failed. After the repugnant Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program was instituted based on a research project to give school aged children a better sense of self-worth was pushed on our servicemen and women, suicides went up.

This farce of teaching soldiers to be "resilient" with this program increased suicides. It isn't that all of this was not predicted far ahead of thousands of graves being filled. Even I saw it coming back in 2009 when I stated this.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Will Make It Worse

"If you promote this 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."

We let them get away with it! It isn't as if they didn't know what was going on. So what is their excuse for all of this now?

White House callous toward American lives
Trib Live
By Diana West
Friday, Oct. 24, 2014

At a time when our military has been at war for 13 years, suicide is at an all-time high, (post-traumatic stress disorder) is out of control and families are being destroyed as a result of 13 years of war, the last thing the president should be doing is sending people into West Africa to fight Ebola.”

Do you get the feeling that the United States government is trying to get us all killed?

OK, not all of us. Some of us.

I almost don't know how else to interpret the headlines, whether the issue is the 167,000 convicted criminal aliens who, despite deportation orders, remain “currently at large” or the U.S. consulates in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea that are still issuing travel visas to citizens from these Ebola-stricken nations at a rate of 100 a day.

The White House refusal to exercise elementary precautions to prevent an Ebola outbreak in the United States has become another notorious hallmark of the Obama years. I refer to the administration's failure to prohibit travel from the Ebola-stricken region into our formerly Ebola-free nation for the duration of the horrific epidemic.

Even now, the Obama administration continues to permit 150 travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to land every day, their unimpeded ease of movement our government's top priority. The rest of us take our chances. To date, we are looking at “only” two infected nurses. From the globalist perspective, this mean Obama's policies are working. The golf course beckons.
read more here

How about we stop talking about suicide awareness, since they have increased faster than when we were not talking about them and start talking about raising awareness on how to live on after combat and heal? How about we give these veterans and military folks some actual weapons to defeat PTSD and stop trying to find excuses for not doing it? How about we raise awareness that most veterans with PTSD do not commit suicide? How about we talk about how they heal better and faster when they stop trying to fit back in with people who can't understand but start to join other groups of veterans who do understand?

We've been at this for far too long to accept any excuses for the good that works to be ignored and the bad to be allowed to continue.

Afghanistan Veteran's Mom Begs Canada to Save Son From Suicide

PTSD linked to soldier's 3 suicide attempts, family says
CBC News
Posted: Oct 24, 2014

“He tried to hang himself with a t-shirt,” his mother said. “He's crying out for help and nobody's there. I do not want my son to become a statistic, but that's what's happening.”

The family of a soldier from Halifax is afraid for his life as he struggles with what he believes to be an undiagnosed case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kim and Steven Dixon say their son, Cpl. Thomas Dixon, has tried to kill himself three times since June.

Most recently, he tried to end his life in an Edmonton military jail.

​“My son, he was always army. Growing up [in the] cadets, he loved it,” Kim Dixon said. “Then he went over to Afghanistan. That's when things turned around for him.”

Dixon's parents saw the change in their son almost immediately when he came home.

“He came back, he was very moody, he had a temper — all the signs you would see of people who have PTSD,” she said.
read more here

Florida Veterans Need to Consider VA Rules on Medical Marijuana

I support medical marijuana and hope it passes in Florida. Many people say that "Oh, it will get abused" so they don't plan on voting for it. Common sense should have shown them a long time ago that most things offering benefits to others end up getting abused, especially things intended to be medication.

The problem I have with this is there are important questions no one seems to be asking. The biggest one is, if marijuana is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government, then what happens when a veteran gets a prescription for it from a private doctor? Will the VA view it as legal or illegal when they take blood and urine tests for other things?

There are many states where medical marijuana is legal but the VA is a federal entity and must follow rules of the federal government. I haven't read anything about this being addressed.

Viewpoint: Suffering? Don’t Move to Florida
Pensacola News Journal
Jon Mills
October 25, 2014

Retired Air Force Capt. Jeff Lahman served 25 years in the Air Force including time in special ops. He ended up with a series of injuries and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

He and his wife, also an Air Force officer, lived in Arizona. He was prescribed a large dose of oxycodone and other pain killers. Those prescription medicines brought him to a new low. A doctor suggested he try medical marijuana. He did and it changed his life. He was himself again. His wife saw the difference. Just last year he moved to Florida. He is a strong supporter of Amendment 2 because it would allow him to legally consult a Florida doctor about using medical marijuana.

