Eric H. Weitz: No More Silent Suffering
The stark contrast among incidents of PTSD and approved claims has spurred the Department of Veterans Affairs to relax requirements for PTSD benefits. Whereas soldiers once had to pinpoint a specific incident that led to their condition, sufferers now need only prove that they served in a war zone. For soldiers seeking PTSD benefits, especially those previously denied, the attorneys of Weitz Garfinkle Datz can help navigate the claims process.

New Tricare Fees and End to Combat Pay 'Windfall' Voted
The Senate Armed Services Committee has agreed with House colleagues to approve a small increase in Tricare Prime enrollment fees for working-age retirees, and to allow these fees to be raised annually by the percentage cost-of-living adjustment applied to military retired pay. The vote ensures that Tricare Prime enrollment fees for individual retirees under age 65 will be raised in the new fiscal year by $30 to $260 a year, and that retiree family coverage will climb by $60 to $520. These will be the first fee increases since Tricare rates were set in 1995.

ACLU Faults VA Plan for Homeless Los Angeles Vets
Civil rights lawyers criticized a plan adopted by the Department of Veterans Affairs for a sprawling Los Angeles campus at the center of a lawsuit claiming the agency was failing to house homeless vets on the property as intended. The West Los Angeles VA Medical Center master plan does not include any commitment to care for vets who need permanent homes after traumatic wartime experiences. While the VA announced that its plan would call for the renovation of three buildings for homeless vets, the actual document released a day later identified those buildings as only being candidates for potential renovation.

Is the Feres Doctrine Fair?
Tragic cases of military medical malpractice are working their way to the doorstep of the Supreme Court in an attempt to upend the legal precedent known as the Feres Doctrine. For more than 60 years, the ruling has protected the U.S. government from being held liable when servicemembers are killed due to official negligence while on duty. The court is set to soon decide whether it will hear arguments on whether to strike down protections against such suits and award damage payments for soldiers' malpractice deaths.

Services Split Over Push for Unified Medical Command
The military's top medical officers are divided over a House-passed plan to reorganize the health care system under a unified medical command. The plan, in effect, would merge commands that the Army, Navy and Air Force have run with separate staffs and resources for decades. Two of three surgeons general oppose the move and hope senators will reject it when preparing their own version of the 2012 Defense Authorization Bill. The plan to restructure military medicine, which the Army and Navy embraced five years ago, assumed cost savings of $460 million a year by ending duplication of effort and staff redundancies across the services; but some question whether the restructuring will save money.

Officials: Dioxin Found Near Camp Carroll Doesn't Point to Agent Orange
Trace amounts of dioxin have been found in streams near Camp Carroll, though both U.S. and South Korean officials say the amounts are too small to be hazardous to human health and do not indicate the presence of Agent Orange. A joint U.S.-South Korean committee investigating the possible burial of Agent Orange at the base recently released the result of water sampling tests, which did not indicate a key chemical found in Agent Orange.

Tricare Informs Beneficiaries About ID Card Changes
Tricare beneficiaries should make sure they have their Social Security number committed to memory, because it won't be found on new Department of Defense ID cards. As of this month, Social Security numbers are no longer printed on new ID cards issued to veterans, retirees and family members. The new cards will look basically the same, but will have a unique Department of Defense identification number in place of a Social Security number. The elimination of visible Social Security numbers is the Department of Defense's response to the increasing need to protect the privacy and identity of ID card holders, but it may raise questions when it comes to obtaining health care or pharmacy benefits.

VA Works to Provide Post-9/11 Family Caregiver Benefits
A month after the Veterans Affairs Department began processing applications for primary family caregivers of eligible post-9/11 veterans, officials report steady progress toward delivering the new services and benefits. So far, 1,119 applications are in process, with caregiver training programs already under way. Five caregivers have completed the training and require only a final VA home visit before they can begin receiving the new entitlements.

Reports of Rapes at VA Centers Spurs Hearings
Veterans Affairs officials say the agency is making improvements to protect patients in treatment facilities from rape after Congress' investigative arm found nearly 300 reports of sexual assaults in facilities over three years. The Government Accountability Office says 67 of the reports involved an alleged rape in one of its approximately 300 in-treatment facilities. The alleged perpetrators and victims were both veterans and staff members. It says clinicians have expressed concern about the safety of female veterans housed near veterans who had committed sexual crimes.

Lawsuit: VA Misusing Land Meant for Homeless Vets
A recently filed lawsuit accuses the federal government of misusing a 390-acre plot of land in Los Angeles that was donated for facilities to house veterans who need care after traumatic military experiences. The suit says the Department of Veterans Affairs has leased the land to private entities, including a car rental company for vehicle storage, a hotel for laundry facilities, and an energy company for an oil well.

Report Reveals Sexual Assaults at Veterans Facilities
There were 284 cases of alleged, attempted or confirmed sex assaults at Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities since 2007, according to a government investigation. Men and women were victims, and patients and employees were among those assaulted or who committed abuse. The crimes ranged from inappropriate touching to rape. Investigators blamed the assaults on a host of problems, including haphazard security measures, too few VA police and no program for assessing potentially dangerous patients. There was also a failure to report crimes to higher leadership for corrective systemwide action and to the VA inspector general.

U.S. Military has New Threat: Health Care Costs
Already soaring health care and pension costs will keep growing, much to the detriment of the U.S. military. In the past decade, military health care costs more than doubled, and now accounts for $52.5 billion in next year's proposed budget. Retirees pay costs another roughly $50 billion.

Agent Orange Allegations Putting Strain on Local Community
For nearly a month, sleepy Camp Carroll and the surrounding city of Waegwan have attracted national attention after three former U.S. soldiers claimed they buried Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used during the Vietnam War, there more than three decades ago. South Korea and the U.S. are investigating their claims, and the U.S. says it has no proof - other than the veterans' claims - that Agent Orange was buried there. However, the military says records show that a large number of barrels of chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides and solvents, were removed from the base in 1979 and 1980, though nobody knows where they were taken.

Time Running Out to Apply for Military Injury Relief Fund
The Military Injury Relief Fund provides grants to Ohio military personnel injured while serving in country under Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom. Eligible veterans include those who have a combat-related injury including post-traumatic stress disorder. MIRF is funded by donations, and the program works on a first-come, first-served basis. The current fiscal year deadline is June 30th, and time is running out.

Collecting Benefits is a Losing Battle for Some Veterans
Nationwide, millions of veterans live with disabilities from their service, and many have found that getting compensation from the VA can take longer than their tours of duty and be as stressful as combat. Veterans can file claims themselves, but the paperwork is complex; the initial application form for benefits is 23 pages long. The appeals process takes an average of four years, and while waiting, some veterans die.

Despite New Efforts, Battlefield Blasts Still Damage Hearing of Thousands of Troops
During the past five years, the military has initiated a series of measures to reduce the number of servicemembers returning with hearing damage. It has introduced advanced earplugs, mandated more training about hearing protection and increased testing to detect hearing loss. But hearing loss and tinnitus, a debilitating ringing in the ears, remain the most common service-related disabilities claimed by vets the past three years, and in 2009, about $1.1 billion in disability compensation was paid out for these two conditions alone.

Army Using Ground-Penetrating Radar to Look for Agent Orange at Korea Base
The U.S. and South Korea began ground and water testing at Camp Carroll, an early step in determining whether Agent Orange was buried at the Daegu-area base in the late 1970s as claimed by a handful of veterans once stationed there. The results of ground-penetrating radar tests and water sampling around a broad area near the base's helipad will be used to focus the investigation on specific areas if any contamination or unusual objects are found.

Web Site Finds Help for Injured Veterans
USA Together is becoming known as the Craigslist for wounded warriors. So far, nearly 600 American servicemembers who were seriously injured or disabled during tours of service have been helped through hardships by receiving either private or in-kind contributions from the California-based nonprofit organization for essential needs after they have been discharged from the military.

VA's Post-9/11 Assistance Program Starts Strong
Applications for a program to support family caregivers of post-9/11 veterans opened with strong response. In the week after it began, more than 625 families have received assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs under the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010. VA officials want more families to apply for the benefit that, for those eligible, includes a stipend, mental health services and access to health insurance.

8th U.S. Army: No Evidence of Agent Orange at Camp Carroll
The 8th U.S. Army says that the military as no evidence that Agent Orange was buried at Camp Carroll, aside from statements made by former soldiers stationed at the Daegu-area base in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, South Korea announced that it plans to conduct an environmental survey of 85 former U.S. military bases returned to South Korean control following allegations that chemicals were buried at one of those bases in the 1960s.

VA Infection Issues Lead to 13,000 Veterans' Tests
At least 13,000 U.S. veterans have been warned in the last two years that their blood should be tested for potentially fatal infections after possible exposures by improper hygiene practices at five VA hospitals in Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee.

Lawmakers to Grill VA Over Problems of Suicides Among Troops and Vets
The Veterans Administration is taking heat for what Congress sees as the agency's inadequate response to the problem of suicides among active-duty and military veterans after a court ruling cited the VA's "unchecked incompetence" in treating mental health issues among vets. The ruling is just the latest indication of a mental health system that has a longtime reputation for failing military veterans - a fact that almost any veteran who deals with the system can confirm.

Shortcomings in Care of Wounded Vets Draws Ire of Senators
Members of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee are plunging into the infuriating problems still plaguing injured servicemembers as they move from military wounded warrior units to veterans health care. More than four years after promises of improvements following the wounded troop care scandals at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, they noted, progress remains frustratingly slow. Officials from the Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments insisted that improvements have been made, and that anecdotes the senators have heard during their series of hearings on veterans care - long waits for medical appointments, inexperienced prosthetics specialists at VA facilities, confusing and confrontational benefits processing - are being addressed.

PA Veterans Received More Than $1.5 Billion in VA Compensation and Pension Benefits in 2010
Pennsylvania veterans received more than $1.5 billion in compensation and pension benefits in the 2010 federal fiscal year. According to a recent statistical report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Pennsylvania has 964,132 veterans - the nation's fourth-largest veteran population. While the number of veterans in Pennsylvania has dropped from 1,117,004 in 2005, the amount of money veterans received since then has increased by $426.3 million.

South Korea Probes Allegations of Buried Chemicals at Ex-U.S. Base
Sparked by a posting made seven years ago on a veteran's Web site, South Korea has begun investigating the possible burial of chemicals at a former U.S. base nearly five decades ago. A former soldier stationed at Camp Mercer posted a comment in 2004 on the Korean War Project's Web site that said the U.S. buried hundreds of gallons of chemicals at Camp Mercer while he was stationed there in 1963 and 1964. His comments attracted widespread attention in South Korean media following recent allegations that the U.S. buried the defoliant Agent Orange at another base, Camp Carroll, in 1978.

OSHA Cites Military Health Center on Safety Violations
Federal regulators say they found unsafe and unhealthy working conditions at a veteran and military health care center in north Chicago. No one was hurt by the violations, and workers at the facility acted immediately to correct them. The center received notices for 11 serious safety violations: a lack of guardrails on stairs and elevated runways; failing to keep exit routes free and unobstructed; failing to properly mark doors and post signs along an exit route; failing to use electrical equipment in accordance with labeling; failing to provide rating markings on electrical equipment; and failing to protect flexible cords and cables from accident damage.

Army Tries New Brain Scans to Hunt Blast Effects
Since 2000, the military estimates more than 200,000 soldiers have mild traumatic brain injuries - or concussions - which have become the signature wound from extended guerrilla wars, but the military is finding these wounds created by improvised explosive devices can be as hard to catch as they are to treat. While normal CT scans can find contusions and brain bruising, more sophisticated technology is needed to help radiologists and neurologists determine more subtle changes to the brain. Some doctors are now using a brain imaging procedure more commonly used to study dementia to find decreased levels of blood flow in some areas of the brain.

Report: Buried Chemicals on Camp Carroll Removed in 1979
The 8th Army says chemicals were buried at Camp Carroll in 1978 but were removed in the following two years, a finding that could back recent claims by veterans who said they helped bury Agent Orange there. A 1992 Army Corps of Engineers environmental assessment found that a "large number" of drums containing pesticides, herbicides and solvents were buried at the base. The study did not say if Agent Orange was among those chemicals.

Report Finds Data Lacking on Exposure to Defoliant
An independent panel of experts has concluded that there is not enough data available to determine whether sailors who served on deep-water ships during the Vietnam War were exposed to Agent Orange, the defoliant that has been linked to cancer and other serious diseases. That conclusion, part of a 112-page report released by the Institute of Medicine, makes it highly unlikely that the Department of Veterans Affairs will establish rules that would make it easier for so-called blue-water sailors to receive benefits for diseases linked to Agent Orange.

Sleep Loss a Chronic Problem for Afghanistan Troops
Combat troops in Afghanistan suffer from high rates of sleep deprivation, a recent Army mental health report indicates, but not from factors that might be suspected. Only about 10 percent of soldiers and 15 percent of Marines reported sleep problems over a 30-day period because of combat stress. Another potential culprit - video grams and movies - accounted for less than 5 percent of reported sleep problems.

CitiMortgage to Reduce Mortgage Payments for Disabled Veterans
CitiMortgage recently introduced its Disabled Veterans Mortgage Relief Program, a new initiative that will allow veterans wounded, injured or otherwise disabled in the line of duty to make reduced monthly payments on CitiMortgage-owned mortgages. The new program will offer an interest rate reduction of 2.5 percent on existing mortgages for a period of two years, and surviving spouses of military personnel who died while on active duty may also be eligible for the program.

Injured Troops Still Waiting for Claim Processing
A new system to help wounded troops get disability compensation more effectively has instead kept them in the military longer than intended, preventing some from taking job offers and starting college as they wait on average more than a year for a claim to be processed. Though VA officials say the new program is significantly better than the old one, they acknowledged that improvements are needed.

VA Now Processing Applications for New Family Caregiver Benefits
In the first week for open applications, the Department of Veterans Affairs has assisted more than 625 veterans, servicemembers and their family caregivers in applying for new services under the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010. New services for primary family caregivers of eligible post-9/11 veterans include a stipend, mental health services, and access to health care insurance if they are not already entitled to care or services under a health care plan. The stipend portion of the service will be backdated to the date of the application, and comprehensive caregiver training and medical support are other key components of the program.

Veterans Charity Scams Flourish
With all the publicity about the war and soldiers, it creates a perfect atmosphere to ask for charitable contributions. If you suspect a scam, the Veterans Administration's website can tell you if a charity is actually affiliated with the agency.

Efforts to Streamline Military Records and Services Face Scrutiny
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department, the two largest federal agencies, have failed to streamline veterans services and share records, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The report criticized the VA and the Defense Department for lacking specific plans, time frames and fiscal prudence in the effort to streamline veterans' services.

Troops in Mideast have More Respiratory Ills
Veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have a higher rate of debilitating respiratory illness than those deployed elsewhere, according to a new study that bolsters concerns among some medical professionals and members of Congress about the potential harm to troops from toxic chemicals and dust in the Middle East. The findings place renewed urgency on getting at the root of why some young, previously healthy soldiers have been returning from the Middle East complaining of symptoms including shortness of breath and dizziness. In many cases, the soldiers can no longer pass a required physical to continue with active duty.

As Military Grows Older, Injuries Increase and Treatment Proves Costly
Most of today's warriors don't fit the time-worn image of a 19-year-old soldier not long out of high school. In fact, more than half of the nation's active duty troops in 2009 were older than 25, with a third older than 30. While experts are divided on how an older force affects military readiness, there's no debate on one factor: Older troops are more vulnerable to injuries and likely to face long recoveries, presenting long-term challenges to a country that has committed to their lifetime care.

Agent Orange Linked to Kidney Cancer
There appears to be a link between Agent Orange and kidney cancer in U.S. veterans exposed to the herbicide in Vietnam, a new study suggests. Researchers examined the records of 297 patients diagnosed with kidney cancer between 1987 and 2009; 13 of the patients said they also had been exposed to Agent Orange.

Officials Anticipating 'Huge Costs' for Care
Experts predict that caring for injured, older troops soon will seriously strain already rising budgets for military and veterans' health care. Many don't think the nation is financially prepared for the growing problems of head injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder among older veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Copter Pilots Seek Civilian Medical Treatments in Attempt to Save Careers
Military helicopter pilots who suffer chronic back and neck problems - thought to be caused by long missions in constantly vibrating aircraft - have been secretly seeking treatment at civilian medical facilities for fear the injuries could jeopardize their careers, an unreleased Navy study has revealed. Back and neck injuries were the focus of the survey of 1,800 Navy and Marine Corps aviators conducted last year.

Few Troops Exposed to Bomb Blasts Screened for Concussions
More than half of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan have been exposed to bomb blasts in the last year, but only about one in five of them said they were examined for concussions, according to a draft of a recent military survey. Medical officials failed to screen about 80 percent of soldiers and Marines who reported being within 50 meters of a roadside bomb blast during their tour of duty, according to combat troops surveyed in July and August of last year.

Navy Researcher Links Toxins in War Zone Dust to Ailments
U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait have inhaled microscopic dust particles laden with toxic metals, bacteria and fungi - a toxic stew that may explain everything from the undiagnosed Gulf War Syndrome symptoms lingering from the 1991 war against Iraq to high rates of respiratory, neurological and heart ailments encountered in the current wars, scientists say.

