Back in th U.S.A.
Soon we will be done
Trouble of the world
How soon we will be done
--Trouble of the World,
Mahalia Jackson
Poor souls that live within the past
where sorrow plays all parts,
for a living death is all that's left
for men with broken hearts
--Men With Broken Hearts,
Hank Williams, Jr.
_______________
Trouble of the world
How soon we will be done
--Trouble of the World,
Mahalia Jackson
Poor souls that live within the past
where sorrow plays all parts,
for a living death is all that's left
for men with broken hearts
--Men With Broken Hearts,
Hank Williams, Jr.
_______________
What happens to seriously wounded soldiers after the Department of Defense (DoD) dumps them on the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) doorstep, like so many newly-orphaned Nebraskan children?
Due to better medical technology, veterans are surviving more serious injuries. "In 2007, the Dole-Shalala Commission said there were 3,000 service members so severely injured that they required full-time clinical- and care-management services" (Veterans Families Seek Aid for Caregiver Role.)
While the DVA provides home health care for 100% disabled veterans, the health care contractors on the government-provided lists can be "awful" according to Tracy Keil, whose husband, Staff Sgt. Matt Keil, was rendered a quadriplegic after being shot in the neck while on patrol in Ramadi. Mrs. Keil quit her $58,000 accounting job to care full-time for her husband. Like many others who have shifted into full-time health care providers for family members, Keil is asking for government remuneration for her services.
It is not that nobody in the chain of command or the DVA cares or that they are callous, but rather the system is just overwhelmed. Vets are just another problem needing to be solved, in a world of problems. The vets most in need are the ones least able to argue for their own care needs.
They are helpless in a world of phony yellow ribbons and little flag lapel pins. Many are not fortunate enough to have family members to whom they may return, and who may or may not be able to take over their care needs.
When Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake said Bob Dole's mother "quit everything she was doing and came to take care of him at the hospital, no questions asked. That’s not the case anymore" -- just so. The care of these severely disabled vets is a governmental, not a family, responsibility.
These vets walk a tightrope of despair as do their families, while we as a nation continue to revel in the distractions of the moment. The issue is money, and if the DVA would compensate contractor care, then they should compensate family members who become de facto caregivers in their stead.
"In the last session of Congress, families and veterans groups persuaded lawmakers to introduce legislation that, among other things, would allow families of soldiers with traumatic brain injury (TBI) to be paid for their caretaking after training and certification by the VA." The VA, however, opposes the legislation it claims due to liability issues.
Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), thinks the families of veterans "are kind of being taken advantage of” because the government knows they will do the work anyway.
DVA respite care (24-hour institutional care) costs $857 a day, or about $25,700 a month. This is $308,400 per patient per year. If 3,000 wounded veterans need full-time care, the total is $925,200,000. $925 million -- almost one billion dollars for the annual care of 3,000 profoundly wounded service members.
These men will live on for many years. That is a guaranteed yearly tab -- where is that cost factored in to the expense of having national warriors?
Who is talking about this "collateral" cost of war? When is the last time anyone out there visited a DVA long-term care facility and actually talked to a vet? How many politicians talk to vets any time other than when they are posturing for votes?
This country has a moral, legal and financial responsibility to wounded veterans. The tab's coming due.
Labels: consequences of phony war on terror, cost of care for wounded veterans, department of veterans affairs remuneration for health care, PWOT
posted by rangeragainstwar at 4:07 PM
8 Comments:
And it's going to be a big tab too Ranger.
What a disgrace, these same people who told us we weren't patriotic if we didn't support the troops are now busy funding corporate CEO's and ignoring the wounded vets and their families. Should we be surprised? My gut feeling is that it's going to get alot worse before it gets better. I hope I'm wrong.
Case in point-check out the blog "Mended Wings". Just one of many cases where family must leave job and home to care for a severely wounded soldier. Excellent post, Ranger.
Ranger, ...and the beat goes on...
Pentagon 'dragging its feet' on injured vets
"Despite order from Congress, defense agency hasn't examined cases"
Rest assured tho...