Cathy Jordan was diagnosed with ALS in 1986 and given five years to live. She and her husband, Bob, moved from Delaware to Florida hoping a milder climate would help her condition. Doctors offered every prescription possible. Nothing worked. She began hoarding drugs with thoughts of suicide. She tried medical marijuana with the help of Bob and it worked. It acts as a muscle relaxer, anti-depressant and stimulates her appetite. In 2013, six officers entered her home and confiscated her medical marijuana.

read more here

I had to do a search to find the answer. Here it is.

Department of Veterans Affairs VHA DIRECTIVE 2011-004
Veterans Health Administration
Washington, DC 20420 January 31, 2011
ACCESS TO CLINICAL PROGRAMS FOR VETERANS
PARTICIPATING IN STATE-APPROVED MARIJUANA PROGRAMS

They will not provide it or pay for it.

(2) If a Veteran presents an authorization for marijuana to a VA provider or pharmacist, VA will not provide marijuana nor will it pay for it to be provided by a non-VA entity.

One more thing, don't bring it with you on VA property.

NOTE:
Possession of marijuana, even for authorized medical reasons, by Veterans while on VA property is in violation of VA regulation 1.218(a)(7) and places them at risk for prosecution under the Controlled Substances Act.

Jeremy Sears Last Moments With Another Veteran

Jeremy Sears Last Words, "Nowhere Important but thanks for asking." The question came from another Iraq veteran standing near him at the shooting range. Chris Naganuma knew pain when he saw it since he saw it in himself.

When you read this story about the battles veterans have to fight back home, it is easy to be angry. Easy to wonder what is wrong with the government when all of this is happening to them. If you just started paying attention, then your anger is justified. If you've paid attention all along then you would wonder when your head stops exploding whenever you read stories like this. All of it has been going on for decades.

Long before most serving today were even born, it was all happening. The pills instead of therapy. The backlog of claims. The overburned VA workers wondering how they can fit in a veteran in need of care before it is too late. And Congress, well, I don't have anything nice to say about them in the 113th anymore than I had anything nice to say about the 112th, 111th, 110th or any of them going back to 1946 when the first Veterans Affairs Committee was seated and it happened to WWI and WWII veterans long before I was born.

You wouldn't know because it hasn't been personal to you. Safe bet that you didn't know any of these older veterans. If you had, then you'd know none of this is new. That is the most deplorable fact of all. None of it is new and none of it should have ever happened.

The last moments of Jeremy Sears
In a twist of fate, another combat veteran is with him at the end
UT San Diego
By Jeanette Steele
OCT. 25, 2014

Chris Naganuma was at the Oceanside shooting range when 35-year-old former Camp Pendleton infantryman Jeremy Sears killed himself. Here, Naganuma attends his memorial at Miramar National Cemetery.
K.C. Alfred / UT San Diego

Chris Naganuma had the sense that something was wrong from the start.

He and his mother went to Oceanside’s Iron Sights indoor gun range for a simple practice session.

In the lane next to him, a guy in a backward baseball cap was shooting haphazardly. Even at only 10 feet away, he could barely hit the target’s inner circle.

Naganuma, a 28-year-old Army veteran, sized up his neighbor as a fellow vet. T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops. The man wore a black metal bracelet, a “hero bracelet” bearing the name of someone killed in action.

Naganuma wears two himself.

“First thing I asked him was, ‘Hey man, where did you deploy to, and how are you doing?’”

“He stopped for a second. Looked up at me,” Naganuma recounts.

“And the only thing he said was, ‘Nowhere important, man. But thanks for asking.’”

The weekend before Sears died, he first opened up to his wife about possibly having “survivor’s guilt” — sometimes seen as a symptom of PTSD.
read more here

Marine Veteran Laid To Rest After Gun Range Suicide

Oceanside shooting range where veteran put the gun to his head

1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing Remembered at Camp Lejeune

Remembering Camp Lejeune Marines killed in 1983 Beirut Barracks bombing
Examiner
Susy Raybon
Military Community Examiner
October 23, 2014

Yesterday’s attack in Ottawa, Canada, is another ugly reminder that there will always be radicals and extremists in the world who, by acts of terrorism, commit horrific deeds. One of the first and most deadly to American servicemen happened at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983.

Thirty-one years ago, today, 220 Marines of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines of Camp Lejeune were killed in the worst attack on the U.S. Marine Corps since Iwo Jima in World War II.

The American death toll that day was 241 servicemen; besides the 220 Marines, 18 were Navy and three were U.S. Army. The French also suffered the loss of 58 of their peace-keeping servicemen that day.

That deadly attack by suicide bombers in explosives-laden trucks marked the beginning of an era of terrorism not quite realized in the world before. Many of today’s Marines were not even born when that attack occurred.