Majority of Recent War Vets Treated by VA have Mental Health Problems
More than half of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans treated in Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals since 2002 have been diagnosed - at least preliminarily - with mental health problems, according to statistics obtained by the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense. The data also shoos that the raw number of returning soldiers with psychological problems rising.

Court Orders VA to Overhaul Mental Health Care System
Noting that an average of 18 veterans a day commit suicide, a federal appeals court has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to dramatically overhaul its mental health care system. In the strongly worded ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it takes the department an average of four years to fully provide the mental health benefits owed veterans.

VA Details New Rules for Program to Compensate Family Caregivers
Advocates for wounded troops are hailing major changes to the Veterans Affairs caregivers program announced recently, and military families can now formally apply for the benefits. Officials from the department unveiled new rules for the program, established by Congress last year to assist military spouses or parents who have given up their full-time jobs to care for their returning wounded veterans.

Suspect Wipes Used at VA Hospitals Across U.S.
A quarter of the nation's Veterans Health Administration medical centers and the agency's outpatient mail-order pharmacy used recalled alcohol prep pads and other products blamed in lawsuits for infections and a death. A Colorado senator has asked Veterans Affairs officials to explain the impact on veterans of hundreds of products manufactured by the Triad Group and included in massive recalls because of the threat of bacterial contamination. At least 38 of the country's 152 major veterans medical centers in 30 states and the District of Columbia have removed recalled wipes, pads and other products from use.

Veterans Group Vows to Fight Proposed Increase in Tricare Fees
Health care fees for working-age military retirees would increase slightly under a proposed defense bill that has drawn fierce opposition from the 2.1 million-strong Veterans of Foreign Wars. The Pentagon is reeling from health care costs that have jumped from $19 billion in 2001 to $53 billion in the latest budget request. 

When the Severely Wounded Come Home, Families Can be Thrust into Caregiver Roles
Seriously injured veterans often require lifelong support, and spouses and other family members provide much of their daily care. Thrust into the role of caregiver, many family members sacrifice their own careers and personal goals for this new responsibility.

VA Agrees to More Caregiver Support for Severely Disabled Vets
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has done an about-face, saying it will make sure more caregivers of severely disabled Iraq and Afghanistan veterans can receive much-needed support. The VA has raised the number of veterans eligible from 850 to 3,500 and changed the requirements; under the new plan, veterans who sustained a serious injury and need personal care services will be covered, whereas families had to show that the veteran would go to an institution without the caregiver's help under the earlier plan.

Soldiers with Mental Illness More Often Get PTSD
U.S. Navy researchers have found that preexisting mental health problems could be setting soldiers up for post-traumatic stress disorder - or PTSD - when they return from the battlefield. They found those with depression, panic disorder or other psychiatric illness were more than twice as likely to develop the condition as their mentally stable peers.

New Federal Beneficiaries Must Sign Up for Electronic Delivery
The check is decidedly not in the mail for new beneficiaries of Social Security and other federal benefits. As of now, anyone signing up for Social Security or other federal benefits will not be able to receive their benefits via a paper check. Those applying for Social Security, Veterans Affairs or other federal benefits for the first time must choose an electronic payment option.

Veterans Urged to Tap Health Care Benefit
In recent years, Congress has revamped the definitions of military-related disability, including more than a dozen conditions that have been linked to Agent Orange exposure, and the identification of post-traumatic stress disorder as an affliction tied to combat experiences. Those changes and others have enabled many more vets to qualify for free medical services through the VA.

Civilian Doctors See More Combat Brain Injuries
With half of returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who seek medical care opting not to use the health benefits they're entitled to at the Department of Veterans Affairs, civilian doctors are treating more and more patients with combat-related traumatic brain injury. What's more, patients who suffered TBI in combat have proven harder to treat, and have less chance of being completely cured, than civilians with TBI.

More Marines Now Eligible to Receive Purple Heart for TBI
It's no longer necessary for Marines suffering from mild traumatic brain injuries to have been knocked unconscious to qualify for a Purple Heart, a retroactive change that could affect thousands of troops who have served in battle since September 11, 2001. Under a new fleetwide instruction, Marines who retain consciousness after a concussion may receive the medal if diagnosed by a medical officer as not fit for full duty "due to persistent signs, symptoms, or findings of functional impairment for a period greater than 48 hours from the time of the concussive incident."

Ohio VA Failed at Infection Policies
A Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Dayton, Ohio failed to follow infection control policies, and procedures were violated by a dentist accused of failing for years to sterilize equipment and change gloves between patients, according to a report from the VA inspector general's office. The report follows the allegations levied at the dentist last year by fellow employees. it says that dental managers knew about infractions but didn't respond appropriately and that required annual training on infection control had not been completely by many hospital employees.

House Committee Studying Potential VA Cutbacks
A plan is being studied by the House Budget Committee to cut $6 billion annually in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care costs by canceling enrollment of any veteran who doesn't have any service-related medical condition and is not poor. Committee Republicans, searching for ways to curb federal deficits and rein in galloping VA costs, are targeting 1.3 million veterans who claim priority group 7 or 8 status and have access to VA care.

Military Malpractice Shield Law Faces Fight
Veterans, military families and others who oppose a decades-old law that shields military medical personnel from malpractice lawsuits are rallying around a case they consider the best chance in a generation to change the widely unpopular protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has asked for more information from attorneys and will decide next month whether to hear the case of a 25-year-old noncommissioned officer who died after a nurse put a tube down the wrong part of his throat.

Study Establishes Link Between Depression and TBI
About 30 percent of traumatic brain injury patients will develop clinical depression, a level three times higher than the general population, according to a new study. The results are significant for the military because more than 200,000 U.S. servicemembers have been diagnosed with TBI since 2000. That translates to about 60,000 potential cases of depression as a result of brain injury for military members.

Vietnam Vet Sues to Change Discharge Status in Wake of PTSD Diagnosis
A Vietnam veteran who received the Bronze Star and later was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder has filed a federal lawsuit to get the U.S. Army to modify his other-than-honorable discharge so that his sacrifice will be recognized and he can get disability benefits. Now 63, he says he battled alcoholism and struggled to stay employed for 40 years, but was only diagnosed in 2004.

Changes in Agent Orange Benefits Impact Veterans
Three new disabilities are now associated with exposure to Agent Orange. The disabilities are ischemic heart disease, Parkinson's disease and B cell leukemias such as hairy cell leukemia, and veterans have until August to apply for these new conditions.

Cost of Combat Stress? A Billion Dollars a Year
In an effort to quantify the psychological cost of war, a recent report from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that lower-bound costs of mental health problems from the global war on terror are between $750 million and $1.35 billion annually. More than 25 percent of returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are depressed, drug- and alcohol-dependent, homeless or suicidal.

Lawmakers Blast Navy Over Lejeune Water Contamination
Five members of Congress have called the Department of the Navy to task - again - for what they say is an apparent resistance to keeping veterans informed about past water contamination at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The legislators claim the military continues to mislead the public about a high-profile scientific report on the contamination and reprimands the Navy for failing to agree to a deal that would allow federal scientists to review its public relations materials.

Imaging Devices Late to Battlefield
Troops in Afghanistan may have to wait 10 to 12 months for advanced medical machinery for treating concussions, raising concerns among top military leaders that the equipment will not be available for potentially hundreds of servicemembers with mild brain injuries. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested last year that magnetic resonance imaging machines be sent to the battlefield to help doctors see and better treat an otherwise invisible wound, but efforts to send two MRI machines have met with resistance from military medical leaders who do not share the same sense of urgency.

German Family Wants GI to Know About Eschenbach Hospital Lawsuit
A recent court victory is leading a German family to look for the parents of American children born at Eschenbach Hospital who might also be victims of dangerous practices by staff and structural negligence between 1987 and 2004. Two doctors were convicted of gross negligence in medical treatment and a midwife for assault and illegal use of pain killers in the verdict. The hospital was found guilty of gross organizational errors, and at least 40 percent of the 10,000 children born there between 1968 and 2004 were American.

Critical Shortage of Neurologists for Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
The Army is facing a "critical" shortage of neurologists, partly because of recent policy changes designed to improve diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injuries. The policies require soldiers who have suffered three or more mild traumatic brain injuries in a year to receive a comprehensive evaluation by a neurologist or similarly qualified doctor.

Evidence for Agent Orange at Okinawa
In addition to three veterans' testimonies, records from the Department of Veterans contain hundreds of similar acconts of Agent Orange on Okinawa during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when the island was under U.S. rule and served as a forward base for the American war in Vietnam. The testimonies reveal that the dioxin-laden herbicide was not only stored in large quantities on Okinawa before being transported to the war zone, but also that it was routinely used to clear weeds on military installations and tested in the northern Yanbaru jungle. This protracted, widespread use of Agent Orange has left many of the servicemembers who handled it seriously ill.

Groups Reach Out to a New Generation of Veterans
Given the higher rates of substance abuse among the current generation of veterans, the idea of meeting up with other vets over a beer is increasingly outdated. Moreover, these younger vets are joining traditional veterans groups in fewer numbers each year. So a new generation of vets groups are trying to draw these young vets in and keep alcohol out of the equation.

Through Technology, Disabled Veterans Reconnect to the World
Researchers at the University of Buffalo and a local high-tech firm hope that an improved version of a computer program can help disabled veterans reconnect to the world. Veterans hospitals are starting to turn to assistive technology to try to give their disabled patients more control over their lives.

Virtual Reality Helps Vets
A new program at the University of Central Florida's Anxiety Disorder Clinic is using virtual reality, including smells, to help treat men and women who have returned from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. The Trauma Management Therapy Program is 17 weeks long and free for all military personnel returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Giving Female Veterans a Chance to Share Their Plan
About 255,000 of the more than 2 million U.S. military personnel who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since the September 11th terrorist attacks are women. Even though they are officially barred from direct ground combat, the realities of the wars sometimes put women in the thick of battle.

Army Veteran Fear He was Infected with Hepatitis C at VA Dental Clinic
A 52-year-old Army veteran has found out that he was infected with hepatitis C at an Ohio VA Medical Center. Officials at the center now believe that between 1992 and 2010, a dentist failed to change gloves and failed to sterilize instruments between patients, putting them at risk for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. The 52-year-old veteran wasn't one of the 535 patients contacted by the VA, and he only went for testing after reading stories about the dentist.

VA Fiduciary Program Comes Under Fire
The Department of Veterans Affairs assigns independent overseers to handle the money of veterans it has declared incompetent, but the question a lot of people are asking is: Who's overseeing the overseers? The VA has fiduciaries managing money for 111,407 veterans and other beneficiaries, with a total value of more than $3.2 billion. The VA Inspect General found last year that the agency wasn't consistently going after fiduciaries who might have misused funds, and hadn't built the systems it needed to effectively track the more than 100,000 veterans it was responsible for.

Lawmakers Seek Investigation of All VA Facilities in Ohio
Lawmakers in Ohio have urged the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to establish a dedicated task force to investigate issues surrounding misconduct at the Dayton VA Medical Center. The urging came after two patients tested positive for hepatitis B due to improper infection control practices at the center's dental clinic. Lawmakers have asked Shinseki to make recommendations to prevent the situation from happening again in Dayton and across the country.

Backlog Buries Veterans' Claims
The number of veterans' disability claims taking more than four months to complete has doubled, prompting criticism from veterans and Congress that the Department of Veterans Affairs failed to prepare for a rise in cases it knew was coming. The number of claims that take more than 125 days to decide has gone from 20,000 a year ago to 450,000 today. As a result, veterans must wait even longer to receive payments for disabilities.

U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Suffer More Catastrophic Injuries
Newly released combat statistics from last year reveal an unprecedented number of catastrophic injuries suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The study revealed the proportion of troops who had undergone amputations in 2010 to be much higher than in past year.

VA Changes Billing Process for Third Party Pharmacy Prescriptions
The Department of Veterans Affairs is implementing a new billing process for charging third party insurers for outpatient prescription medications provided to veterans for conditions unrelated to their military service. This change will affect veterans' co-payments for prescriptions.

Former Maine Congressman Pushes for Veterans' Trust Fund
"If a Congress sends men and women into harm's way, then they should, at the outset, take responsibility for the care and treatment for the men and women should they be injured and wounded going into harm's way," says a former Maine congressman, who pitched his idea at a symposium on veterans' health. He says that Congress needs to set aside enough funds for the waves of veterans returning from Iraq, Afghanistan and soon Lybia so timely attention to their needs is guaranteed.

Vet on Death Bed Ejected by VA
A Virginia VA medical center inappropriate discharged a terminally ill veteran from its emergency room and failed to provide him hospice care requested by his wife, a federal investigation has found. Investigators from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of Inspector General found that staff members at the Hampton Center were unaware of a VA policy requiring that end-of-life care be provided when veterans and their families ask for it.

Disability Evaluation Reforms Seen Falling Short
After a three-year effort by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to improve the process, ill and injured members still endure a long, complex and often contentious evaluation system when seeking disability ratings and compensation for service-related health conditions. The process has been made more convenient and even shortened by an average six to eight months under a pilot program jointly run by the two departments and which continues to be expanded to more military bases.

VA Works to Break Disability Claims Backlog
To address a claims backlog, the Veterans Affairs Department has hired 3,500 new employees to expedite claims processing as it introduces other systemic improvements. VA's goal by 2015 is for veterans to wait no more than 125 days for a decision on a claim with a 98 percent accuracy rate.

New Disability Evaluation System Goes Worldwide
The Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Departments are "moving aggressively" to put in place a new, faster, simpler disability evaluation system for wounded warriors at 141 military installations in the U.S. and abroad. A three-year test proved the new system to be "faster, fairer and more efficient" than the system it replaces.

Vet Vents on Stigma Attached to Diagnoses
A veteran wounded five times and awarded three Purple Hearts in recognition of his U.S. Army service during the Iraq War joined in a discussion about veterans and their behavioral health needs. He took particular issue with the stigma attached to veterans' mental health problems by words such as "disorder," "syndrome" and "illness," terms that he said dissuade many veterans from seeking out care because of the implication that something is wrong with them.

Hotline Coaches Vets' Families on Mental Health
The Department of Veterans Affairs is encouraging family members who are concerned about the mental health of a military veteran to call a toll-free number for coaching on how to convince the veteran to seek help. After a yearlong pilot program, Families at Ease is taking calls at (888) 823-7458, and the line is staffed by VA psychologists and social workers.

Veterans Services Scrutinized for Waste
Although the U.S. Veterans Administration mandates that anyone being paid to provide home health care to a veteran under its oversight be certified by a professional care association, no such requirement exists for veterans receiving benefits through the City of Boston. A veteran or widow of a veteran can have a family member, even one living in his or her house, paid for such care as long as the city approves it.

VA Doctor in Malpractice Suit has History of Violations
When the Virginia Board of Medicine reprimanded a doctor in 2004 for posing a danger to the health and welfare of his patients, it noted that he had been hired by the local VA medical center. Unfortunately, there is now a pending malpractice lawsuit against the center that alleges that the gynecologist negligently perforated a patient's large intestine and punctured her bladder during a hysterectomy in 2008.

More Powerful Roadside Bombs Lead to Increase in Spinal Injuries Among Troops
Stronger armored vehicles are preventing more servicemembers in Afghanistan from being killed by roadside bombs, but the bombs are still powerful enough to cause severe skeletal and spinal injuries, the worse of which are leaving some paralyzed. Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles have V-shaped armored hulls designed to protect riders from a bomb's shrapnel and firepower. The bomb's immense energy is also absorbed by the vehicle, but as insurgents try to counter the vehicles' protections with bigger blasts, much more of this energy is reaching the soldiers' bodies, especially their spines.

VA Enlists Harsh Critics as it Belatedly Embraces the Web
Eighteen months after writing his first blog post targeting the health care he'd received courtesy of the VA, he is now a professional blogger for the VA. His mission is to revolutionize how the VA interacts with veterans on the Internet so that veterans can get information and people with complaints can get answers.

Why So Many Vets are Struggling
In this year's State of the Union address, President Obama said that "veterans can now download their electronic medical records with the click of a mouse," but that claim was widely shown to be untrue. less than 48 years later, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America issued a statement urging the White House to set the record straight. Still, the President has yet to make a correction to his speech. In a video interview, he details the many ways the Department of Veterans Affairs falls short of providing timely, accessible health care for veterans returning home from war.

Survey: Female Vets Frustrated with VA Health Care
Female veterans still face significant frustrations getting medical care, even in Veterans Affairs facilities with female-specific services, according to a new survey released by the American Legion. One in four female veterans said the availability of gender-specific health care was poor within the VA system, and more than half felt the sexual trauma services at those facilities were inadequate, according to the report.

Secretary Promises Better Care for Troops
Secretary of Veteran Affairs Eric Shinseki has testified that his office would work to improve how veterans returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are treated. "It is our intent to continue to uphold our obligations to our veterans when these conflicts have subsided, something that we have not always done in the past," Shinseki told members of the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs.

Disabled Veterans Tax Exemption Clears Hurdle
Legislation passed a final hurdle this winter to exempt from state real estate taxation those veterans rated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as 100 percent disabled. to be able for exemption, a veteran must have permanent, service-connected and 100 percent disability. Having 100 percent disability benefit is not a qualifier for the exemption.

Investigation at Veterans Center Confirmed
The Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs has officially confirmed reports the agency is conducting an investigation of a local veterans center. The investigation comes on the heels of a criminal probe that resulted in charges against a veterans' center employee of abusing veteran patients.

