Every time the shock begins to fade from the last Veterans Affairs (VA) health care scandal, you can count on the VA to do or have done something else outrageous relative to their obligation to care for our wounded and suffering veterans. Veterans disabled by PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) and a host of other mental health issues related to their military service are getting such poor, haphazard mental health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs that at least since 2008 more than 1,000 veterans per month are attempting suicide.
Now we finally have an answer: “unchecked incompetence” is a nationwide systemic problem within the VA. Many disgruntled veterans and their families have felt this way for decades as they have struggled to get the help they so desperately need in the mental health care area from a mind-numbingly unresponsive VA. This time, though, “unchecked incompetence” are two of the words in a scathing 100-page decision published May 10, 2011 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for the majority, wrote that it was the “unchecked incompetence” within the VA that had led to such poor mental health care over so many years that veterans were just giving up and killing themselves.
Veterans got a hint of validation that the VA was so abysmally dysfunctional on May 6, 2008. That was when Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), then chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, held a hearing to question Dr. Ira Katz, deputy chief for mental health of the VA. “We should all be angry,” Filner said in his opening statement. In February 2008 Katz had sent an email to VA Undersecretary for Health Michael Kussman, wondering if the VA should admit the truth that there were 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans “before someone stumbles on it.”
There is no accountability within the VA, and Filner went on to state, “What we see is a pattern … that we have seen going back to the days of atomic testing, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, Persian Gulf illness, traumatic brain injury, post traumatic stress disorder, suicide, homelessness. The pattern is deny, deny, deny. Then when the facts seemingly come to disagree with the denial, you cover up, cover up, cover up. Then, when the cover up doesn’t work any more, you admit a little bit and underplay the problem. And then, finally, you (the VA) admit it’s a problem, and then way after the fact, you try to come to grips with it. We have seen it again and again and again. If that isn’t criminal negligence [by the VA] then what is?” Filner asked Katz and Kussman to resign. They didn’t.
Veterans young and old have been killing themselves because the hidebound VA just won’t move quickly and with compassion when it knows it is dealing with a veteran with PTSD.
In the May 10, 2011 Ninth Circuit decision, the judges noted that a frequent VA defense is that they do, eventually, approve the medical care requested. The court found this specious and wrote, “Veterans suffering from serious disabilities, including PTSD, suffer substantial and severe adverse consequences as a result of (VA) delay.” The court further found that “delay in the provision of care sought is tantamount to denial.” Judge Reinhardt also wrote, “The record before us is replete with examples of deleterious delay” by the VA.
Congressman Rush Holt (NJ-12th District), a tireless advocate for veterans, said that he was angered that the VA New Jersey Health Care system failed to provide the timely care requested by Sgt. Coleman Bean, East Brunswick, who was suffering from PTSD when he took his life on Sept. 6, 2008. Sgt. Bean was 25. It was hideous when the labyrinthine VA called to confirm an appointment … two weeks after Sgt. Bean was dead. Then-candidate Barack Obama called the suicide of Grover Chapman, Greenville, S.C., “an indictment of society’s treatment of disabled veterans.” In the spring of 2008, Chapman, also suffering from PTSD, shot himself in the head outside his local VA clinic shortly after the VA denied him extra care. The VA “reversed its decision on treatment less than six hours later.” Chapman was 89. Unchecked incompetence. Criminal negligence.
The anguish of a disabled veteran does not stop on Friday at 4 p.m. when the VA pencil pushers go home. By Monday morning, the veteran put off on Friday may be dead. If the VA cared, they would have changed years ago. Help veterans now.
Gus Nordin
Veteran
Tinton Falls