In July of this year, some of those troops’ surviving family members were awarded a small restitution for their loss.

A settlement of $1.7 million from the Iranian government was awarded to 1,300 families who lost loved ones in the attack. The award brought an end some 13 years of legal wrangling.
read more here

Power to Heal PTSD Already Within You

You loved so strongly, you were ready to die for those you served with.  

That came from within the same place where your pain lives.

It is from that devotion to others that caused you to grieve.

It is from that strength of your soul that you dared to 

enter the valley where few others would go.

And it is from that place where love lives where you

will draw strength to mourn and remember

to live on and love abundantly so that others

may know the joy of a time to dance.

Everything you need to heal is already within you.

It is the same power that pushed you on from one moment to the next

in combat that holds the power to heal.

PTSD does not have to defeat you or control all that God has placed within you.

Veterans Affairs kept secret for years, and years and more years

Who are we talking about when articles appear on the Department of Veterans Affairs? Are we talking about the healthy and uninjured? No, we're talking about the wounded and disabled veterans we have comprised of veterans from all wars. The VA is compensating less than 4 million of them among the over 22 million veterans alive today. This is a nation of over 300 million people yet we can't even get it right for this percentage of veterans! There is seriously something wrong in this country and it begins with members of Congress.

A reminder of what was going on back in 2008 with the Department of Veterans Affairs

In his first appearance before Congress since becoming secretary, Peake also sought to assure lawmakers that President Bush’s proposed 2009 VA budget of $91 billion would be sufficient to meet the growing demands of veterans of a protracted Iraq war. The proposal is a 3.7 percent increase from the previous year, but several lawmakers have criticized it as inadequate after factoring in inflation.

Peake wants to reduce wait times from roughly 180 days to 145 days by the start of next year. He cited aggressive efforts to hire staff, noting the VA will have 3,100 new staff by 2009. VA also is working to get greater online access to Pentagon medical information that he said will allow staff to process claims faster and move toward a system of electronic filing of claims.

Peake promised to “virtually eliminate” the current list of 69,000 veterans who have waited more than 30 days for an appointment to get VA medical care. Such long waits runs counter to department policy, and a group of Iraq war veterans have filed a lawsuit alleging undue delays. He said VA plans to open 64 new community-based outpatient clinics this year and 51 next year to improve access to health care in rural areas.

“We will take all measures necessary to provide them with timely benefits and services, to give them complete information about the benefits they have earned through their courageous service, and to implement streamlined processes free of bureaucratic red tape,” Peake said in testimony prepared for a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Thursday.

And by 2009, this was the report about veterans waiting to have claims approved.

A new report about Veterans Affairs Department employees squirreling away tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims is sparking fresh concerns that veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of money.

VA officials acknowledge further credibility problems based on a new report of a previously undisclosed 2007 incident in which workers at a Detroit regional office turned in 16,000 pieces of unprocessed mail and 717 documents turned up in New York in December during amnesty periods in which workers were promised no one would be penalized.

“Veterans have lost trust in VA,” Michael Walcoff, VA’s under secretary for benefits, said at a hearing Tuesday. “That loss of trust is understandable, and winning back that trust will not be easy.”

Unprocessed and unopened mail was just one problem in VA claims processing mentioned by Belinda Finn, VA’s assistant inspector general for auditing, in testimony before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

But as bad as that was, the claim backlog in 2009 was this,

The VA's claims backlog, which includes all benefits claims and all appeals at the Veterans Benefits Administration and the Board of Veterans Appeals at VA, was 803,000 on Jan. 5, 2009. The backlog hit 915,000 on May 4, 2009, a staggering 14 percent increase in four months.

Watchdog report on Veterans Affairs kept secret for years
Washington Examiner
BY MARK FLATTEN
OCTOBER 22, 2014

Deliberate falsification of patient wait times was confirmed at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix in 2008, but the agency’s inspector general kept its findings secret, a report obtained by the Washington Examiner shows.

The 2008 investigation confirms the IG and VA officials were aware that schedulers were using bogus tactics to “game” the system, allowing them to falsely claim patients were getting the medical care they needed within agency deadlines.

The tricks used to hide the delays are virtually identical to those that were revealed earlier this year, leading to a nationwide scandal and confirmation that the use of falsified waiting lists was deliberate, “systemic” and potentially criminal.

Yet the 2008 investigation by the IG was deemed “restricted,” meaning it was not publicly released. So the problems identified in 2008 festered at the Phoenix facility until a whistleblower took charges of manipulation of patient records to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which in April directed the IG to thoroughly investigate the practices.
read more here

Any questions should be directed to members of Congress asking for your votes next month.