Congress Must Act Now to Restore Earned Benefits to All Vietnam Veterans
The House Veterans' Affairs Committee has announced the introduction of the Agent Orange Equity Act, which would restore equality to all Vietnam veterans that were exposed to Agent Orange. The bill would clarify the laws related to VA benefits provided to Vietnam War veterans suffering from the ravages of Agent Orange exposure.

Preventing Suicide Among Servicemembers and Veterans
The National Veterans Crisis hotline in New York has received 400,000 calls since its opening in 2007, and many of those calls result in rescues. There is no doubt that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a staggering toll on America's military men and women, and a stunning report issued last year showed that in 2009 more soldiers died from non-combat injuries - like suicide - than in war.

Secretary: Proposed State Budget Falls Short of Meeting Veterans' Needs
The head of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs said the proposed state budget won't cover veterans' needs while the governor countered that his plan puts the department in better shape. The secretary is particularly worried about the Veterans' Trust Fund, which pays for services including job training, military honors programs and others, going broke at the end of the biennium if it doesn't get an infusion of funds from the state government.

Health Care is DOD's Achilles' Heel
The Pentagon currently spends more than $50 billion - about 10 percent of its base budget - on health care, an almost 300 percent increase over the last decade. These costs are projected to jump to $65 billion by fiscal year 2015. To put this in perspective, the department will spend more on health care this fiscal year than on the war in Iraq and will probably spend more on health care in 2015 than on the conflict in Afghanistan.

Female Soldiers' Suicide Rate Triples When at War
The suicide rate for female soldiers triples when they go to war, according to the first round of preliminary data from an Army study. The findings show that the suicide rate rises from five per 100,000 to 15 per 100,000 among female soliders at war. Scientists are not sure why but they plan to look into whether women feel isolated in a male-dominated war zone or suffer greater anxieties about leaving behind children and other loved ones. The suicide risk for female soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is still lower than for men serving next to them, the study says.

Veterans Groups Split on Fee Increases for Tricare
Veterans groups were split during a hearing on the Obama administration's proposal to require working-age military retirees to pay higher fees for health care benefits; however, both groups remain united on one key point: their opposition to setting up automatic fee increases in Tricare, the military insurance program, tied to rising medical costs.

Mild Brain Injury Could Soon Rate Purple Heart
More U.S. troops who sustain combat-related brain injuries could soon be eligible for the Purple Heart. Senior military leaders at the Pentagon are considering individual service proposals to change the guidelines for awarding the medal to troops who sustain mild traumatic brain injuries or concussions.

Boston Conference Focuses on Military Suicides
The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs will sponsor the third annual suicide prevention conference entitled "All the Way Home." The conference will focus on finding ways to prevent military suicides by removing the stigma of seeking mental health counseling and mustering stronger support throughout the community.

VA Insists Benefits will Cover Caregivers of Vets with TBI
Veterans Affairs officials have promised that traumatic brian injury victims will be covered under new caregiver benefits scheduled to start this summer, but veterans advocates remain skeptical. In testimony before the House Veterans Affairs Committee, the VA said that "large numbers of TBI patients will be eligible" when the final benefits rules go into effect later this year. Though the VA anticipates the program will launch by June, it is already well behind its original January start date.

North Carolina VA Trying to Decrease Backlog of Claims
Starting this week, the VA Medical Center in Salisbury, North Carolina will take on a growing backlog of compensation and pension exams during what staff term a "blitz" of three one-week sessions. The hospital, along with eight others in the VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network, is dedicating up to 80 percent of its primary care appointment schedule to exams from March 7th through 11th, April 11th through 15th, and May 9th through 13th.

Texas Agency Says Funding Cuts Would Deny Help to Veterans
The Texas Veterans Commission, like virtually every state agency, is staring down budget reductions, but agency officials believe that they would dramatically affect the number of state employees who help veterans file disability claims. As many as 22 people who file and handle claims statewide - almost 20 percent of that section of the agency - would have to be shed in fiscal year 2012 if the agency is required to shave its budget by 20 percent, a figure that is still up in the air.

Troops Not Biting on Extra Pay
They've sent out letters and flyers and have Tweeted and pleaded, but Pentagon officials are still struggling to give away a huge cache of money to troops and veterans. The Defense Department has spent only $300 million of $534 million approved by Congress as special pay for service members forced after the September 11th terror attacks to serve beyond their enlistment terms - a controversial practice called "stop-loss."

A Hollow Victory
Nine months after the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act was signed into law, a Texas mother's hopes evaporated when the Department of Veterans Affairs missed a deadline for implementation of the act. The legislation would provide respite care, counseling, training and financial support to relatives who serve as full-time caregivers to severely wounded veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, VA officials can give no definite date when caregivers will begin receiving services and benefits, and veterans groups say VA regulations threaten to curtail the number of families eligible for help.

VA Facing 300,000 More Claims Than Last Year
Disabled veterans recently asked Congress for help in funding programs fairly and reducing delays in deciding benefits claims. The Veterans Benefits Administration faces nearly 800,000 claims for disability compensation and pension - almost 300,000 more than a year earlier. Even more troubling, one in six of the agency's initial decisions on disability claims are wrong and can take years to rectify.

Report: TBI Center Leadership 'Unfocused'
More than three years after its inception, the Pentagon's premier entity for addressing the invisible injuries of war continues to be plagued by a lack of direction and mismanagement, according to a recent report. The Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury "has been challenged by a mission that lacks clarity." "Officials contend that the center's unfocused mission has been exacerbated by unfocused leadership," the report states, noting that three different people led the entity in 2010 alone.

Could a Fire Sale Cut the VA Claim Backlog?
A key lawmaker has proposed an unorthodox solution to clearing the 780,000-case backlog of veterans benefits claims - a fire sale. Veterans who apply for disability compensation could receive an immediate payment if they are willing to accept a reduced amount, or they could hold for a bigger check if they are willing to wait for a full review of their claim under the proposal.

A Breakdown of the VA Budget
While many agencies are cutting back or barely holding steady, the Department of Veterans Affairs' budget is growing. The agency would get a modest 4 percent increase in its budget next year over its request for this year, bringing its funding to $132 billion. The focus of the increased spending is on the needs of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, with more than $6 billion going to mental health and traumatic brain injury needs.

Congress Eyes Cuts to the VA
Lawmakers have made it clear that despite two wars, the VA won't be getting the kinds of increases it's gotten used to, and the department will be lucky to hold its budget near current levels. Indeed, some key lawmakers in the GOP-controlled House say the VA could actually see painful cuts in the coming years. While slashing veterans benefits was once seen as politically risky, with growing concern over the national debt, even those programs may no longer be spared from the chopping block.

VA Clinic Testing Veterans Possibly Exposed to Hepatitis and HIV
More than 500 veterans in Ohio are being contacted by a clinic where they may have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV during routine dental work. The VA clinic is contacting 535 veterans who received treatment during an 18-year period from a dentist who admitted to not washing his hands or changing gloves between patients. The clinic is offering free tests to those involved, and the clinic has promised to provide all necessary care and treatment without charge should a veteran test positive for the viruses.

Veterans of Gulf War Can't Get Treatment Because Army Destroyed Records
The VA has heard veterans complaint that they have been denied benefits because they're records are missing; however, an Army letter that was recently made public says that after Desert Storm ended, units were told to destroy their records because there was no room to ship the paperwork back to the states. Files confirm the letter, showing that when some veterans came to the VA to submit medical claims, the Army discovered that all records below the brigade level no longer existed.

Caregiver Benefits Proposal Irks Families of Wounded Troops
A plan to provide benefits to caregivers of wounded troops may now exclude some of the same families who appeared alongside President Obama when the measure was signed into law last year. Lawmakers and veterans are blasting a proposal outlined by Veterans Affairs officials as months behind schedule and unnecessarily restrictive for military families.

VA Fumbles New Caregiver Program
A delay in releasing benefits that include a new stipend for the caregivers of the nation's most severely wounded veterans has angered advocates and members of Congress. The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act was approved by Congress last year to provide additional respite, training, counseling and new stipends to those who care for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries and other severe wounds sustained in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though the program was set to begin last month, the deadline came and went, and instead of new benefits, the Department of Veterans Affairs has launched just one part of the program: a caregivers' support hotline.

Experts Skeptical of New Report on Infant Deaths at Fort Bragg
The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the U.S. Army have released a long-awaited report about a rash of unexplained infant deaths at Fort Bragg, concluding that no environmental issue - including contaminated drywall - was to blame for the babies' deaths. However, three experts who reviewed the report said the tests used to examine the drywall were unreliable and incomplete and that more tests should have been done. At least nine infants have died of unknown causes at Fort Bragg since 2007, including three infants of different parents who lived in a single house.

VA Outlines Plan to Help Caregivers of Wounded
The Department of Veterans Affairs has unveiled its long-awaited plan to give caregivers of severely wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans some extra help, but the plan included few specifics about when it would be implemented and how many families would benefit. The VA rolled out its plan under pressure from a Washington congresswoman and several veterans' service organizations, who have been pressuring the VA to reveal its plan.

Senator Pushes for Action on Vet Caregiver Law
Hawaii Senator Akaka has urged the Veterans Affairs Department to begin implementing a law he wrote that requires caregiver support for wounded veterans. Though the law went into effect last month, the administration hasn't even planned to carry it out.

New VA Support Line Provides Important Assistance to Caregivers
The Department of Veterans Affairs has launched a new, toll-free telephone line for veteran caregivers. The new National Caregiver Support Line - (855) 260-3274 - will serve as the primary resource and referral center to assist caregivers, veterans and others seeking help. In its first week, the line logged nearly 600 calls.

Federal Investigation into Missouri VA Center Begins
The Veterans Affairs Department, at the prompting of Congress, has launched its investigation into a St. Louis VA hospital. The VA has referred to the hospital as the worst in America, specifically third worst for cleanliness, fourth worst for nursing services, and third worst in the ability of nurses to communicate with patients. Despite the hospital's rating, the VA has no plans to close the hospital, and it is about to undergo an expansion.

Veterans Upset Over VA Clinic Service
Administrators of a VA clinic in Laredo, Texas have met with local veterans to discuss how to improve the clinic's poor customer service. With plans to expand the facility, Congress has urged the clinic to improve its staffing levels before its expansion.

Lawmakers Seek Action on Missouri VA Medical Center
Disturbed by reports of continued problems at a St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, all U.S. senators and House members from Missouri and Illinois are asking the Department of Veterans Affairs to investigate and "find solutions" to the safety issues at the hospital. A recent report showed the the center had suspended surgeries after the staff noticed evidence of contaminated surgical instrument trays. Nurses also expressed concerns about broken equipment, staffing levels and a lack of medical supplies. Last year, the same center had sterilization problems in its dental clinic that potentially exposed more than 1,500 veterans to hepatitis and HIV.

Texas National Guard Sees a Spike in Suicides
A spike in the number of Texas National Guard soldiers who took their own lives last year has resulted in a sobering statistic: More members of the Texas Guard has been lost to suicide than to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. A total of 12 Texas Army National Guard troops have been killed in action since 2001, and during that same time period, 18 killed themselves. Seven of those suicides occurred in 2010, a jump from just one, two or none in previous years.

Military Tries One-Stop Shop for Treatment of Concussions
Since 2000, more than 160,000 servicemembers have been diagnosed with concussions, and since last year, medics at Camp Leatherneck have treated 310 concussed patients in the Concussion Restoration Care Center, a unique facility that provides concussed troops comprehensive care in a one-stop shop.

Documents Show Army's Disservice to Broken Soldiers
The Army's special medical units should be healing more than 9,300 soldiers entrusted to their care, but a nine-month probe has found America's sick and injured soldiers must struggle to mend inside 38 Warrior Transition units the Army has turned into dumping grounds for criminals, malingerers and dope addicts. Originally designed to treat the wounded from twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, after nearly a decade of battle these barracks snag soldiers in red tape.

Rep. Bachmann Drops Veterans Budget Cut Proposal Amid DAV Pressure
After the Disabled American Veterans and other groups sharply criticized a scheme to cut $4.5 billion from veterans health care and disability compensation, Rep. Michele Bachmann has removed the controversial proposal from her Web site. In recent days, she has received thousands of phone calls, emails and Facebook posts calling on her to back away from proposals to severely cut essential veterans programs.

20,000 Military Members and Vets Faced Foreclosure in 2010
More than 20,000 veterans, active-duty troops and reservists who took out special government-backed mortgages lost their homes last year - the highest number since 2003. The rate of foreclosure filings in 2010 among 163 zip codes located near military bases rose 32 percent over 2008 compared with a 2010 increase in foreclosure filings nationally of 23 percent over 2008. The housing crisis has hit military families particularly hard in part because of transfers and the loss of civilian jobs left behind by reservists.

Torn Blood Vessels Growing Problem
U.S. troops appear to be sustaining more blood vessel tears now than in earlier wars, according to a new analysis of reports from the battlefield. Of soldiers wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan, 12 percent had damaged blood vessels - a number of several times higher than reported earlier from the Civil War through the Vietnam War. Some researchers believe that the increase use of explosives such as roadside bombs in modern warfare could explain the rise in blood vessel injuries.

At the VA, Preparing Brain-Injured Veterans for the Real World
At Independence Way, a model community rehab unit at the Washington, D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center, therapists simulate real life so veterans who suffer from traumatic brain injuries, other neurological conditions or physical injuries can train for community reentry within the safe setting of a medical center.

Applying Online for Healthcare Benefits Made Easier by VA
Veterans will find it easier and faster to apply for their healthcare benefits now that the Department of Veterans Affairs has enhanced and streamlined its online Form 10-10EZ Application for Health Benefits. The revised online application now features a chat function which allows veterans to receive live assistance while they are filling out the form. Veterans can complete or download the form here.

Chaplains Try New Path to Deal with PTSD
A Colorado theology school is teaching Air Force chaplains to consider the religious beliefs of servicemen and women to better help them cope with post-traumatic stress. The goal is to build trust so a chaplain can encourage service members to draw on their individual concepts of God and spirituality.

More Vets Approved for Agent Orange Claims
Veterans who served in Korea from 1968 through 1971 were probably exposed to Agent Orange, which makes them eligible for treatment at VA medical centers, according to a ruling from the Department of Veterans Affairs. In the past, the VA stipulated that Agent Orange exposure could only be assumed for veterans who served in particular units along the Korean demilitarized zone between 1968 and 1969. Under the new rule, the VA will presume herbicide exposure for any veteran who served between 1968 and 1971 "in a unit determined by VA and the Department of Defense to have operated in an area in or near the Korean DMZ in which herbicides were applied."

Bar Association to Expand Help for Veterans
The nation's top lawyers are expanding plans to help troubled veterans. The American Bar Association is creating a nationwide network of attorneys who provide free legal services to veterans, especially those who have been homeless and suffer from chronic legal problems.

Veterans Groups Denounce Bachmann Plan
A veterans' group denounced a plan by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to freeze healthcare spending and cut disability payments for veterans, calling it heartless. Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, posted the proposal on her Web site, calling for a total of $400 billion in spending cuts to healthcare and disability payments for veterans that would prevent increasing the debt ceiling. Veterans organizations denounced the plan, with Disabled American Veterans calling it "nothing short of heartless."

Rep. Giffords Could Receive Brain Injury Treatment Thousands of Troops Don't
As Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords begins rehabilitative therapy in Houston after being shot in the head in Tucson earlier this month, she was transferred today to a premier rehabilitation hospital renowned for its treatment of traumatic brain injuries. One of its techniques is cognitive rehabilitation therapy, a tailored type of medical treatment designed to retrain the brain to do basic tasks. If she does end up receiving the treatment, she'll be getting what many troops don't. The Pentagon's health program, Tricare, has refused to cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy for the tens of thousands of service members who have suffered brain injuries in the line of duty.

VA May Have Overpaid Disabled Vets by $1 Billion
Poor oversight and missing medical follow-ups led to nearly $1 billion in overpayments in veterans disability benefits over the last 18 years and could lead to another $1 billion in improper payouts in the near future if left unchecked. A new report from the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of the Inspector General found mistakes in the processing of an estimated 27,500 cases before the Veterans Benefits Administration, resulting in individuals receiving a 100 percent disabled rating for years longer than they should have.

Veterans, Like Active Duty Troops, Hesitant to Seek Mental Health Care
In recent years, the military has been encouraging its active duty troops to acknowledge the emotional and psychological stress of deployment, hoping to break through the resistance some people have to seeking help. A new study of recent veterans living in New York suggests that some of the same resistance continues among men and women who have left the military. The study found that only about a third of the veterans who appeared to need mental health care - typically for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or substance abuse - had actually received it in the previous year. Many fear that seeking treatment will lead colleagues or bosses to lose respect for them and hurt their careers.

35 Percent of Warrior Unit Soldiers Face Addiction
Medical officials estimate that 25 to 35 percent of 10,000 ailing soldiers assigned to special wounded-care companies or battalions are addicted or dependent on drugs - particularly prescription narcotic pain relievers. The formations, known as Warrior Transition Units, created after the Walter Reed Army Hospital scandal in 2007 as a means of improving care for wounded troops - have become costly way stations where ill, injured or wounded soldiers wait more than a year to receive a medical discharge.