"Eileen M. Lainez, a spokeswoman in the Defense Press Office at the Pentagon, said in an e-mail the panel's creation was delayed because the Defense Department had to create the application process, Internet information sites and develop training programs for newly hired staff."
"I can assure you that budgetary constraints do not factor into adjudications at any point," Lainez said. "This has never been a factor and it will not be in the future."
Right! ...and I have a bridge to sell, real cheap too...!
they always forget when they beat the drums, wave the flags, and blow their fucking bugles that the cost is real, and human. shit gets blown off.
i have a chunk out of the left side of my hip where a 7.62 blapped off my iliac crest. that motherfucker has hurt every goddamned day since nineteen sixty goddamned eight.
what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger is absolute bullshit. i have had injuries that made me weaker, and weakened since they occured.
if my recruiter had told me that when you fucking get shot it still hurts 40 fucking years later i might not have been so reckless.
i opted out of the VA system as much as i could. i still go back when i have flare ups of jungle gut critters. after all you don't find too many tropical medicine specialists in the blue cross directory.
the arthritis, the tinnitinitus, the limp, the sweats, the shakes, the sleepness nights, the nightmares when i did get to sleep.
all that shit i was on my own. if we can, in any way, make things a little smoother and better for this crop of kids i say we go for it.
for every fucking wall street thieving suit who gets bailout money, at least that much needs to go straight the fuck into veteran's care. it won't happen, but it would sure be nice.
Amen, brother. Amen.
I wish that every kid had to spend a day volunteering on a long-term care ward the the VA the day before he or she signed their enlistment papers. They need to see the face of battle before they commit themselves to the care of the Gods of War.
Sadly, because the guys who come home this way will never have six-figure lobbyists buying their Congresscritters this will never go away. We will continue to see that the executives at AIG and Bear Stearns and McDonnel Douglas and Boeing and Rayethon and Blackwater are well taken care of.
But the kid from Modesto who will spend the rest of his life wearing a diaper?
Not so much.
Makes me want to line up the elected scoundrels and their corporate masters and decimate them - kill every tenth man - like a cohors that fled rather than stood like men. This, as much as anything, shows the rottenness of our system.
Of War Wounded:
Rangers,
You can read an online version of Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun" at THIS LINK.
you know chief, if you're going to go old school roman, go all the way.
for a decimation, the offending unit would be assembled. each cohort was comprised of ten men. each cohort would have lots cast, one man from each cohort was then to kneel, be surrounded by the remaining nine who would then beat him to death with cudgels.
it was an extreme and vicious penalty, usually reserved for the vilest of unit crimes. to order a decimation was considered to be the mark of a failed general.
lucullus, crassus, cato, varrus and the other dilletantes all ordered decimations. crassus ordered it to his legion when they sensibly refused to obey orders that would have resulted in a foolish assault.
caesar never used decimation, neither did pompei magnus, gaius marius, sulla, scipio, fabius, or the true military men. it usually turned out that decimation was called for by the aristocrats who blamed the legionaries for their own failures as commanders.
before the march on rome, caesar's ninth hesitated to cross the boundries with him, knowing it was an extreme violation of roman law and custom that would provoke a long and bloody war against other romans.
rather than order a decimation caesar called the ninth together and recalled their past glories. he reminded them that in every battle, caesar was there in the center of the front line conspicuous in his scarlet cape and silver helmet.
two of his primus pilum centurians stepped forward and offered to fight each cohort of the legion. the two of them against the ten of each cohort.
no takers. the ninth however, remained north of the rubicon. once the civil war was engaged in earnest they chose to fight on under the eagle of caesar and were soon victorious. it was a bittersweet victory for them. caesar was soon dictator for life, then that life was cut short.
the republic, the ideals that the ninth had sworn to defend was dead.
let's have a wall street decimation. i'll whittle cudgels with glee.
MB: Me, too, brother. That's a beat-down I'd be happy to help with.
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