Scott Walker and Repulsivecans Target Veterans

Check out the GOP's latest battle in their long war against veterans' benefits.

Late-onset Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder--War and Hate Suck

On February 15, 2001, Sonia Reich fled her home in Skokie, Illinois, insisting that someone was trying to kill her -- to "put a bullet in [her] head." It took a year for her son, Chicago Tribune journalist Howard Reich, to understand why she was running the streets of Skokie, fearing for her life: Late-onset PTSD

Turns out that Ms. Reich is a Jewish survivor of the Ukrainian-Russian area known as Beyond the Pale of Settlement begun in the 18th century where Russian Jews became the victims of pogroms, an enterprise of West-Asian anti-Semites and Stalinists which became mindlessly organized to commit deadly violence upon Jews and assorted non-right thinking persons of the last century.

Soviets, Nazis, whatever; militarists and bigots share much in common notwithstanding wars among them.



Suddenly, and late in life for Sonia Reich the bystanders and perpetrators of some 60 years ago became a 21st-Century monster terrorizing her.

Ms. Reich's plight won't come as any great surprise to any victim of war.

War is always a crime, always an act of terror.

The people who fought wars in the name of the USA, American veterans, in a supreme irony for the world's greatest purveyor of violence remain the object of scorn and ridicule in our political system.

Running the streets, hiding out in the garage, staying vigilant against ghosts; this is a familiar story in America. Just not a story that many want to hear.

The neocons, Dr. Sally Satel, the American Enterprise Institute, Christian fundamentalists, the Republican Party with much of the Democratic Party in tow, all agree or tacitly accede to the asserted demands that caring for veterans just cost too much money.

And besides Dr. Sally Satel assures us: Trauma, PTSD, psychological problems associated with war aren't nearly as serious as veterans' groups say. No cause to expend public capital as though veterans, especially that bunch who served in the Vietnam War, can still have any problems associated with their service.

Here's an example of the tripe from Satel:

[M]emories of horrible experiences are rarely, if ever, repressed--that is, exiled from consciousness without the victim knowing it and actively kept out of her awareness.

But ask a Vietnam War veteran. Ask a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank. Ask a victim of the American wars of the last few decades which seem to have a more provincial benefactor like the state of Israel and its cheerleaders in American society. Ask Sonia Reich.

Ask the veterans before they shoot themselves.

As one angry Vietnam Army combat veteran, Bob Walsh, an attorney who battles the VA every day on behalf of veterans says, "(Veterans) freeze to death on the streets or blow their brains out in the garage. The veterans' benefits claims system is a national tragedy, and men like (longtime claims specialist with the Veterans Benefits Administration) Mark Rogers are the problem, not the solution for our veterans and their families."

Good point, Walsh.

And with respect to Sonia Reich: Perhaps she can us teach us something about demons, war and respect in a civilized society.

New Medical Forms Will Streamline Veterans Claims Process

- Physician Questionnaires to Boost Disability Exam Efficiency -

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has released three new disability benefits questionnaires for physicians of Veterans applying for VA disability compensation benefits. This initiative marks the beginning of a major reform of the physicians’ guides and automated routines that will streamline the claims process for injured or ill Veterans.

“This is a major step in the transformation of VA’s business processes that is yielding improvements for Veterans as we move to eliminate the disability claims backlog by 2015,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki.

These new questionnaires are the first of 79 disability benefits questionnaires that will guide Veterans’ personal physicians, as well as VA physicians, in the evaluation of the most frequent medical conditions affecting Veterans.

Accurate and timely medical evaluations are a critical element of VA’s continued commitment to high-quality and prompt decisions about the nature and degree of conditions afflicting Veterans. Streamlining this process by directly involving Veterans’ treating physicians in providing specific information needed to evaluate their claims will lead to completeness in the examination and faster compensation decisions.

VA’s goal is to process all claims in fewer than 125 days with a decision quality rate no lower than 98 percent, a mark Secretary Shinseki has mandated by 2015. The physician questionnaire project is one of more than three dozen initiatives actively underway at VA, including a major technology modernization that will lead to paperless claims processing.

The disability benefits questionnaires are part of VA’s automated health records system which prompts VA physicians conducting disability examinations to include precise information in a standardized way to assist claims adjudicators in ensuring



Veterans receive the benefits they deserve as quickly as possible. These VA examination results are electronically available to claims adjudicators in VA regional offices.

For Veterans who receive their care from private physicians, VA has placed the disability benefits questionnaires on its Internet site (http://www.vba.va.gov/disabilityexams) with instructions for physicians to submit examination results on Veterans’ behalf.

The first three questionnaires cover B-cell leukemia (such as hairy-cell leukemia), Parkinson’s disease and ischemic heart disease. VA recently published a final regulation to be implemented Oct. 30 that will establish the presumption of eligibility to VA disability compensation benefits for Veterans with one of these three conditions who were exposed to Agent Orange, a herbicide agent used extensively in Vietnam.

In practical terms, Veterans who served in Vietnam during the war who have a “presumed” illness do not have to prove an association between their illnesses and their military service. This “presumption” establishes eligibility to VA compensation if their condition is disabling to a compensable level.

For additional information on the VA disability compensation program or additional presumptive disabilities for Veterans exposed to herbicide agents, contact VA at 800-827-1000 or visit http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/AO/claimherbicide.htm.