Department of Veterans Affairs Working to Improve Health Care
The Department of Veterans Affairs is creating a new office to develop personal, patient-centered models of care for veterans who receive health care services at the VA's more than 1,000 points of care across the nation. The new VA Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation began operations in Arlington, Virginia recently.

Number of Casualties from Roadside Bombs in Afghanistan Skyrocketing
The number of U.S. troops killed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan soared by 60 percent last year, while the number of those wounded almost tripled, a new U.S. military statistics show. All told, 268 U.S. troops were killed by the improvised explosive devices - IEDs - in 2010, which is about as many as in the three previous years combined, according to the figures. More than 3,360 troops were injured, which is an increase of 178 percent over the year before.

Newest War Vets Becoming Homeless at Alarming Rate
Nationally, 110,000 former servicemen and women don't have permanent housing. While most served in Vietnam, a growing population - an estimated 9,000 former soldiers - are from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This class of veterans faces a new set of problems unseen in previous wars, with most soldiers returning home with invisible scars. As a result, many veterans are finding themselves homeless faster than any of their predecessors, on average around 18 months after returning from war.

Ex-Marine Files Lawsuit Over Camp Lejeune Water
Exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune in the 1950s led to a rare form of breast cancer in one former Marine decades later, according to a federal lawsuit. The former Marine is seeking over $16.2 million in damages related to the cancer, which he says was diagnosed in 2004 and has since spread to his right lung. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune from 1957 to 1959, and he claims it was then that he was exposed to water tainted by dozens of chemicals, which later caused his cancer.

Drugs Cloud Troops' Judgment
The United States Central Command allows troops struggling with sleep deprivation to receive a six-month supply of Seroquel, a drug first developed to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, mania and depression. However, at least two soldiers have died after taking large amounts of the drug before bed. A recent report has also revealed that nearly 20 percent of active-duty troops are taking psychotropic drugs, ranging from antidepressants to antipsychotics to sedative hypnotics. Medical professionals say these drugs can lead to "loss of judgment and self-control, increased violence and suicidal impulses."

Lawsuit: VA Denied Veteran Help Before Suicide
The family of a Marine Corps combat veteran has sued the federal government for $22.5 million, claiming that Veterans Affairs medical facilities in Lexington turned away the man when he sought psychiatric help hours before he took his own life. He fatally shot himself at his home hours after leaving a VA medical facility and a VA hospital.

Suicides Nearly Double Among Army Guardsmen and Reservists
The number of suicides among Army National Guardsmen and reservists nearly doubled last year, even as suicide totals among active-duty soldiers saw a slight decline for the first time in recent years. Army leaders announced the news as evidence that their suicide prevention programs are working, but also that those resources don't reach far enough to help soldiers who live off base or don't interact daily with the rest of the force.

Study: Proactive Counseling Stems Troops' Mental Ills
A battlefield study conducted by the Army on 20,000 soldiers during the troop surge in Iraq shows that more aggressive efforts to question and counsel soldiers about their mental health reduce by nearly 80 percent the number who develop behavioral health illnesses during combat. The study also found that 54 percent fewer soldiers contemplated suicide and that the number who needed to be sent home from Iraq with mental health problems dropped by nearly 70 percent.

Man's Best Friend Could Soon be Veteran's Best Medicine
The number of veterans who get rehabilitation and reentry help from dogs will substantially increase if a bill introduced in the House of Representatives becomes law. The Veterans Dog Training Therapy Act proposed a two-pronged approach: Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder would receive instruction in training dog, and the dogs trained would go to disabled vets. The proposed pilot program's goal is to address "the growing need to help returning veterans, which encourages using shelter dogs when possible.

Stop Loss Bonuses Go Unpaid to 35,000 Soldiers
Congress passed a law in 2009 to compensate troops with retroactive bonuses of $500 for every month served beyond enlistment, and though the Army has paid $245 million in bonuses for 84,000 soldiers, it has yet to pay up to $160 million to 57,000 current or former soldiers, which includes 22,000 requests that are currently under review and 35,000 soldiers the Army cannot locate.

Veterans Urged to Sign Up for Direct Deposit
The Department of Veterans Affairs has urged veterans to sign up for direct deposit of their benefits before the VA stops issuing paper checks in 2013. People who do not have electronic payments for their federal benefits by that time will receive their money via a pre-paid debit card. People receiving VA compensation or pensions for the first time this year will automatically receive their benefits electronically.

Bank Overcharged Troops on Mortgages
JP Morgan Chase has admitted it overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan, and improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families. Under a law known as the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, active-duty troops generally get their mortgage interest rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure. Chase now appears to have repeatedly violated that law, which is designed to protect troops and their families from financial stress while they're in harm's way. Chase has admitted that nearly 4,000 troops have been overcharged.

Military Widow: Pentagon Demands Money from Husband's Benefit Back
More than seven years after her husband's death, the U.S. Department of Defense is demanding a military widow repay more than $41,000 in benefits the government shelled out as part of an insurance policy he paid into. The federal government gave her 45 days to pay it back and garnished her benefit payments when she couldn't pay it all back at once. Now, $577 is being deducted from her military benefit check each month because she got remarried. A confusing section of federal law has now affected some 57,000 military spouses who receive military benefits and are being forced to pay the government back after remarrying.

New Agent Orange Being Blamed for Veterans' Illness
Some veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from lung diseases caused by chemicals burned in pits near military bases. The disease is being called this generation's Agent Orange by some, and it's starting to claim more victims.

New Computer System to Benefit Kentucky Veterans
Kentucky veterans should see quicker filing of benefits claims thanks to a new computerized system installed by the state. The new system allows the department to file veterans' claims electronically, reducing the time to get a claim from the veteran to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs from a week to the same day.

Study: Women Shortchanged on Combat-Stress Help
A new study shows that the Department of Veterans Affairs must work harder to address combat stress in women returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found that female veterans are often denied benefits and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder at a rate higher than men. The study also concluded that many VA facilities aren't especially responsive to the health needs of women.

Veterans Dislike Proposal to Raise Tricare Fees
Even veterans who won't have to pay more aren't happy with proposed fee increases in the military's health system. The plan would raise fees on military retirees under the age of 65, while health care for active-duty troops would still be free and rates charged to older retirees will remain the same. The Secretary of Defense believes raising the fees and other bureaucratic changes could save the Department of Defense about $7 billion over five years.

Report Examines Combat Stress Care for Women Vets
The Department of Veterans Affairs has released a report about the growing number of women who suffer from combat stress. Among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a smaller percentage of women than men were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, while a higher percentage were diagnosed with depression. Although women aren't assigned to units primarily engaged in direct ground combat, many female veterans suffer from the same combat stress as their male counterparts. Some have argued that the VA is not properly caring for these women, prompting the study.

Charity Sidesteps Bureaucratic Roadblocks to Help Veterans
The charity Troops Need You, which is currently active at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, has attempted to reach out to wounded troops and their families at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, but has been repeatedly turned away. The charity raises funds to provide emergency assistance for wounded service members and supplies to troops in combat zones. The hospital repeatedly told the charity that a program for channeling benevolent support to wounded troops was not yet in place, forcing Troops Need You to conduct its own "counterbureaucracy" operations to provide the aid.

First Screening Tool for War Veterans to Assess Traumatic Brain Injury
A team of researchers have developed the first Web-based screening tool for traumatic brain injuries. The Brain Injury Screening Questionnaire allows users to anonymously answer a series of questions about whether they sustained a blow to the head in which they were unconscious or dazed, confused or disoriented and whether they have any typical symptoms. At the end of the survey, participants receive a computer-generated report, and those who are found to be at risk are advised to seek further evaluation from a qualified health care professional.

Army Efforts Don't Stem Fort Hood Suicides
The Army's largest post saw a record-high number of soldiers kill themselves in 2010 despite a mental health effort aimed at reversing the trend. The Army says 22 soldiers have either killed themselves or are suspected of doing so last year at its post at Fort Hood, twice the number from 2009.

New House Veterans Affairs Chairman: Let's See Where the Money Went
Under Democratic control the last four years, the House voted to pump tens of billions of additional dollars into the Department of Veterans Affairs for improved benefits and health care. The new Republican chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee says its time to learn where a lot of those dollars went and to provide better oversight of how VA budgets are shaped and spent. He has listed closer oversight of the VA's $125 billion budget as his top priority.

$33 Million in Unclaimed Money for Veterans Dating Back to World War I
Veterans and their families may be eligible to receive unclaimed funds totaling at about $33 million, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans' advocacy groups say many veterans' families have no idea the money is there. Unclaimed life insurance policy payments, dividend checks and refunds - about $33 million in all - have accumulated since the beginning of the Veterans Affairs insurance programs in 1917. The unclaimed payments can go up to $4,000 but are typically between $5 and $750.

Veterans Hospital Plagued with Problems
Four nurses have testified to a culture of dysfunction at a St. Louis veterans hospital. The hospital has been under scrutiny since last year when improperly cleaned dental equipment exposed up to 1,800 veterans to blood-borne pathogens. Other problems, which suggest that veterans at the hospital aren't getting the best care possible, included chronically broken or unavailable oxygen tubing for respirators; poor nurse-to-patient ratios that meant patients went days without baths or clean bed sheets; and nonexistent tools for time-critical diagnoses.

VA Hospital Offers Free Legal Services
A West Virginia veterans hospital has launched a new legal aid program for its patients. A group of legal organizations are working together to offer free legal assistance on a variety of issues, from family law to employment issues. The program is the only one of its kind in the nation.

Dramatic Drop in Marine Suicides
The Marine Corps ended 2010 with its lowest suicide rate since 2008. There were 37 confirmed or suspected suicides in 2010, compared with 52 in 2009. The drop is a 2009 percent reduction from the 2009 figures. Attempted suicides, however, have continued to rise every year since 2006. The year, the figure rose by nine for a total of 173 attempted suicides.

Study of Guard Soldiers Shows Effects of Mild Brain Injury Fade Over Time
Results from an ongoing survey of Minnesota National Guard troops conducted by researchers at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center show that most cases of mild brain injury or concussion are likely to fade over time. Researchers say the survey also sheds more light on post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Keeping Ailing Veterans at Home
More than 50 New Jersey veterans are participating in a model program that helps veterans at risk of nursing home placement stay at home. The program has been so successful that the federal government is expanding it to 28 states next year. The program allows veterans to hire family or friends to transport them to doctors, stores and banks. They can hire someone as a nurse or home health aide or even as a companion, and the program also covers the cost of adult day care.

Fort Detrick Cancer Cases to be Studied
Maryland public health officials say certain cancers appear to occur at younger ages among people living near Fort Detrick than in people statewide. Investigators will probe deeper into the discrepancies involving liver, bone and endocrine cancers. The most marked difference involves lung cancer; the media diagnosis age among people living near the Army installation is 55 versus 65 statewide.

Study Seeks PTSD Symptoms That Increase Suicide Risk
A Texas A&M University researcher is mining a unique database in hopes of helping clinicians identify the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that increase the risk of suicide among combat veterans. The researcher's goal is to determine which specific symptoms of PTSD - which include sleeplessness, nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance and feeling emotionally numb - might have a more direct link to suicide in hopes of saving lives.

Soldiers' PTSD Tied to Lasting Psychosocial Effects
Post-traumatic stress disorder may have long-term effects on troops - including physical, emotional and cognitive problems - while those who suffer from concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries don't appear to encounter symptoms over the long haul, a new study suggests. The survey was conducted in two stages; in the first stage, only 7.6 percent were diagnosed with PTSD. A year later, however, the number of soldiers diagnosed with PTSD increased to 18.2 percent. The researchers concluded that "although combat-related PTSD was strongly associated with post-concussive symptoms and psychological symptoms one year after soldiers return from Iraq, there was little evidence of a long-term negative impact of mild traumatic brain injury after accounting for PTSD."

VA to Stop Issuing Paper Checks by 2013
In March 2013, the Veterans Administration will stop issuing paper checks to comply with a Department of Treasury policy. Veterans and other beneficiaries who do not have electronic payments for their federal benefits by that time will receive their funds via a pre-paid debit card. As a prelude to paperless payments, those receiving VA compensation or pension benefits for the first time after May 2011 will automatically receive the benefits electronically. To learn more about the change, visit www.GoDirect.org.

Women Veterans Asked to Comment on VA
Women veterans are being asked to participate in an online survey for the American Legion about the VA healthcare system. The two-month, worldwide online survey will ask questions regarding the quality of VA healthcare. Of nearly the nearly two million female veterans, only 25 percent use the VA healthcare system.

Military Insurer Denies Coverage of New Brain Injury Treatment
Military health officials are refusing to pay for a new treatment for traumatic brain injury despite widespread support for the therapy among doctors and lawmakers. In an internal study, the Tricare Management Agency found that cognitive rehabilitation therapy is scientifically unproved and does not warrant coverage as a stand-alone treatment for brain injuries. Health care professionals argue, however, that Tricare's study was biased because the therapy is costly and time-consuming, with an estimated cost of $50,000 for a four-month course of treatment.

Lost Money for Veterans
Millions of dollars for veterans and their families remain unclaimed; the money represents life insurance policy payouts or dividend checks and premium refunds that were mailed to policyholders. If payments couldn't be delivered, the Department of Veterans Affairs holds the money indefinitely. To see if you or a family member has any unclaimed money, click here to search.

Disabled Troops and Vets Misled on Service Dogs
Some service members and veterans are being misled and possibly harmed by well-meaning charities promising to provide trained service dogs to help with medical needs. Typically, a disabled veteran who might benefit from a dog trained to do certain tasks may end up with an animal that a charity group has rescued from a pound that has been taught no special skills and might not be a true service dog for legal purposes.

Compensation Available for Stop-Lost Servicemembers
Thousands of U.S. servicemembers have had their military contracts involuntarily extended - or "stop-lost" - during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Congress would like to compensate them. Congress approved the Stop Loss Compensation Act in 2009, which made $500 retroactive payments for troops who were placed on stop-loss anytime between 2001 and 2009. On average, recipients have received $3,800, however some have received as much as $7,000. Still, despite what the Pentagon calls its best efforts, fewer than half of those eligible have received the funds. Since the payout program was announced, only 69,000 of the 145,000 eligible servicemembers have filed and received payment. 

Veterans Struggle with Constant Pain
More and more veterans are exhibiting symptoms of complex regional pain syndrome, which can cause lifelong medical nightmares after a mild trauma inflames the nerves, causing pain that never shuts off. Though the numbers of veterans afflicted with complex regional pain syndrome are growing, the illness isn't formally recognized by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and sufferers are consistently being denied benefits.

Canada Eases Qualifications for Agent Orange Compensation
After a major restriction on Agent Orange compensation was removed, it will now be easier for widows to apply for compensation on behalf of their deceased spouses. The federal government has extended the deadline for submitting an application for a $20,000 ex gratia payment and eligibility criteria has been modified. Applicants will now have until the middle of next year to obtain a relevant medical diagnosis and will no longer have to prove they were expecting their medical diagnosis before 2006. Also changed is the requirement for applicants who were being looked after by primary caregivers to have been alive in 2006 - a move that will make it easier for widows and widowers to apply on behalf of a loved one who died before the ex gratia payment came into place.

Gulf War Illness Gets Its Due with VA Research
A Gulf War Illness Task Force has discovered that nearly a quarter of these veterans of war have reported chronic fatigue, weakness, gastrointestinal problems, cognitive dysfunction, sleep interruptions, persistent headaches, skin disorders, lung problems and chronic mood disorders. The cluster of symptoms are known as Gulf War Veteran Illness, and the task force's preliminary findings show that the illness is the product of exposure to environmental toxins. The VA recently approved $2.8 million for research into treatments for the illness. 

Women War Veterans Prone to Mental Health Problems During Pregnancy
A new study has revealed that the stress associated with military service in a war zone may later contribute to an increased risk of mental health problems if female veterans become pregnant. Pregnancy among women veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to increase their risk for mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hearing Condition Plagues U.S. Veterans
At least 639,000 veterans suffer from tinnitus, a hearing disorder described as a ringing in the ears that can be triggered by common noises, which patients experience as either a minor nuisance or debilitating. While there are treatments, no cure exists. The Defense Department is responding to the rising number of cases with a new earplug designed to protect hearing from loud noises while letting in the sound of everyday noises.

Philanthropist - Not Pentagon - Bankrolls Promising TBI Therapy
Though doctors have shown that cognitive rehabilitation therapy - a subtle and complex treatment for brain injuries - helps service members, the Pentagon's primary health plan for soldiers and seriously wounded veterans will not cover the treatment, claiming it is still unproven. However, a small project for brain-damaged soldiers is being funded by a private philanthropist. He estimates that he has spent $1 million over the past two years to treat about 70 soldiers and veterans.

Plan to Switch Federal Benefits to Direct Deposit Gets Exceptions
The Treasury Department has released final regulations for paperless federal benefits that address some of the concerns raised when the rules were initially proposed. The plan, which was released earlier this year, said federal benefits - including Social Security and Veterans Affairs payments - will switch from checks to direct bank deposit or a debit card. The plan drew fire from consumer advocates who said many older Americans aren't technologically skilled and could be confused by the changes. In response, the Treasury Department has implemented several exceptions to electronic payments, which allow recipients over the age of 90, the mentally impaired and recipients in remote areas to continue to receive checks if they wish.

