Supporting The Troops

From our local free, that's right: F-R-E-E, weekly The San Antonio Current:

Even more disturbing are the increasing reports that the military may be intentionally misdiagnosing wounded veterans with PTSD and head traumas and discharging them with “pre-existing” mental disorders — diagnoses that limit their access to military health care.

“I don’t think we have even started to see the tip of the iceberg,” said Ignacio Leiya, vice president of service operations for the American GI Forum’s National Veterans Outreach Program in San Antonio. “In a few more years we’ll start seeing the full effect of what has been going on in Iraq.”

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It can be tough identifying PTSD cases and the war’s growing “signature injury” —
Traumatic Brain Injury, a plague caused by the prevalence of homemade bombs. After all, “A mental illness doesn’t present to us like a broken leg,” Brown says. Still, thousands of brain injuries and psychologically damaged troops go undiagnosed and uncompensated.

Parrish has a more critical assessment of the military and the VA’s performance.

“There’s so much, let’s say, bureaucracy involved in all of these situations that so many of the veterans just feel hopeless. Basically we’re running into similar problems nationwide,” Parrish said. He calls the personality-disorder discharges a scam.

“The doctors are being motivated by the command to not give out PTSD diagnosis and put them in the medical-board situation,” Parrish said. “It just so happens then these doctors, whenever they give out a misdiagnosed personality disorder, they are getting patted on the backs by the command for saving the budget.”

Here’s the rub: A personality discharge means the veteran had a mental disorder before joining up. Since it is considered “pre-existing” the soldier doesn’t qualify for benefits when he or she comes home.

Currently it is estimated that more than 22,000 veterans have been discharged with personality-disorder diagnoses in the past six years. This, in turn, may have saved the Department of Defense billions in health-related claims.

So, this maneuver may have saved the Defense Department billions of dollars. How much is it costing the rest of us?