In her article, Op-Ed Contributor “The Wrong Way to Help Veterans” Sally L. Satel, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, she leads one to believe returning veterans are met with open arms by the Veteran’s Administration and are put on the easy, fast tract to gaining VA benefits and services. Ms. Stein’s understanding of the reality of the process borders on fairytales and fantasies.
I sent a response to NYT editor on her article. I’m not sure if my response will appear in the Times or not but felt it should not pass with out comments. I’m sure I was not the only one appalled at her lack of understanding of the VA system. I hope more educated minds on Veterans affairs also contacted the Times with their opinions on the topic of this article.
NYT Op-Ed Sally Satel link below.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Ms Satel:
“IF all goes according to plan, by the end of the year, 10,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan will be home with their families — and their memories. As many as 20 percent of them will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression, while suicide rates have reached tragic new highs among veterans. In response, the Department of Veterans Affairs has greatly expanded its mental health services and made veterans well aware that disability benefits are available”.
While the VA has done a good marketing campaign and is now handing out pamphlets to discharged veterans, it is hardly making veterans aware of what lies ahead of them to receive treatment or the $2600.00 check, to which Ms. Satel refers. According to her view, the VA offers veterans an all expenses paid invitation to Disneyland, when in fact veterans are plunged into Alice’s Wonderland, where the compensation board operates like the tea party, with the Mad Hater at the helm. In this world, a veteran’s case can sit, get lost, misfiled, lost again, and come out of the rabbit hole two years later denied. Of course, one can appeal, so the case goes down yet rabbit hole, called the Board of Veterans Appeals where it sits a few more years. This is the reality Ms. Satel missed in her article, and one that veterans live with on a daily basis
Ms. Satel:
“It seems only logical that a veteran who thinks he has a long-lasting
impairment as a result of military service would file a disability
claim. The problem is that the system allows him to receive these
benefits for a condition without ever having been properly treated for
it. As a result, a system intended to speed up entitlements for veterans
could end up hurting them.”
Putting aside she refers veterans as “he,” effectively dismissing the plight of female veterans, yes, indeed, it does hurts them but not for the reasons Ms. Satel suggests. The harm that takes place is many faceted and impacts veterans’ entire lives, the lives of their families and everyone around them. The impossible snails pace of working a case through the VA system sets in place a cycle of frustration, shame and despair for veterans who are suffering, trying to get help, and losing everything valuable to them. Their lives come to a complete stop and are put on hold. They are often looked at as trying to scam the VA and the nation. Family and friends often are unable to bear the overwhelming destruction of their lives, so they move on. Veterans often end up homeless and living on the street, because family and friends don’t know what to do with their hero. Great harm is done.
Ms. Satel:
“Currently, for a disability determination, Veterans Affairs requires the claimant to go through a psychiatric exam, also known as a “comp and pension.” But the session typically lasts just 90 minutes and does not provide enough information for an examiner to make a firm decision about a veteran’s future function — that is, whether he or she will continue to be sick in a way that impairs the ability to work, and thus require compensation”.
Ms. Satel makes it sound as if after a 90-minute interview, veterans are handed a check then sent on for treatment. This is not the case and it can languish for years in the VA system across the country before any determination is made on benefits to Veterans.
Ms. Satel:
“After all, gauging the prognosis of mental injury in the wake of war is not as straightforward as assessing a lost limb. What’s more, it is very difficult to predict the pace and extent of a patient’s progress when the odds of success also depend heavily on none medical factors: the veteran’s own expectations for recovery, availability of family and social support, and the intimate meaning the patient makes of his or her distress, wartime hardships and sacrifice. And there is an even more delicate risk: awarding disability status prematurely can actually complicate a veteran’s path to recovery.”
Yes indeed, compensating veterans while they try to sort their lives with 30-minute monthly visit and a bag full of drugs as they walk out the door would complicate a veteran’s path to recovery. Clearly, Ms. Satel has no idea of how the VA system operates or how veterans are shuffled around, kept waiting for extended time periods, and treated as if they are blight on the system. If all operated according to Ms. Satel’s fantasy world, veterans would received top-notch care, would be treated with respect and gratitude and would be able to meet the emotional and financial needs of their families. Instead, they are put into a free fall down the rabbit hole, never certain where, or if, it will come to an end.
In closing, I would suggest Ms. Satel take more care in developing her arguments and broadening her research methodologies to include real-life veterans and their very real challenges as they face the Veterans Administration and the Veterans Medical systems.
My letter to the editor NYT-------------------------------------ended here
Much of her op-ed comes from this hearing STATEMENT OF SALLY SATEL MD AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS HEARING ON BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN CARE AND COMPENSATION FOR VETERANS JUNE 14, 2011
http://veterans.house.gov/...