VA Takes Step to Deal with Mounting Camp Lejeune Water Claims
Responding to heightened publicity and an uneven smattering of decisions on claims, the Department of Veterans Affairs will begin training a specialized cadrew of workers to handle disability claims related to historic water contamination at Camp Lejeune. The agency will consolidate claims at one office, and the eight employees there will focus on culling, researching and adjudicating disability claims related to the contaminated water.

Small-Business Loan Program Extended for Three Years
An initiative that has provided more than $560 million in loan guarantees to nearly 7,000 veterans for their small businesses is being renewed for three years. Patriot Express offers an enhanced guarantee and interest rate on loans to small businesses owned by veterans, reservists and their spouses. The loans are offered by participating lenders and are available for up to $500,000. The loans can be used for most business purposes, including start up, expansion, working capital, inventory and buying equipment and real estate.

Battle Over Science and Money Blocks Widely Recommended TBI Therapy
Scientists increasingly believe that cognitive rehabilitation therapy - a lengthy, painstaking process in which patients relearn basic life tasks - can benefit those suffering brain injuries. Despite pressure from Congress and the recommendations of military and civilian experts, the Pentagon's health plan for troops and many veterans does not cover the treatment - a limitation that could affect the tens of thousands of troops who have suffered brain damage fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tricare officials say the scientific evidence does not justify providing comprehensive cognitive rehabilitation.

VA Hopes to Eliminate Backlog in Benefits Claims by End of 2015
Veterans Affairs officials have vowed to eliminate the backlog in veterans benefits claims by the end of 2015, ensuring that all those seeking payment from the department will have to wait no longer than three months. The department's current backlog - claims that have taken more than 125 days to process - sit around 250,000. Recent improvements in procedures and technology have made VA officials confident they can steadily shrink that number over the next five years.

Group Sues Over Personality Disorder Discharges
The group Vietnam Veterans of America has filed a federal lawsuit demanding records for 26,000 veterans who it says were "wrongfully discharged" for personality disorders. The Defense Department's "personality disorder designation prevents thousands of wounded veterans from accessing service-connected disability compensation or health care," the group's president said. Personality disorders are considered a pre-existing condition, which means that service members receiving administrative discharges for those disorders have no opportunity to get disability compensation for medical benefits. A congressional investigation found that many service members separated for pre-existing personality disorder had served in combat and displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

Little Known Benefit for Veterans and Spouses
Veterans are entitled to health benefit programs from the federal government; however, few take advantage of the non-service connected improved pension benefit, commonly referred to as the Aid and Attendance benefit. The program's purpose is to assist veterans, as well as their spouses, widows or widowers, with paying out-of-pocket medical expenses. The little-known benefit could be a significant source of financial aid for long-term care services provided either at home or in a facility.

Eyeing Death Rates of Vietnam War Veterans
An increasingly vocal number of Vietnam veterans and their loved ones are questioning whether participation in the Vietnam War is hastening the deaths of soldiers who survived it. While data is largely anecdotal, advocates say factors other than service in Vietnam most likely undermined the health of veterans. Returning troops were often rejected by a war-weary public, causing many to turn inward, battling anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder on their own.

Families of Wounded Veterans Shoulder Burden
A recent study - Caregivers of Veterans: Serving on the Homefront - paints a bleak picture of what veteran caregivers are up against. Those who look after wounded veterans are twice as likely to provide long-term care for 10 years or more than non-veterans. They are also twice as likely to be in a high-burden caregiver role and to consider their situation highly stressful.

Agent Orange Victims Get More Help
The Viet Nam Red Cross and the Viet Nam's Agent Orange Victims Association have signed a joint activity agreement to implement policies for Agent Orange victims at all levels. The two groups will also work together to formulate new Agent Orange policies and co-ordinate local and international communications activities.

Water Contamination Disability Claims to be Processed
Officials with the Department of Veterans Affairs have said the disability claims of those suffering from issues related to water contamination at Camp Lejeune will soon be processed at a central location. All water claims will now be sent to a VA center in Kentucky to keep track of the cases and keep the procedure for handling them consistent. The change comes after veterans and their families living on the base reported multiple cases of breast cancer and non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Congress Passes Bill Allowing Military Families and Retirees to Keep Their Doctors
Congress has passed legislation allowing military families and retirees covered under Medicare and Tricare to continue seeing their regular doctors. The bill amends the Medicare physician payment formula to allow doctors enrolled in the programs to receive current levels of compensation through the end of 2011.

Court Deals with Veterans' Time Limit on Benefits
The Supreme Court is wrestling with whether to enforce a deadline for military veterans who may have physical or mental problems to appeal the denial of benefits. The court is hearing an appeal from the wife of a veterans who was discharged from the armed forces in 1952 after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He asked the Veterans Affairs Department for home care in 2001 and was denied. He missed a 120-day deadline for appeal by 15 days, blaming it on his illness.

Make Sure Estate Issue Understood
The Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs estate recovery program collects about $3 million a year from the estates of residents who die in the state veterans centers. After a resident dies, the state calculates the cost of the services provided, deducts what the patient paid and often bills the estate for the remainder. Most families are surprised by the collection efforts, which averages $100,000.

Gates Seeking to Contain Military Health Costs
Of nearly 4.5 million military retirees and their families, about three-quarters are estimated to have access to health insurance through a civilian employer or group; however, more than two million of them stay on Tricare. As the costs of private health care continue to climb, their numbers are only expected to grow. Now, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is seriously considering whether to ask for Tricare fee increases in next year's budget.

VA Insists Iraq Veteran Not Disabled Enough
The Veterans Administration is standing by its claim that an Iraq war veteran doesn't qualify for an adaptive housing grant even though his right leg was blown off and he lost the use of his right arm in a bomb blast. Though he is classified as 100 percent disabled, his injuries aren't covered by the program. The program is meant to help wounded warriors modify their homes, but the strict criteria includes loss of both legs, total blindness or extreme burns.

Traditional Vets Groups Turn to Social Media
Some traditional veterans' groups have updated their recruiting campaigns, using social media to attract younger veterans. Groups have opened Facebook ad Twitter accounts and written blogs to connect with roughly 4.3 million veterans who have served since the Persian Gulf War to replenish a steep decline in membership. Lost membership and dues have forced groups like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars to close down some social clubs across the country as about 1,650 veterans from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars die each day.

National Clinic to Assist Vets Coping with Tinnitus
Tinnitus, commonly known as noise or ringing in the ears, is a major health issue for soldiers returning from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, Veterans Affairs officials say. The condition - which can be the result of extreme noise exposure - was the most claimed service-connected disability for veterans receiving compensation in 2009. Because of increased patient demand, an audiology clinic in the Phoenix veterans hospital has extended its daily hours from five to six days open each week and has added additional staff.

Struggling to Serve Women Vets
Women across the country who have helped serve in Iraq and Afghanistan tell similar stories: Home loan paperwork from the Department of Veterans Affairs made out in the names of their husbands; VA hospital care where women are such an afterthought that examination rooms face out toward crowded hallways; insufficient job training programs; family outreach programs blind to the idea that some of the spouses left struggling at home are husbands, not wives. Nearly 250,000 female soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, and as more and more of them come home, the military is often struggling to serve their needs.

VA Officials Test Programs to Expedite Payments to Disabled Veterans
Department of Veterans Affairs officials have launched two pilot programs to test new procedures that will speed the payment of VA compensation benefits to veterans with disabilities connected to their military service. The "Quick Pay" disability program, which is being tested in a Florida, is designed to speed disability compensation to veterans who provide sufficient evidence at the time of claim submission to decide all or part of their claim. The "Express Lane" pilot program, which is being tested in Seattle, realigns staff members to address disability claims based on claim complexity.

Retirees Left Vulnerable to Hospital Fee Hikes
Every day that Congress fails to pass the 2011 defense policy bill is a day the Defense Department could surprise military retirees with a massive cost increase for inpatient hospitalization. In 2009, Congress blocked defense officials from imposing a $110-a-day increase in the inpatient hospitalization charges for military retirees; however, the moratorium on fee hikes applied only during fiscal year 2010, which recently ended. Since the moratorium expired, the Defense Department has been free to increase the charge, but it has not acted because the pending 2011 defense authorization could again bar the fee increase.

Executive Excess
Veterans Affairs executives in Pittsburgh are setting a standard for outrageous abuse of tax dollars that should assist wounded warriors. The Veterans Integrated Service Network 4 - which oversees VA operations in Pennsylvania and parts of four neighboring states - recently moved from their downtown space to new offices along the North Shore. The new offices are complete with a $1 million customized fitness center. Meanwhile, the VA has closed a swimming pool and athletic facilities used by disabled vets at a nearby facility.

Seizure of Veterans' Estate Assets to be Investigated
A Pennsylvania lawmakers says she and her Senate colleagues want to get to the bottom of a policy that allows the state to seize assets of veterans who died at six state-run nursing homes. Officials of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs will be asked to explain the controversial policy at a hearing before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Under the program, veterans pay a reduced rate for their care based on their income; however, when they die, the state makes a claim against their estates for the balance of the actual cost.

Veterans Day Highlights VA Claims Backlog
In the past few months, more than 150,000 Agent Orange cases have emerged, adding to a backlog of more than a million claims pending at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Agent Orange cases are either new filings or resurrected old claims, all seeking disability for veterans exposed to Agent Orange after a decision last year by Veterans Affairs to expand access to compensation for the defoliate.

New Online Hub to Serve Veterans
In honor of Veterans Day, Causecast will be celebrating the men of women of America's armed forces with the Salute to Service campaign. The online hub - www.salutetoservice.org - will provide visitors to the site with the opportunity to take easy actions to support veterans through the work of partner nonprofit organizations. On Salute to Service, individuals can find local volunteer opportunities to support veterans, service men and women and their families.

Caregiving: Stressful, Isolating, Rewarding
Caregivers for severely disabled veterans report a stress-filled and largely isolated life that usually sees their own health and finances suffer - but they also say that what they do is rewarding, according to a new report. Most married veterans are cared for by their wives, while single veterans are typically cared for by a parent or sibling. Among injured Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, about one-fourth are being cared for by their parents. The reports says caregivers don't get out much to see their family or friends, often ignore their own medical needs and find a worsening financial situation because they are forced to reduce hours or give up outside work all together.

Vets with PTSD Train Dogs to Help Comrades
A program underway at a Veterans Affairs hospital in California and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center - Paws for Purple Hearts - is helping injured veterans and active duty troops in two very different ways. The program trains labradors and golden retrievers as lifelong service dogs and companions for veterans who use wheelchairs; however, for their first two years of life, the dogs are trained by veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. For many of these psychologically damaged warriors, this human-canine connection provides them with emotional sustenance, a mission and important lessons in patience that help them get on with their lives.

New Treatments Tackle Age-Old Problem of Veterans
Post-traumatic stress disorder has experienced an increased profile in recent years because of the high rate among veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but the condition has been around since the dawn of man. Veterans with PTSD may receive various treatments depending on what works best for them, but the goal of all of them is to allow people with PTSD to deal with the trauma they experienced to control the emergence of memories that create symptoms that affect day-to-day living.

The Enemy Didn't Hurt Solider in Iraq - Toxic Smoke Did
Though an Army sergeant served two tours in Iraq, no bullet ever hit him and no shrapnel from an improved explosive device ever pierced his skin. However, he still suffers wounds from the war - he's blind in one eye, he's missing some teeth, his head is scarred, he has cancer, knee problems, diminished hearing and post-traumatic stress disorder. According to his doctors, his cancer is directly attributable to constant exposure to the thick, acrid smoke that wafted almost every hour of every day across the air base in Iraq where he was stationed for about 18 months. In bases across Afghanistan and Iraq, amputated body parts, Humvee parts, human waste, plastic meal trays and other garbage is incinerated using jet fuel in large trenches called burn pits, and the smoke billowing from the pits is so pervasive, it can be seen from miles away. 

Folding Canes Free of Charge to U.S. Military Veterans
A national program will provide 36,000 Hugo Folding Canes free of charge to U.S. military veterans in need of mobility assistance to honor them for their selfless contributions to our country. "Hugo Salutes Our Veterans" will be launched the day before Veterans Day and run at all Sam's Club locations nationwide. Click here for additional information about the Hugo Salutes Our Veterans program.

Vet Waits for Meds
A Rhode Island World War II veteran says he's been without the medication his doctor prescribed since August, and he blames the VA hospital for the delay. He claims his pulmonologist - an outside provider, not a VA physician - recommended a medication for his breathing issues, but the drug is expensive. The drug is $297, but only $9 through a VA prescription. However, to get the drug through the VA, he required approval from a VA physician, which he requested in August. He is still waiting.

Paying New Agent Orange Claims a Complex Drill
Many Vietnam veterans with ischemic heart disease, Parkinson's disease or B-cell leukemia expected VA compensation for their illnesses to begin soon after a 60-day congressional review period ended. Though the first batch of payments have gone out, the relatively small number - about 1,300 claims worth $8 million - reinforced the fact that the process for calculating retroactive payments is lengthy and complex.

VA Treats Combat Stress Remotely
For the past three years, a psychologist and associate director of a PTSD clinical team at a South Carolina VA medical center has used videoconferencing systems to conduct prolonged exposure therapy sessions with veterans who cannot make it to the hospital for face-to-face counseling. He has received a VA national award for his pioneering work in an area critical to the rehabilitation and improvement in the quality of life of war-injured veterans. His remote counseling combines "old-school techniques" with technology to help veterans face their fears and learn that "memories will not hurt them."

VA Begins Paying Benefits for New Agent Orange Claims
The Department of Veterans Affairs has begun distributing disability benefits to Vietnam veterans who qualify for compensation under recently liberalized rules for Agent Orange exposure. Up to 200,000 Vietnam veterans are potentially eligible to receive VA disability compensation for medical conditions recently associated with Agent Orange, which includes B-cell or hairy cell leukemia, Parkinson's disease and ischemic heart disease. The VA has also launched a variety of initiatives - both technological and involving better business practices - to tackle an anticipated upsurge in Agent Orange claims.

More Vietnam War Vets Eligible for Agent Orange Benefits
The government has started distributing additional benefits for Agent Orange exposure to Vietnam War veterans who qualify under liberalized rules. Up to 200,000 Vietnam veterans could be eligible for the disability compensation for diseases now associated with Agent Orange, including hairy cell leukemia, Parkinson's disease and ischemic heart disease. The Veterans Affairs Department has provided disability compensation to veterans with medical problems related to Agent Orange since 1985, but the recent expansion of eligible veterans will include those presumed to have contracted the three additional diseases due to exposure.

Veterans Kept in Dark About Chemical Exposures
THe Department of Defense is the biggest owner of EPA Superfund sites, and the contaminants and health effects of exposure are published on the EPA's Superfund Web site. A simple hyperlink to military installations on the National Priority List, identifying the contaminants and health effects, could save lives - but no one seems interested in setting it up. Veterans of military installations currently on the list need to know the contaminants of concern found on these sites and the health effects of exposure to receive proper medical treatment. Exposure to such contaminants can cause serious medical conditions, including cancer and death. Veterans with serious medical conditions who were stationed at an EPA Superfund installation need to share this information with their medical care providers to receive appropriate treatment.

Apnea Elevated in Vets with PTSD
Combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder almost universally suffer sleep problems - with more cases of sleep apnea than might otherwise be expected. In a group of 135 young, otherwise healthy combat veterans with PTSD, 98.5 percent reported sleep complaints. Despite their relatively young age and slightly overweight physique, 54 percent of the PTSD patients who underwent polysomnography were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea - whereas, in the general population - the rate of OSA is only 1 percent.

More Troops' Concussions Diagnosed Under New Rules
Military doctors are diagnosing hundreds of concussions among combat troops because of an unprecedented order requiring them to leave the battlefield for 24 hours after being exposed to a blast. Doctors say the order helps prevent permanent brain damage that can result if a servicemember has a second concussion before the first one heals. Concussions among U.S. troops in Afghanistan increased from 62 diagnosed cases in June to 370 in July when the new rules were imposed. From July through September, more than 1,000 soldiers, Marines and other servicemembers were identified with concussions, more than twice the number diagnosed during the previous four months.

New Medical Forms to Streamline Veterans Claims Process
The Department of Veterans Affairs has released three new disability benefits questionnaires for physicians of veterans applying for VA disability compensation benefits. The 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. The new questionnaires are the first of 79 disability benefits questionnaires that will guide veterans' personal physicians in the evaluation of the most frequent medical conditions affecting veterans.

Mental Health issues Differ for Male and Female Vets
Mental health issues confronted by U.S. veterans returning from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan differ by gender, new research suggests. Female veterans are more likely to have a diagnosis of depression than are their male counterparts, and they are also generally younger than their male counterparts and more likely to be black. In contrast, male veterans were found to be more prone than their female peers to post-traumatic stress disorder and/or alcohol abuse.

Alaska Veterans Traveling to Lower 48 for Health Care Treatment
A VA investigation has found that nearly 600 Alaska veterans were required to travel to the Lower 48 to receive health care services - even though the treatment may be available privately in Alaska. The good news was that 96 percent of the 15,170 Alaska veterans who actually received health care services from the Alaska VA system received all of their health care in Alaska; however, 591 of Alaska's veterans were required to travel to the Lower 48 to use their earned VA health care benefits for specialty care - about half on more than one occasion. The report was initiated in response to complaints from Alaska veterans and their families that the VA was requiring veterans to travel outside Alaska for health care services that could not be provided in federal facilities, even though those services might be available from private practice physicians and community hospitals in Alaska.

