Army Still Discharging Traumatic Brain Injury Patients Without Benefits

[babylonsister]

Army Still Discharging Traumatic Brain Injury Patients Without Benefits

Posted by Jesse Wendel, Group News Blog at 11:00 AM on December 7, 2007.

Jesse Wendel: The Army has been taking the easy way out, and shoving soldiers out any way they can, rather than rate them properly.


Sgt. Darren Mischke got hurt bad in Iraq.

A two-tour vet, he was in a wreck tour one, and knocked out. In his second tour, his vehicle was mortared. He has Traumatic Brain Injury.

Like many chronic pain, PTSD, and depression patients, he became a different person, a different "I" from the person his family had always known.

Happens. But the Army, consistently has been taking the easy way out, and shoving soldiers out any way they can, rather than rate them properly.

Colorado Confidential

"I told him to get help," Teresa Mischke said. "He told me he'd get in trouble with his unit. He said one of his superiors had told him he'd make his life a living hell."

Shortly thereafter, Darren Mischke, pain-riddled and confused, turned abusive, then suicidal. His wife, trying to save him, called 911.

The El Paso County Sheriff's Department "arrested him for domestic violence and the District Attorney's office fast-tracked him to plead guilty," Teresa Mischke said.

The third-degree assault plea became the basis for an attempt by the Army to give Mischke a general discharge.

"He would have nothing, no insurance and limits on his VA coverage," his wife said.

Working with the advocacy group Veterans for America, Teresa Mischke pushed the military to send her husband to a medical review board.

The medical board talked about depression and post traumatic stress, but not brain injury. The diagnosis didn't help. Eventually, a military doctor decided Sgt. Mischke suffered from "post concussive syndrome," but offered no regimen of treatment, his wife said.

"He's actually worse now than when he came home from Iraq," she added.

more...

http://alternet.org/blogs/peek/69997/#more

[TomInTib]

1. No matter how much light TBI catches, the VA is going to continue

ignoring it as much as possible.

In this instance, denial of benefits is otrageous.

[JFN1]

2. VA Benefits are the lie they tell young people

to get them to sign up.

VA benefits are the lie officers and NCO's tell the troops, when they get hurt.

VA BENEFITS ARE A LIE, in the same way if I told you I was going to cook you a meal, then served you a single piece of raw bacon.

[Mike03]

3. Despicable, Disgusting

Not only is this patently immoral, but it's senselessly short-sighted; this negligence is going to come back to haunt us tenfold. These young men and women have to have the tools to reintegrate into society, if they need them.

This problem has to be solved, immediately. And maybe afterwards, we can begin to extend mental health care to the rest of the people who are in dire need.

[Breeze54]

4. Those f*&king assholes!!

:grr:

"They" are just hoping they all commit suicide or die and just go away!!

They're too expensive to take care of, dontcha know? :sarcasm:

The American people should be taking to the fucking streets instead of the fucking malls!!! :grr:

Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans

A CBS News Investigation Uncovers A Suicide Rate For Veterans Twice That Of Other Americans

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml

They survived the hell that's Iraq and then they come home only to lose their life.

Twenty-three-year-old Marine Reservist Jeff Lucey hanged himself with a garden hose

in the cellar of this parents’ home - where his father, Kevin, found him.

"There's a crisis going on and people are just turning the other way,” Kevin Lucey said.

Diana Henderson’s son, Derek, served three tours of duty in Iraq. He died jumping off a bridge at 27.

"Going to that morgue and seeing my baby ... my life will never be the same," she said.

CBS News’ investigative unit wanted the numbers, so it submitted a Freedom of Information Act
request to the Department of Defense asking for the numbers of suicides among all service members'
for the past 12 years.

Four months later, they sent CBS News a document, showing that between 1995 and 2007, there were
almost 2,200 suicides. That’s 188 last year alone. But these numbers included only “active duty” soldiers.

Many of them are between the ages of 20 and 24 years old!!!

More.....

:kick: & Recommended

:(

[Mike03]

5. Another Thing to Consider

Not only is this inhumane and morally corrupt, but when we are told that the war(s) will cost such-and-such, they are not including the toll that this war is taking on the people over there, or what will come as a result of their experiences there, either if they are treated or not treated. It's just egregiously insane.

[AuntPatsy]

6. I think its horrific that they are attempting to pretend these are pre existing conditions..

I am surprised their military buddies are not up in arms about their comrades in arms being so mistreated by the very government they put their lives on to protect...sickening....

[Breeze54]

8. They ARE up in arms about it but it'll take

the American people standing up with them and shouting out about this to get action!!!