Wikipedia link Sally Satel
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
A Political Debate On Stress Disorder
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Abraham Lincoln
Second Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1865
“To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan,”
Lincoln’s immortal words became the VA motto in 1959; it was latter removed from Veterans Administration official correspondence.
This is where I would like to move ever so slightly off topic. I wish PTSD only affected the veterans, as many know that might be a more manageable in some situations. We expect a lot from the young men and women who become our nations warriors and their families. Ms. Satel’s approach will only put more obstacles in place, and cause more delays for treatment and compensation and yes inflect more pain on these people that have given so much to our country. She should take Lincoln’s words to heart.
Please bare with my anger and rant there is a story. My layout matches each paragraph she wrote with one of my own. Link below.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Consider my real-life case a soldier returning from two tours in Afghanistan,
whom I’ll call GI. He suffers from all the symptoms Ms. Satel outlines in her piece. He has a job, wife, and two young children, house and car life is good and he’s out of the death zone.
His wife and children are distant to him as are his coworkers, but he is pushing through his rough patch. It’s been six months since he returned home from the death zone. He and his wife are out for a Saturday night; the kids are with the grandparents. All is good, right? On the way home, he and his wife have a disagreement - nothing huge. They have them since his return, and she knows he has changed, but they’re working very hard to get through their rough patch. They love each other. They go silent because they had a great night out! As she drives them home, he pulls a gun out and shoots himself in the head. Not understanding what has just happened she pulls over, he slumps to her shoulder, showering blood over her from his wound. He ended his PTSD only to start hers. GI is dead; it becomes clear he had some issues with his two years in the death zone.
Not to worry GI wife and children the $2600.00 check is in the mail. While your lives have been affected forever The Grateful Nation will be there to help you out of this rough patch, you now find you and your children in.
There is however one little matter we need to clear up in his case to get your check in the mail. It seems we have no problems indicated in his military medical file also we see he filed no claim or treatment at the VA. Not so fast, maybe this happen from some childhood problem way before his service in the death zone. Sorry! The Grateful Nation doesn’t pay without proof.
In Ms. Satel thinking, Mr. and Mrs. GI and children the last thing you need in your life is check from the government to pull you through your rough patch, god forbid we have some empathy for you or your children. Mrs. GI needs to get on with life. She needs to get his parents to care for the children and get a job and become a productive citizen of this Grateful Nation.
Just think telling your children that nobody cares and daddy won’t be coming home. The Grateful Nation did however provide a $300.00 head stone you can visit for the rest of your life, so you won’t forget him. Let’s not forget the flag The Grateful Nation bestowed on you and your children.
That’s right Ms. Satel to give this family $2600.00 will only make them wards of the The Grateful Nation and it’s citizens can’t afford anymore freeloaders in this difficult time.
In most cases these heroes spiral down with little notice to the public. They demand so much from us, they take their own lives and ruin those lives around them. Mrs. GI is at work, her house is in foreclosure, the savings account is empty, Medicaid and food stamps have kicked in and life will be great, just as The Grateful Nation had planed.
Malpractice is when you denied claims that even a child could see is related to the death zone. Malpractice is when you turn these people out into the public with out the simple contact with the family to make sure all is well. Malpractice is your column Ms. Satel you weave a story of fantasy not fact, you make grand statements with little knowledge of the true VA system Mr. and Mrs. GI faces.
So let me get this right Ms Satel, after years in the VA system of treatments, rehabilitation, evaluations and pushing paper around a merry go round VA system in and out of appeals, only then would Mr.GI get his $2600.00 payment. Guess what Ms. Satel? That’s what the VA has in place NOW. Your fantasy $2600.00 that a vet ask for and gets faster than he can get home from signing the paper work is the one that doesn’t exists and never has and never will, it’s only in your delusional thought that’s a system like that exists.
I love the Frank Luntz / Ms Satel approach “recovery benefits” instead of “disability payment”. Why not call it The Grateful Nation Award that would seem one that the public would love because we support the troops and their families, until they get out or have a serious malfunction. How much should The Grateful Nation pay? I don’t have the answer, would you trade places with Mr. & Mrs. GI? I don’t think so. You use a childish argument to very serious problems. You act like a few treatments and all is good. Oh and don’t ask to be compensated until after your dead and your family is destroyed.
Maybe when someone wants to go to war you should become a protester because the best way Ms. Satel to rid the country of PTSD and the wonderful compensation check is not create Mr. & Ms. GI’s It would also remove the grief that families endure for the rest of their lives.
November 12, 2010
A recently released yearlong review by a Department of Defense task force challenged with studying military suicides shows more than 1,100 members of the armed forces took their own lives between 2005 and 2009 – more than the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 and 2010.
That’s one suicide every 36 hours.
http://publicintelligence.net/...