Walk-In Veteran Pilot Program in Wisconsin and Kansas
There is evidence that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the agency's Veterans Benefit Administration are turning the corner in delivering benefits in the face of record suicide rates. A new VA Walk-In Claims pilot program is now available for Wisconsin and Kansas veterans. The offices will offer on-the-spot reviews of claims for compensation and pension benefits with the goal of expedited claims decisions. In some cases, decisions may be immediate or provided within days.

Veterans Reaching Out for Help Online
Created by veterans in early 2008, Prevail Health Solutions is a free online program that offers six half-hour lessons on managing post-deployment combat stress and symptoms of depression. The goal of the program is to become a government-financed tool for connecting with war-weary soldiers and veterans.

Iraq Contractor Tries to Stop Toxin Lawsuit
Texas-based military contractor KBR is appealing a judge's decision to try a lawsuit filed by Oregon veterans who claim they were exposed to a toxic chemical in Iraq. KBR claims that suing a military contractor raises "unprecedented" legal questions that first should be decided by a higher court. Oregon Army National Guard veterans sued KBR last year, claiming the company downplayed or disregarded their exposure to hexavalent chromium in Iraq.

Senator: Troops with Combat Stress Discharged, Not Treated
The military has been discharging troops who are suffering from combat stress instead of providing treatment, allege a Missouri senator and several veterans advocates. That would mean that many who could be afflicted with mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, have left the service without official medical diagnoses and no chance for medical benefits. The disputed discharges are for "adjustment disorders," which can occur when a person has trouble handling a stressful event. In the military, service members who've seen combat or undergone other types of stress might be discharged as a result of sleepwalking, airsickness or severe nightmares. The procedure bypasses the lengthier medical discharge process, but critics say that many troops are discharged erroneously and lose out on medical benefits.

Is Army Overhyping Its 'Breakthrough' Brain Injury Test?
Army brass declared a triumph over diagnosing traumatic brain injuries recently, hyping a simple new blood test they say can catch the trauma before it becomes more severe, before telltale symptoms manifest and before troops sustain a second concussion. However, with one small study and a history of expensive, underperforming "breakthrough" treatments for brain injuries, this latest test still has a long way to go before it's be worth bragging about. The blood test was only tried on 34 patients, and none of them were troops.

Vet's Recovery "Not Going Well," Says Family
The family of a Florida soldier who was critically injured in Afghanistan has alleged he is not receiving the care he needs from the VA. After nearly dying earlier this year in Afghanistan, he has undergone dozens of surgeries, and he was recently moved from Walter Reed Hospital to his hometown. Since his move, he's contracted shingles and a blood infection, which have only compounded his initial injuries - the loss of a both legs and four fingers. His family is not happy with his doctors, the cleanliness of his room or the way he is being treated at the VA hospital.

Veterans Bill Improves Benefits and Protections
An omnibus veterans benefits bill recently signed into law holds the promise of big changes for disabled veterans and the families. One example is an expansion of employment and re-employment legal protections and more financial protections for deployed and mobilized service members, including the opportunity for service members to sue people or businesses who violate the Service Members' Civil Relief At. The Veterans' Benefits Act of 2010 also increases automotive grants for disabled veterans, provides childcare services for homeless veterans and expands life insurance for disabled veterans.

'Burn Pits' Still in Use in Iraq and Afghanistan
A U.S. government report has found that waste disposal methods at military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to expose troops to potentially harmful emissions despite recent legislation aimed at curbing hazardous disposal practices. The Government Accountability Office investigated four bases in Iraq in the past year and found none were entirely in compliance with regulations. Regulations prohibit the disposal of hazardous and bio-medical waste in open-air burn pits. As of last year, roughly two million soldiers had been exposed to the burn pit emissions. Although there is no definitive proof linking the emissions to veterans' health problems, rates of pulmonary and respiratory diseases and rare cancers among those soldiers have jumped.

VA to Use Open Source Model for Health Records System
The Veterans Affairs Department will adopt an open source model to modernize its legacy electronic health records system. The Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture runs on an archaic program language that experts claim must be modernized to properly serve the 8 million veterans who receive care at VA health facilities. The Department told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee that an open source model will restore "the innovation that made the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture the best electronic health record system in the country."

Army Finds Simple Blood Test to Identify Mild Brain Trauma
The Army says it has discovered a simple blood test that can diagnose mild traumatic brain damage or concussion, a hard-to-detect injury that can affect young athletes, infants with "shaken baby syndrome" and combat troops. Recent data shows the blood test, which looks for unique proteins that spill into the blood stream from damaged brain cells, accurately diagnosing mild traumatic brain injury in 34 patients. Doctors can miss these injuries because the damage does not show up on imaging scans, and symptoms such as headaches or dizziness are ignored or downplayed by he victims. About 300,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered concussions, mostly from roadside bombs.

VA Looks to Improve its Reputation from the Inside Out
The Veterans Affairs Department is embracing a new attitude with plans to better engage VA employees and better meet veterans' needs. Within the department, employees have felt that innovation is discouraged; to reverse that reputation, the VA launched a Web-based idea collection tool as part of the VA Innovative Initiative, a portal which yielded 10,000 ideas from VA workers on how to improve the department. The VA has taken the best suggestions and is now implementing them.

VA Expands Program to Bring Electronic Health Records to the Home
The Veterans Affairs Department plans to expand its use of information technology and telecommunications - including mobile and landline phones and video conferencing - to deliver health care to aging veterans and others who suffer from chronic conditions. In fiscal year 2010, VA recorded 300,000 health care encounters in 36 specialty areas with the assistance of telehealth technologies. The VA has now begun to analyze data from these programs as part of a long-term goal to change the location of care from the hospital to where the patient it. The plan is ultimately to "extend the electronic health record into the home."

Pay Mistakes for Airmen on Combat Deployments
If you deployed to a combat zone in the last three years, check your pay stubs for the time you were gone: There's at least a one-in-four chance that you either got shorted or got too much. Either way, the Air Force doesn't much care; it's focused on improving the way it tracks deployments and the special compensation tied to it, which led to the mistakes - not finding all the pay errors and correcting them. An audit by the Department of Defense Inspector General uncovered the pay problems, which could total $8.6 million. The audit found mistakes with more than half of the pay stubs it checked.

Veterans Tout VA Services in New Ad Campaign
The Veterans Affairs Department is launching a six-city advertising campaign featuring a Marine veteran of the Iraq War that is aimed at spreading the word about available help for newly discharged combat veterans. The ad campaign is part of an effort to address the fact that there are 23 million veterans in the U.S., but only 8 million use VA services.

Disability Claims Process to be Paperless within Days
The Veterans Affairs Department is preparing to launch within days a paperless service-related disability claims system. There are about one million backlogged service-related disability claims at the Veterans Affairs Department, but a paperless system could change that. Today, claims process is a "paper-bound semi-automatic process" in which "we will happily accept your claim form, print it out and type it in." Currently, veterans wait between 160 and 170 days to get a response from a claims processor.

Despite Army Efforts, Soldier Suicides Continue
Twenty soldiers connected to Fort Hood have believed to have committed suicide this year. The Army has confirmed 14 of those and is completing the official investigations into six other soldiers who appear to have taken their own lives - four of them in one week. The deaths have made this the worst year at the sprawling fort since the military began keeping track in 2003. The spate of suicides in Texas reflects a chilling reality: Nearly 20 months after the Army began strengthening its suicide prevention program and working to remove the stigma attached to seeking psychological counseling, the suicide rate among active service members remains high and shows little sign of improvement. Thought August, at least 125 active members of the Army had ended their own lives, exceeding the morbid pace of last year when there were a record 162 suicides.

Many Vets to be Helped by 2010 Veterans Benefits Act
It's unusual for Congress to pass a comprehensive bill to help thousands of veterans with a final legislative sprint that leaves veterans' service organizations wondering what just happened, but that's what the Senate and House have done. After a burst of closed-door compromises, they agreed to and separately passed the Veterans' Benefits Act of 2010. The package has no clear blockbuster initiative, but it improves many veterans' benefits including some allowances for disabled veterans and various veterans' insurance options.

VA Urged to Review Veteran's Complaint
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is being urged to review the complaint of a veteran whose application for benefits was disapproved verbally by one of its staffers. The veteran was among a group who were told by a staffer that anyone who contacted their member of Congress would not receive his assistance or the individual's file would be placed at the bottom of his work load.

Veterans Air Anxiety to VA Officials
About two dozen veterans voiced health care concerns to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki and a local New York representative. The biggest concern brought up by veterans was integration between the military and the VA. Not only do the two bureaucracies have to communication with one another, but also with individual veterans.

Shinseki's Call to IBM CEO
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki personally called the chairman and chief of IBM to express his dissatisfaction with the company's progress on development of a computer system to process veterans' claims for ailments associated with Agent Orange. Contractors often run late on government information technology contracts, and IBM did not "understand it was not business-as-usual" when it came to the $9.1 million project. Though Shinseki now expects IBM to meet the delivery schedule, a backup may be required if IBM misses it. VA issued a proposal for a second contractor, although the department has not issued an award.

Vets Groups Lose at Supreme Court
Two veterans groups lost in their effort to have the Supreme Court force bureaucrats in the Department of Veterans Affairs to move more swiftly in processing claims. The Vietnam Veterans of American and the Veterans of Modern Warfare allege that the VA takes far too long to process claims made by its members and for all veterans. They contend that officials can take more than a year to respond to an initial claim and upwards of five years for the appeals process to wind its way through a "Byzantine system of procedural hurdles." The Supreme Court, however, said it would not hear a case challenging a supposed lack of brevity from the government.

The Cost of War: 'It Changes Who We Are'
For nearly a decade, the United States has been fighting wars in which soldiers are routinely exposed to brain-rattling blasts that can send ripples of compressed air hurtling through the atmosphere at 1,600 feet per second. Now, the military is struggling to come to terms with an often-invisible wound.

'Bad Paper' Discharges Can Stymie Veterans' Health Care
Veterans advocates are spotting a troubling trend within the United States' fighting force: increasing numbers of service members discharged from duty for misconduct and other disorders who are suffering from the mental wounds of war. Once dismissed, many find themselves unable to get the help they need for mental health issues that might have sparked the misconduct. Veterans advocates see cynical forces at play in the use of administrative discharges for reasons including misconduct, personality disorder and adjustment disorder - defined as an excessive reaction to a stressful event with symptoms similar to PTSD.

Families of Troops Go to Court Over Retained-Asset Accounts for Death Benefits
Twelve years later, the issue of the lack of FDIC protection in retained-asset accounts flared anew. Though the FDIC warned that consumers could incorrectly conclude that retained-asset accounts were insured by the FDIC, some families have taken their grievances about retained-asset accounts to court.

VA to Reconsider Cases of Agent Orange Exposure
The Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to review the cases of 16,830 "brown water" Navy and other Vietnam-era veterans whose disability claims related to the herbicide Agent Orange were denied. The VA denied claims without properly determining whether veterans served in Vietnam's inland waterways, referred to as "brown water."

Hearing Exposes Flaws in Agent Orange Law
The former secretary of Veterans Affairs has warned Congress that disabled veterans and their families will suffer if Americans "lose faith in the integrity" of the VA disability compensation system - and "the surest way for that to happy is for the American people to believe that large numbers of veterans are being compensated for illnesses that may not be the result of their military service." Fortunately, for the hundreds of thousands of Vietnam Veterans in line to be compensated for three additional diseases linked to Agent Orange exposure, few senators seemed ready to grapple with that issue any time soon.

Widows on a Warpath Demand Justice for Chemical Spraying Victims
Widows of soldiers affected by the deadly chemical Agent Orange held a protest to fight against what they believe is unfair compensation for the victims of chemical spraying. In 2007, the government agreed to pay $20,000 to the families of those who fell ill or died from the sprayings but only if the victims fell ill within certain guidelines. As of now, only women whose husbands became ill or died before the cut off date of February 2006 are eligible for compensation.

Families of Wounded Warriors Eligible for Mortgage Break
Families suffering hardship after the injury or death of a service member can seek a delay in mortgage payments under a program the Pentagon and secondary market mortgage lender Fannie Mae recently announced. Eligible homeowners may obtain a forbearance for up to six months on their mortgage, and if a homeowner's mortgage lender agrees, the forbearance reduces or suspends payments. It also suspends any adverse reporting to credit bureaus about the homeowner.

Deadline Extended to Apply for Retroactive Stop-Loss Pay
Congress has extended the deadline to December for veterans to apply for retroactive stop-loss pay. Under the program, troops who have been stop-lossed since September 11, 2001 - or their surviving spouses - are eligible for $500 for every month they were kept beyond their initial separation date. The program was slated to end in October, but now it has been extended to December 3.

Study May Quiet Doubts on PTSD-Trauma Link
A new study suggests that trauma is a trigger of post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers studied 103 pairs of identical male twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry to test whether trauma truly causes PTSD or if its suffers would have developed symptoms of the disorder regardless. One brother from each pair had been exposed to combat in Vietnam; the other had not. Fifty of the combat-exposed men had PTSD. The researchers found a substantial difference in mental disorders between the twins: Men exposed to combat and diagnosed with PTSD had three-fold more symptoms than their brothers, as well as compared to combat veterans without PTSD and their twins.

Prudential Profits from Slain Soldiers with Help from Taxpayers
When Prudential Financial invests the death benefits owed to survivors of soldiers killed in battle, the money comes from a source with deep pockets: the U.S. government. After a U.S. soldier dies in combat, the Department of Veterans Affairs sends Prudential the full amount of each family's life insurance coverage. The government has paid Prudential $1.7 billion for these benefits since 2003, and Prudential holds that taxpayer money, invests it and reaps the gains.

VA Extends Coverage for Gulf War Veterans
Veterans of the first Gulf War as well as current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan now have a smoother path toward receiving healthcare benefits and disability compensation for nine diseases associated with their military service. Veterans need only show service in Southwest Asia beginning on or after the start of Operation Desert Shield on August 2, 1990 through Operation Desert Storm to the present, including the current conflict in Iraq. Veterans who served in Afghanistan on or after September 19, 2001 also qualify.

Veterans' Insurance Disclosure Rules for Death Benefits Approved by House
The U.S. House passed legislation that would set new disclosure rules for life insurance companies that provide death benefits to veterans. The legislation would require insurers to tell beneficiaries how the money will be invested and provide additional financial counseling.

Trust Fund Proposed for Long-Term Veterans Care
In the face of new estimates showing a 30 percent jump in the expected lifetime costs of healthcare for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee has proposed creating a trust fund to set aside money for long-term costs of the current conflicts. New estimates show taking care of veterans will cost between $589 and $934 billion over the lifetime of veterans.

War Veterans' Care to Cost $1.3 Trillion
The expense of caring for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is an unfunded budget liability for U.S. taxpayers that in years to come will rival the cost of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The House Veterans' Affairs Committee will soon hear new estimates of the cost of lifetime medical care and benefits for returning troops disabled by their service - a total of more than $1.3 trillion.

Four Suicides in a Week Take a Toll on Fort Hood
Four veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan died this week from what appeared to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds at Fort Hood in Texas, raising the toll of soldiers who died at their own hands there to a record level and alarming Army commanders. So far this year, Army officials have confirmed that 14 soldiers at Fort Hood have committed suicide. Six others are believed to have taken their own lives but a final determination has yet to be made. The highest number of suicides at Fort Hood occurred in 2008 when 14 soldiers killed themselves.

VA Opposing Issuing Healthcare Quality Reports
A bill that would require the Veterans Affairs Department to post medical quality assurance records online has drawn opposition from VA, which worries about the confidentiality of patients and whether posting the records would have a "chilling effect" on the willingness of healthcare workers to report mistakes. The bill is Representative Joe Sestak's response to "revelations of substandard care" in the past two years that include well-publicized problems with the sterilization of medical equipment and less publicized issues, like a veteran whose open wound was filled with maggots and a diabetic veteran who was not given needed insulin shots while hospitalized.

Senate Passes Compromise Vets Bills
With just days before Congress takes a six-week break for the November elections, the House and Senate veterans' affairs committees have reached agreement on an omnibus bill making improvements in employment, job protection, housing, insurance and other benefits. The bill includes an increase in Veterans' Mortgage Life Insurance that fills a need obvious in today's housing market. Currently, maximum insurance in case of the death of a service-connected disabled veteran was $90,000, far short of paying the mortgage balance on most homes. The bill hikes the maximum to $200,000. Additionally, it increases supplemental life insurance for totally disabled veterans to $30,000, a $10,000 jump.

Senate Passes Bill to End Practice of Counting Vets' Disability as Income
The Indian Veterans Housing Opportunity Act of 2010 has been passed and now heads to President Obama's desk for his signature. The legislation will discontinue the practice of counting veterans' disability compensation as income. Because housing assistance is based on income, the practice has often pushed disabled Native American veterans above the income threshold for housing assistance or actually increased their rent.

Virginia Veteran Report Shows High Depression Rate
More than one in four U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars in the state of Virginia say they have suffered a service-related head injury and two-thirds reported depression, according to a report by Virginia Tech. The real numbers may be much higher. In focus groups, many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan said they were afraid to admit to suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder during demobilization because it would keep them from their families and hurt their careers.