S.1233 - Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury and Health Programs Improvement Act of 2007

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s1233/show

A bill to provide and enhance intervention, rehabilitative treatment, and services to veterans with traumatic brain injury, and for other purposes.

Other Bill Titles
* Official: A bill to provide and enhance intervention, rehabilitative treatment, and services to veterans with traumatic brain injury, and for other purposes. as introduced.
* Short: Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury and Health Programs Improvement Act of 2007 as reported to senate.
* Short: Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Act of 2007 as introduced.

4/26/2007--Introduced.
Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Act of 2007 - Expresses the sense of Congress that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) should have the capacity and expertise to provide veterans who have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) with health care, rehabili more...

Wounded Warrior Project
Help our wounded veterans get back on their feet today!
www.WoundedWarriorProject.org

[AuntPatsy]

9. I think its way passed time for all the citizens to come together, they go on and on

about supporting the troops and have these huge areas set up attempting to collect gifts for our soldiers in the line of fire, nothing wrong with that but I have yet to see even ONE such group of people getting together to attempt to gather more support for those that are already home and being ignored....I just don't get it?

But I am adding this for another kick to keep it up top, another important issue, one of God so many these days that are not getting enough attention, its so overwhelming...

[Breeze54]

10. IVAW. VVAIW,

There are many groups that have been speaking out! Code Pink and many other anti-war groups.

What I'm saying is we need every day Americans to get off their collective asses and HELP US!!!

But I think you know that. http://www.ivaw.org/vetresources

[AuntPatsy]

11. I do know that, down in my area I have yet to see anyone pushing for that help and we have alot of

veterans? Push us, it appears we need it....

[Mike03]

13. It is ghastly, isn't it?

What it says is that the military would rather that the public think they can't screen their officers and soldiers than that they would provide for them the care they need after the war that they put them into on the basis of lies.

It's like the Emporer with no clothes announcing to the world that he has no clothes, but doesn't care.

[AuntPatsy]

15. How much more proof does the american citizens need that all they wanted was bodies nothing more...

[brentspeak]

7. That's just too bad -- Halliburton's fat paychecks are a little more important

:sarcasm:

[KharmaTrain]

12. The Military Refuses To Admit PTSD Exists

It's almost an instinctive reaction as if the extend of the mental illness suffered by our troops was openly and honestly reported, the public would be appauled and their recruiting would dry up. It flies in the face of the macho image the military lives under...a weak man "cracks"...and that many who do suffer from PTSD will try to fight it off for years, only making it worse.

The Repugnicans abuse of the military and the VA are a national disgrace. The "privitzation" of the military and health care system assures that our veterans will get the lowest possible care...like they're a welfare case. The treatment of Iraq veterans must be a high priority...we failed this in Vietnam and a reason this war has never really ended. Our Iraq nightmare won't end until theirs do.

[babylonsister]

14. I think they now admit it as witnessed by so many studies done, they just

don't want to pay for screwing up these people's lives.

[KharmaTrain]

16. I Think It Goes Deeper

I've visited VA hospitals and have met several Iraq war veterans...as well as my own previous experience with Vietnam vets. I think there's the culture of "macho" or "tough" that looks at an injury as a weakness...one to be locked away. This is especially the case with an unseen injury such as head trauma or PTSD...since you can't put a "bandage" on it, it isn't seen as a serious injury or condition. One vet I met tried to explain it that no one likes a "broken soldier".

Yep...there's definitely a dollar and lack of sense motive here...isn't everything this regime tied to stuffing their pockets? But its also the problem our military has had for decades in dealing with its veterans...symptom of the national pysche where not only do we want to forget the war, we want to forget who fought it.

[fed-up]

17. Who is really spitting on our troops??? nt

[Ilsa]

18. The Alternet link isn't working any more. nt

[babylonsister]

21. That's odd; I just clicked on it and it worked.

:shrug:

[Ilsa]

22. I get a page but no story. humpf. nt

[Whisp]

19. part of the program of the Great Weakening.

shaft everyone not in the 1%ers club.
lots of shafting going on so we grub and fight amongst ourselves while the Pigs fill their troughs with the blood and suffering.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

20. They DO NOT WANT to count TBI Vets as one of the "injured"!!!!

That would make this war look "BAD".

They want to do every/anything possible to make this war look "good".

It's sick. It's fucked up!! It's malignant and gross!!!

But, that's what the corporateers-in-charge DO (and the top military loyalists are WITH the corporateers, NOT THE SOLDIERS)!!!