Military Not Following Regulations When Separating Troops for Personality Disorders
The military services do not always follow Defense Department regulations when involuntarily separating service members for a personality disorder, a condition that can have similar symptoms to post-traumatic stress disorder and disqualifies individuals for combat-related disability pay, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. A 2008 review of the personnel records of 371 enlisted service members found that most troops were notified of an impending personality disorder separation, which is required by the DOD, the GAO found. However, in many cases, the diagnosis was not made by a psychiatrist or psychologist and/or formal counseling was not provided prior to notification of separation, which are also DOD requirements.

Panel May Rethink Agent Orange Law
With costs mounting, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee is laying the groundwork for a second look at the landmark 1991 Agent Orange law that has governed nearly two decades of disability claims related to the herbicide widely used in the Vietnam War. That was the consistent theme of a hearing that featured testimony by Cabinet secretaries past and present about living under the law's limits and navigating through the often vague scientific standards for judging what diseases qualify as service-connected claims.

Senate Wants Details on Record Sharing
The Senate Appropriations Committee wants more details about how the Defense Department plans to modernize its electronic health record system, which DOD is upgrading in coordination with the Veterans Affairs Department. The committee is monitoring progress the two departments are making improving their electronic health record systems, but lacks details from them on how that will be accomplished. DOD and VA share many of the same requirements for their respective electronic records systems, which they have now begun to interconnect as part of the Obama administration's virtual lifetime electronic record or VLER project.

Shinseki Defends New Agent Orange Benefits
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki says providing Agent Orange benefits to Vietnam veterans who have heart disease - even though there are many other reasons they might have the ailment - is a decision that errs on the side of veterans because that is the right and legal thing to do. The decision also has wide-ranging implications for current veterans because it is a sign that VA will act to provide benefits even years after a conflict is over.

U.S. Military Suicide Prevention Efforts Fail
Efforts to prevent suicides among U.S. war veterans are failing - in part because distressed troops do not trust the military to help them. Poor training, a lack of coordination and an overstretched military are also factors, but a new 76-point plan lays out ways to improve this.

Brain Injury Office Chief Reassigned
The Army officer in charge of overseeing treatment for troops suffering from brain injuries and psychological trauma has been reassigned until an internal investigation into his management of the office is completed. The officer is being replaced as acting director of the Defense Centers for Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. He has been accused by an office employee of unwanted sexual advances and creating a hostile workplace.

VA Initiative Aims to Improve Communications with Veterans
The Veterans Affairs Department debuted its new Veterans Relationship Management customer service initiative, a multiyear effort aimed at improving veterans' interaction with the VA for access to care, information and benefits. The multifaceted initiative includes improvements to telephone services at VA calling centers, as well as enhancements to VA's year-odl e-benefits website that offers veterans department information.

Shinseki, IBM and Agent Orange
Earlier this year, the Veterans Affairs Department awarded IBM a $9.1 million contract to develop within three months a system to process claims for Vietnam veterans suffering from diseases stemming from exposure to the Agent Orange defoliant sprayed in that country by the Air Force. VA presumes all 2.6 million veterans who served in Vietnam had exposure to Agent Orange, and if veterans have one 15 diseases - including hairy cell leukemia, Parkinson's and ischemic heart disease, which were recently added to the list - they don't have to prove they were in an area where the defoliant was sprayed and their diseases results from military service. The new approach to Agent Orange will add 240,000 claims to its case load, which is why it tapped IBM to build a separate system to process machine readable claims that veterans submit electronically.

Technology Improving Veterans' Access to Health and Benefits Information
Department of Veterans Affairs officials are launching a multi-year initiative called Veterans Relationship Management - or VRM - that will greatly improve veterans' access to health care and benefits information. By the end of 2010, VRM will deliver improved telephone services to enable veterans to reach a call center agent faster. Another important component of VRM is its Web site, which puts veterans in the driver's seat for information.

Agent Orange Spending Concerns GOP Lawmaker
The leading Republican on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee has said that he also has concerns about a proposal that would spend billions of dollars on disability compensation for Vietnam veterans who get heart disease. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina added his voice to leading Democrats on the committee who have reservations about the spending and plan to discuss the issue at a hearing. Because of concerns about the defoliant Agent Orange, the Department of Veterans Affairs wants to allow tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans to get compensation for heart disease, a common ailment for older adults.

More Health Conditions Tied to Agent Orange
About 270,000 of the 1 million Vietnam veterans receiving disability checks are being compensated for diabetes. The disease is one of several illnesses presumed by Veterans Affairs to be linked to exposure to Agent Orange, a chemical sprayed on Vietnam to defoliate its jungles. Three new illnesses were just added to the list of those connected to Agent Orange: Parkinson's disease, ischemic heart disease and all chronic B cell leukemias.

Despair Turns to Hope When Marines and Civilians Join to Help Family
A Florida Marine was forced to battle military and veteran healthcare to get adequate treatment for severe post-traumatic stress disorder and recurring seizures caused by a traumatic brain injury. For example, his seizures - which could not be induced - required extensive neurological testing. Though he received VA approval for "short term outpatient care" with a local neurologist, he soon learned that only three appointments would be covered.

Congresswoman Calls for Review of Purple Heart Decisions
In response to recent media reports, a congresswoman on the House Armed Services Committee is urging the Pentagon to review decisions to deny Purple Hearts to some soldiers suffering from mild traumatic brain injuries. In a letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine called it "unacceptable" that Army commanders have turned down soldiers who met criteria for award of the Purple Heart, which recognizes soldiers wounded or killed in combat.

Concussion Specialists Provide Front-Line Care
Not long after a Marine logistics group set up a combat stress center in Afghanistan, doctors saw a trend: As many patients came in with mild concussions as those who suffered from combat stress. Marines and sailors rattled by blasts had few options for assessment or treatment, so many turned to the combat stress tent, which offered psychiatric care and psychological counseling. As thousands of Marines arrived at the camp amid more intense combat operations, business at the small center became brisk.

Soldiers Can Sue Military Contractors Over Toxic Emissions, Judge Rules
Military contractors can be sued by soldiers and others who allege they were harmed by improper waste disposal while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge has ruled. The judge found that Houston-based military contractors Halliburton Co. and KBR are subject to lawsuits alleging the contractors exposed soldiers to toxic emissions and contaminated water when they burned waste in open pits without proper safety controls. More than forty lawsuits have been filed claiming the waste disposal methods used by the contractors caused serious physical injuries, including cancer and permanent respiratory damage.

Veterans Agency Made Secret Deal Over Benefits
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to inform 6 million soldiers and their families of an agreement enabling Prudential Financial Inc. to withhold lump-sum payments of life insurance benefits for survivors of fallen service members. The amendment to Prudential's contract is the first document to show how VA officials sanctioned a payment practice that has spurred investigations by lawmakers and regulators. Since 1999, Prudential has used so-called retained-asset accounts, which allow the company to withhold lump-sun payments due to survivors and earn investment income on the money for itself.

VA to Make Changes to Life Insurance Accounts
Attempting to minimize confusion over the way life insurance proceeds get paid to families of fallen soldiers, the Department of Veterans Affairs will revamp claims materials and spell out that beneficiaries can opt for a check in the mail. The military will continue to offer a now-controversial money-market-type account run by Prudential Financial Inc. as an option, and this so-called Alliance Account will be used if families fail to specify another option.

Veteran Fights VA Over Exposure to Burn Pits
Hundreds of veterans across the country have filed lawsuits contending that dangerous toxins from open-air burn pits operated on U.S. military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan made them sick, and a federal judge recently ruled the cases could proceed.

250,000 Vietnam Vets Could Get Benefits Under New Agent Orange Rules
Sweeping new presumptions about what medical conditions in Vietnam veterans are the result of exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange could lead to benefits for up to 250,000 more veterans. But the $42.2 billion expansion of disability compensation and medical treatment is raising questions about just how generous the federal government should be. About 90,000 veterans or survivors could receive retroactive benefits by the end of October, covering an average of almost 12 years of back pay. Another 150,000 veterans are expected to apply for benefits that would take effect the day of their application.

VA Streamlines Agent Orange Claims
Many service members who were exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange while in Vietnam still live with its after-effects. That's why Veterans Affairs decided to streamline and speed up the process of settling claims of illness related to Agent Orange. The former Director of the VA's Compensation and Pension Service says the VA is "adding three new diseases to the list of conditions that are presumed to be service-connected as a result of exposure to the herbicide that we commonly refer to as Agent Orange."

Denial of Purple Heart Frustrates Some with 'Invisible' Wounds
The Army honors soldiers wounded or killed in combat with the Purple Heart, a powerful symbol designed to recognize their sacrifice and service. Yet Army commanders have routinely denied Purple Hearts to soldiers who have sustained concussions in Iraq, despite regulations that make such wounds eligible for the medal, and investigation has found. Soldiers have had to battle for months and sometimes years to prove that these injuries, also called mild traumatic brain injuries, merit the honor.

VA Abruptly Issues Second Contract for Agent Orange Claims System
The Veterans Affairs Department had earlier awarded IBM a contract to develop within three months a system to process claims for veterans suffering from diseases related to the Vietnam-era chemical Agent Orange. However, recently, officials inexplicably issued another contract searching for a second contractor to do the job in one-third the time, while the IBM contract remains in place. The VA needs the new system to process up to 240,000 claims for 15 illnesses determined to be the result of military personnel being exposed to Agent Orange, a defoliant sprayed on the jungles during the Vietnam War. VA presumes all personnel who served in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange, and the 15 illnesses they might have are a result of coming into contact with the chemical.

Psych Meds Spike Among Younger Troops
Use of psychiatric medications among people ages 18 to 34 - mostly active-duty troops and their spouses - is rising at a significantly higher rate than other age groups in the military health care system, according to newly released data. Overall, the number of prescriptions filled for psychiatric medications rose 42 percent from 2005 to 2009 among Tricare beneficiaries in that age group. That compares to an increase of 24 percent among Tricare beneficiaries ages 45 to 64, mostly retires. For children 17 and younger, the increase was 18 percent.

Possible Agent Orange Effects Lead to More Aid for Vets
Agent Orange, which was used in an effort to destroy crops and jungle cover shielding communist guerilla fighters in Vietnam, has been linked to a number of disabilities and diseases among veterans. Those vets will have an easier path to accessing health care and qualifying for disability compensation under a recent regulation that takes effect in November.

Study Links PTSD and Dementia
San Diego veterans who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder - PTSD - may be more likely to develop dementia late in life, claims a study by the VA Medical Center in Houston. Researchers examined more than 10,000 veterans over age 65 who visited Veterans Affairs medical centers in the late 1990s. They found that veterans who suffered PTSD were twice as likely to have Alzheimer's disease or some other form of dementia.

Sleep Apnea in Veterans
More veterans are suffering from sleepless nights, and a double-digit spike in the number of vets being treated for a chronic sleep problem is pointing to a disturbing trend. A common symptom of sleep apnea is disturbed sleep. The disorder is linked to excessive daytime sleepiness, heart disease, even strokes, now being diagnosed in a growing number of military veterans. The Veterans Administration says about 20 percent of all vets suffer from sleep apnea and according to statistics, the number of vets receiving benefits to treat the disorder jumped 61 percent between 2008 and this year.  

Army Studies Concussions' Effect on Bomb Techs
Soldiers from the Army's 52nd Ordnance Group based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky have undergone hours of exhaustive cognitive testing in the military's first-of-its-kind study of mild traumatic brain injury. This focus on the soldiers who find and destroy the powerful and deadly weapons is part of a larger effort by the military this year to better track and treat mild brain injuries.

Drug Used to Treat PTSD Raises Questions
Thousands of troops suffering from PTSD have received the same medication over the past nine years, helping make the medication Seroquel one of Veterans Affairs' top drug expenditures and the No. 5 best-selling drugs in the nation. But several soldiers and veterans have died while taking the pills, raising concerns among some military families that the government is not being upfront about the drug's risks.

U.S. Troops Leave $324 Million in Back Pay UnclaimedUncle Sam wants to give free, no-strings-attached money to about 145,000 troops who were involuntarily kept on duty after the September 11, 2001, attacks, but is having trouble persuading them that it's not a gimmick. Last October, Congress approved retroactive bonus pay for military personnel who were forced to remain on duty beyond their original discharge date, a controversial policy known as "stop-loss." Lawmakers approved back pay of $500 for each month of involuntary service; the average lump-sum due is between $3,500 and $3,800.

The Pathway Home Makes Inroads in Treating PTSD
A nonprofit residential treatment center in California - Pathway Home - allows active and retired service members suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury to learn to make the hard transition from war to civilian life. Since opening in 2008, the center and its 18 staffers have treated almost 200 wounded warriors, many of whom had found only frustration when they sought treatment at military hospitals or VA centers. What differentiates Pathway Home from standard facilities is a seasoned staff with military experience, few patients, a high tolerance for emotional outbursts and erratic behavior, the collegial atmosphere of a campus instead of a hospital and a willingness to try anything. 

When Warriors Hurt Themselves
"Dwell time" is military shorthand for the precious home-front visits back to family life that soldiers enjoy between the multiple deployments of modern warfare. The need for enough dwell time - and for a fairer, less stressful distribution of repeat deployments - is a keystone finding in a study of the alarming rise in suicides afflicting the military as it soldiers on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other factors stand out, including the continuing stigmatization of troubled warriors who dare to step forward for help. Most surprising, perhaps, the lack of a top level Pentagon office and prevention policy for the hundreds of anti-suicide programs now pursued separately by the services.

Navy to Pay for Deceased Sailors' Families to Attend Memorial Services
The Navy will now pay for families of deceased sailors to travel to unit memorial services for their loved ones. Under the new policy, eligible family members are entitled to round-trip travel and transportation allowances to attend one Navy-sponsored memorial service at a location other than the burial site for any sailor who dies while on active duty. Eligible family members include spouses, children, parents, in-laws and siblings of the deceased.

Veterans Affairs Works to Reduce Claims Backlog
The Veterans Affairs Department is making great strides in its efforts to reduce the backlog of veterans' claims, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki told thousands of veterans attending the 92nd Annual American Legion National Convention. The average time taken to process claims in VA is about 160 days, but by the end of the year, no claim will take longer than 125 days. The VA doesn't plan to stop once the claims are processed by that mark, saying "our goal is not an average."

VA Streamlines Help for PTSD
As the number of veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress skyrockets, the Department of Veterans Affairs is simplifying claims to provide help as quickly as possible, Secretary Eric Shinseki announced. Addressing thousands of veterans attending the National American Legion Convention, Shinseki said service members no longer need to document the location of the event that triggered post-traumatic stress. A Vietnam veteran, Shinseki said he has increased the number of mental health staff to minister to the needs of veterans, boosting the total to more than 20,000.

Task Force: Military Suicide Prevention Efforts Inadequate
A Defense Department task force devoted to preventing suicide in the military presented a grim picture of the trend with suicides rising at a near steady pace even as commanders apply various balms to soothe a stressed, exhausted fighting force. The military has nearly 900 suicide prevention programs across 400 military installations worldwide, but in a report, the task force describes the Defense Department's approach as a safety net riddled with holes - and last year, 309 men and women slipped through.

New Battlefield: Vets Tackle Transition Home
In the military, 12 weeks of basic training can make someone a soldier; however, it may take years, even decades, for many veterans to readjust to home life. While much of the responsibility for guiding the transition falls to the Department of Veterans Affairs, community-based groups are playing a key role in helping veterans transition to civilian life.

Thousands Strain Fort Hood's Mental Health System
Nine months after an Army psychiatrist was charged with fatally shooting 13 soldiers and wounding 30, the nation's largest Army post can measure the toll of war in the more than 10,000 mental health evaluations, referrals or therapy sessions held every month. About every fourth soldier here, where 48,000 troops and their families are based, has been in counseling during the past year, and the number of soldiers seeking help for combat stress, substance abuse, broken marriages or other emotional problems keeps increasing. A chief refrain by the Army's vice chief of staff is that far more soldiers suffer mental health issues than the Army anticipated. Nowhere is this more evident than at Fort Hood, where emotional problems among the soldiers threaten to overwhelm the system in place to help them.

Soldiers' Survival Rates on Rise...With Challenges Presented by Brain Injuries
Thanks to advances in combat gear and battlefield medicine, more troops survive injuries that would have killed them in previous wars. While increased survival rates are good, they also present some long-term challenges. Soldiers are surviving, but are also afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries. An estimated 19 percent of the 1.8 million troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan - about 342,000 - may have experienced a traumatic brain injury during deployment, and more than half of those cases go undiagnosed and untreated. The reasons: There is no simple check, such as a blood test, to diagnose TBI, and many soldiers do not seek treatment for concussions.

Some Veterans Get Mental Health Help, But Needs Far from Being Met
Nearly 20 percent of all combat veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - about 360,000 in all - report symptoms of PTSD and depression. Yet only a little over half of those have sought treatment, and many cite the stigma attached to mental illness for not seeking treatment, saying that doing so might harm their careers.

Invisible Wounds: Mental Health and the Military
While our military's combat troops fight two wars, its mental health professionals are waging a battle to save soldiers' sanity when they come back, one that will cost billions long after combat ends in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army troops are seeking mental help more than 100,000 times a month, and that figure reflects a growth of more than 75 percent from the final months of 2006 to the final months of 2009. Even though the Army mental health corps has increased about 60 percent since 9/11, demand is growing faster.

Veterans Find Relief with Horseback Riding
Manes & Motions, a therapeutic riding center in Connecticut has helped eight veterans with PTSD through its riding program in the last three years. Treatments like horseback riding and yoga are done in conjunction with more traditional methods, like cognitive-processing therapy. While horseback riding may lack the statistical proof of results that evidence-based therapies have, the benefits are obvious. The program is helped by a grant from the VA's Recreation Therapy division, which has covered care for 10 riders.

VA Makes Applying for Health Care Benefits Faster for Veterans
As part of Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki's effort to streamline access to benefits, the Department of Veterans Affairs has removed the signature requirement for veterans who electronically submit an online application for health benefits. Previously, veterans filling out the online application were required to print a copy, sign it and send to their local medical center or wait for a copy to be mailed to them for signature and mailing before enrollment into the VA healthcare system could occur.

Advocates Push Changes in VA Service Dog Policy
An inconsistent policy that can sometimes bar a veteran from entering a Veterans Affairs Department hospital or clinic accompanied by a service dog - even one approved by VA - has prompted a Florida lawmaker to demand a change in regulations. The problem is that current law and policy prohibits animals other than guide dogs for the blind from entering VA facilities without written permission. Rules require exceptions to be approved on a case-by-case basis, and some medical centers and clinics have been reluctant to provide permission. Some same the VA's restrictions seem especially outdated because the Americans with Disabilities Act - which does not apply to VA - requires civilian hospitals and clinics to allow guide dogs and other service animals to accompany disabled people if the animals are specially trained.

University to Study Prescription Drug Abuse Among War Vets
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences received a $1.2 million federal grant to research prescription drug abuse among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Researchers at UAMS and the Central Arkansas Veterans Health Care System plan to study six years of data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on the use of prescription painkillers known as opioids. The purpose of the study is to identify factors associated with drug misuse and abuse and determine the effectiveness of the VA's guidelines on prescribing painkillers.

A Culture in Need of Change
The U.S. Army reported a record number of suicides for June. Soldiers killed themselves at a rate of one per day, making it the worst month on record for Army suicides. Of the 32 confirmed or suspected suicides among soldiers in June, 21 were among active duty troops and 11 among National Guard or Reserve forces. Seven soldiers killed themselves while in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, and of the total, 22 soldiers had been in combat, including 10 who had deployed two to four times. These grim statistics arrived just weeks before the release of an Army report that fixes blame for a record number of suicides in the past several years, noting that while repeated deployments may be partly to blame for the increased suicides, sometimes those who killed themselves had only one deployment or none at all. The report put a large part of the blame on commanders who either failed to recognize or disregarded high-risk behavior among their troops. Instead of pointing to a decades-long systemic failure of our military system to integrate meaningful mental health education and services into basic training, ongoing training and follow-up with veterans, the report fixes the blame on stressed commanders in the field.

Combat Casualty Care Conference Shows Promising Research Returns
Top scientists gathered at an annual conference to discuss therapies for traumatic brain injuries and lifesaving medical tools to deploy to the battlefield. The annual Advanced Technology Applications for Combat Casualty Care Conference included presentations on topics ranging from regenerative medicine to pain control to more sensitive vial system monitors; however, the two biggest issues talked about were traumatic brain injury and hemorrhage research.

High-Tech Knee Holds Promise for Veterans
The X2 is a prosthetic knee loaded with microprocessors, sensors and even a gyroscope that gives amputees more freedom of movement and better balance then previous prostheses, veterans affairs officials say. It is smaller, lighter and has a longer-lasting battery than other widely used prostheses. While the new knee will certainly help younger service members hoping to return to active lives after amputations, it may have even greater impact on older veterans, a much larger population. Since 2001, there have been about 900 troops who lost legs or arms in the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. However, each year about 5,000 veterans lose legs to disease or accidents. In addition, there are about 45,000 veterans who have already had leg amputations.

Linking Head Trauma and A.L.S. in the Military
Researchers at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts and the Boston University School of Medicine said the link between head trauma and symptoms that resemble amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may explain why A.L.S. has been misdiagnosed in military veterans at high rates. The doctors said that the link between head trauma and an A.L.S.-like disease suggests that the heightened risk would apply not just to collision-sport athletes, but soldiers who sustain concussions and blast injuries.

Third Hearing in Series Focuses on Gulf War Illness
An Arizona senator has recently conducted the third in a series of hearings focused on Gulf War Illness. The hearing was intended to gauge the outlook going forward for veterans suffering from GWI, specifically examining how the Department of Veterans Affairs administers healthcare and benefits to veterans experiencing GWI. The first hearing focused on Vietnam-era veterans and their struggle for healthcare and benefits for service-related maladies, often related to Agent Orange, and the second thoroughly reviewed the existing scientific evidence related to GWI. Both hearings found that veterans are suffering from acute and chronic symptoms attributed to their military service and experience barriers to care and services from the VA.

Pennsylvania Senate Candidates Argue Over Aid for Disabled Veterans
Rivals in the Pennsylvania Senate race are battling over who would do more for disabled veterans. While Democrat Joe Sestak blamed his opponent for ignoring a backlog of disabled veteran benefit applications that grew under former President Bush and voting to reduce assistance slated for veterans suffering from mental disorders, Republican Pat Toomey claimed supporting veterans is critical, but that Congress must limit spending.

Tax-Break Bill for Vets Suffering from PTSD Advances
New Jersey's Senate Military and Veterans Affairs Committee has approved bipartisan legislation that would provide an income tax credit to veterans who require psychological counseling and treatment upon returning home from war. Under the measure, veterans would be eligible for a direct state income tax credit up to $10,000 of unreimbursed psychiatric treatment - counseling that is not covered by insurance. Another measure would urge Congress to fill a gap between members of the Individual Ready Reserve and active duty soldiers. IRR members can be activated whenever the Army deems it necessary, though they are not considered to be on active duty. This discrepancy means IRR members are ineligible for the mental health services offered by the Pentagon and the VA.

Discharges for Adjustment Disorder Soar
Under congressional pressure, the military changed its policy on separating troops dealing with combat stress for pre-existing personality disorders - an administrative discharge that left those veterans without medical care or other benefits. More than two years later, veterans advocates say the personality-disorder discharges have been replaced with similar discharges for "adjustment disorder," and Congress seems poised to intervene again. A Missouri senator plans to send a letter to President Obama asking that the military provide detailed data showing how many people have been discharged for adjustment disorders. In the meantime, his staff has been gathering more general data that shows discharges for "other designated physical or mental conditions not amounting to disability" - a broad category that includes adjustment disorder - have increased from 1,453 in 2006 to 3,844 last year, an increase of 165 percent.

VA Hopes to Curb Veteran Suicides with Pilot Program
A Colorado hospital is launching a pilot program aimed at helping veterans who may be thinking about suicide. The VA will put up signs at bus stops and in buses advertising the suicide prevention hotline number. In total, the VA will be putting up more than 20 ads around Grand Junction. The local VA got the idea from an identical program in Washington, D.C., which ended up reaching thousands.

VA to Test Paperless Claims System in Rhode Island
The Department of Veterans Affairs has selected its regional benefits offices in Providence, Rhode Island to test a paperless system and new procedures to improve processing of veterans' claims for disability compensation to support the VA's transformation of the claims process for veterans, their families and their survivors. The goal for the pilot, which initially focuses on compensation benefits, is to eventually deploy it at all 57 VA regional benefits offices. 

VA Care for Women Too Restrictive, Group Says
The creation of health clinics specifically for female veterans at Veterans Affairs Department hospitals may be having the unintended effect of limiting women's access to routine medical care, according to a report being prepared as part of a symposium about problems facing new veterans. A working group of current and former service members looking at veterans health issues raised concerns that women may have a harder time than men being seen by their primary care physicians because of a policy that restricts women to being seen only when those physicians rotate through the women's health clinics. If a female veteran's primary care physician sees patients in the women's clinic only one afternoon a week, which seems to be a normal rotation, that veteran could see the physician only on that one afternoon. Male veterans, however, could see that physician on any day he takes appointments.

Pennsylvania Senate to Probe Seizure of Vets' Assets
A Pennsylvania Senate committee will soon hold hearings to examine "significant" questions about the seizure of assets from the estates of deceased veterans as payment for care provided in six state veterans homes. Court records show officials with the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs seized savings accounts and other assets of dozens of deceased patients. Several relatives of deceased veterans did not know the state would seize assets or place tight limits on patients' personal savings accounts while they were alive. Attorneys say the state policies and practices appear to be contradictory and place tighter restrictions on veterans than on patients receiving nursing home care under Medicaid. Department officials, however, said patients are fully informed upon admission that they are ultimately liable for the full cost.

FDIC Reviews Insurers' Retained Death Benefits
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is reviewing whether life insurers misled customers about retained death benefits and urged companies to clearly disclose that the funds aren't guaranteed by the U.S. government. An initial review indicates consumers may mistakenly believe the accounts are insured by the FDIC, and it is illegal to misrepresent FDIC coverage. Life insurers have drawn fire from state and national elected officials since it was reported that more than 100 carriers profit by holding and investing $28 billion owed to life-insurance beneficiaries.

Congressional Panel Investigates Veterans Insurance
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will investigate the insurance benefits for U.S. soldiers provided by Prudential Financial Inc. and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Prudential currently holds payments owed to the families of fallen soldiers in its general corporate account and sends survivors "checkbooks" that aren't insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The company then earns profit on the money held and pays beneficiaries interest. Several members of Congress have called for an examination of the program administered by Veterans Affairs, and the agency is conducting its own review. Lawmakers are proposing fuller disclosure for beneficiaries of their right to accept lump-sum payments or have the money held in Prudential's accounts.

Vets Suspect Agent Orange Dangers Passed Down to Kids
A growing number of parents are connected exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War with the ailments affecting their children. The Agent Orange Act, passed in 1991, declared that veterans who served in Vietnam are presumed to have been exposed to dioxin-contaminated herbicides such as Agent Orange and any diseases Veterans Affairs recognizes as associated with herbicide exposure are presumed to be service-related, qualifying affected veterans for disability compensation. However, the health problems of children and grandchildren of Vietnam veterans have been obscured, and research on congenital defects related to Agent Orange is slowly being conducted.

Ailing Vets Sue over Smoke from Trash Fires in Iraq, Afghanistan
Some 241 military personnel and contractors who became ill after serving in Afghanistan and Iraq are suing a Houston-based firm, claiming they were poisoned by smoke from trash fires. The claimants are suffering from a range of conditions including cancer and severe breathing problems which they blame on the thick, black smoke from two dozen burn-pits operated by a subsidiary of Halliburton. The burn-pits were used to get rid of garbage including plastic water bottled, Styrofoam food containers, mangled bits of metal, paint, solvent, medical waste and dead animals by dousing it in fuel and setting fire to it. While six people have died from blood-cancer leukemia and five others are currently stricken with the disease, a dozen more use machines to help them breathe.

Veterans Still See Room for Change in System
Though the Veterans Administration has eliminated co-payments for catastrophically disabled veterans, reduced red tape and offered more support to returning soldiers, some say there is still room for improvement. Among other things, more work needs to be done to improve diagnosing and treating conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.

Representative Travels Across States to Promote Brain Injury Awareness
A Democratic state representative from Pennsylvania made an 1,800-mile, seven-day journey through seven states on his motorcycle to promote awareness of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans, especially those injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 1.5 million U.S. military personnel have been deployed since the start of military operations in 2001, and military statistics show that at least 115,000 troops have suffered brain injuries related to IED explosions since the wars began. Representative Barbin plans to introduce a resolution designating a special day to be set aside as "Combat-Related Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Day" in Pennsylvania.

Obama Reaffirms Commitment to Veteran Care
Caring for veterans is a moral obligation, President Obama said in a speech at the Disabled American Veterans National Convention. "Every American who has ever worn the uniform must know this: Your country is going to take care of you when you come home," Obama said. He also lauded Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki for "building a 21st-century VA," calling the administration's commitment to the veteran community "historic." The president also cited the VA's $15 billion budget increase last year, the largest hike in 30 years. The additional budget is improving health care benefits for Vietnam War veterans suffering from Agent-Orange-related illnesses.

Bill Would Set New Rules on Soldiers' Life Insurance
Representative Debbie Halvorson wants Congress to set new rules for life insurance companies that profit from accounts that hold death benefits from policies of dead U.S. soldiers and veterans. The Illinois Democrat introduced legislation that would require companies to tell beneficiaries how their money will be invested and how much the insurer stands to make from holding the funds. Life insurance companies keep money in their own accounts instead of paying a lump sum directly to survivors when a policy holder dies. The insurers pay uncompetitive interest rates and offer misleading guarantees about the safety of accounts that aren't federally insured.

PTSD and the VA: Just Who's Malingering?
America has combat veterans who have seen two, three or even four rotations in Iraq and who are now on their way to Afghanistan. Suicide rates are unacceptably high on active duty, and at home, combat veterans already account for 20 percent of suicides. This is the wrong time in history for the VA to engage in a turf war with their civilian counterparts. The VA's unfinished business will eventually fall on the churches, communities and families of our returning servicemen and women. For once, let's call it like it is and get our patriots the help they need.

VA Secretary Hopes to Improve Access and Outreach to Veterans
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki concedes that a full transformation to a user-friendly, fast-moving department is still years away, but he also insists that the focus and approach of VA workers has fundamentally changed in the last 18 months. Nearly 200,000 veterans have been waiting at least four months for benefits claims to be approved, a figure veterans groups have blasted as an embarrassment for the department. Shinseki made trimming the backlog his top priority earlier this year but acknowledged that the problem will likely get worse in the coming year as rules for claims on post-traumatic stress disorder and Agent-Orange-related illnesses were relaxed by department officials.

Program Aims to Prevent Hearing Loss Among Soldiers
According to a veterans' center that studies hearing, hearing loss is the most common disability among soldiers and veterans. The Veterans Administration spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on hearing aids and rehabilitation, and a program in Portland is educating soldiers about the problem.

Shinseki Addresses Importance of Care for Women Veterans
Women in today's military serve closer to the front lines of combat than ever before, and as they become veterans, the Veterans Affairs Department will be ready to handle their care, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said. Speaking at a forum on women veterans, Shinseki underscored the need to improve care for women veterans, citing their military contributions and the complexity of issues women may return with from battle. Women represent almost 8 percent of the veteran population, as well as 6 percent of veterans who use VA health care services. VA officials expect that number to double within 10 years.

Mental Illness Costing Military Soldiers
The number of soldiers forced to leave the Army solely because of a mental disorder has increased by 64 percent from 2005 to 2009 and accounts for one in nine medical discharges, according to Army statistics. Last year, 1,224 soldiers with a mental illness, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, received a medical discharge. That was an increase from 745 soldiers in 2005 or about 7 percent of medical discharges that year. The trend matches other recent indicators that show a growing emotional toll on a military that has been fighting for seven years in Iraq and nine years in Afghanistan.

VA Creates New Registry for Soldiers Exposed to Hexavalent Chromium in Iraq
The Department of Veterans Affairs is launching a registry to aggressively track and treat veterans exposed to a cancer-causing chemical in Iraq in 2003. The national surveillance program will register hundreds of National Guard members who served at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant, looking for health problems associated with hexavalent chromium exposure, such as asthma and lung cancer. The monitoring is a victory for thousands of Army National Guard members and Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden, who proposed the registry after veterans with breathing and skin problems told him that VA staff did not understand the hazards of their assignment.

New PTSD Benefits Help Veterans
For troops fighting on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan, the real battle sometimes begins in earnest when they've made it home. Now red tape has been removed from benefits helping troops suffering PTSD get on the road to recovery more quickly. Veterans will no longer have to prove they experienced a traumatic event in order to receive benefits. Previously, veterans had to prove exposure to a traumatic event in a combat zone, which could have included being hit by an IED, involvement in a fire fight or taking mortar rounds.

Door Opens Wide for Veterans' Benefits
New federal rules will make it much easier for veterans to claim treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder - and officials are still trying to evaluate the likely impact. On the one hand, the relaxed rules might help veterans who are suffering, but some officials believe the new rules will also lead to fraudulent - and potentially expensive - claims of PTSD by some veterans.

The War Away from the BattlefieldsSuicide stalks the United States military as much as enemies do on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the latest grim data. Last year, 347 military personnel were killed in the two wars, while at least 381 warriors took their own lives. The double-edged tragedy was brought home in recent Congressional hearings that laid bare how much must be done to reach and comfort battle-wary soldiers near the edge of their resources.

Colorado Springs Veterans Program Shares Success Story with Congress
Representatives of Pikes Peak Behavioral Health Group recently discussed the success of its Peer Navigator program before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. The program connects veterans returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries with veterans who know how to navigate VA benefits and health care. Data collected from the program shows veterans who do not receive treatment for combat stress could cost their community as much as $60,000 per year in emergency room visits or public housing assistance.

A Mother's Mission: Help At-Risk Veterans
A New Jersey woman's son took his own life in 2008 only a few months after returning from his second tour in Iraq. He had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after his first tour, but was called back to duty without receiving treatment. Since her son's death, it has become her mission to increase communication between Veterans Affairs and returning soldiers in order to provide more resources to those veterans in need of treatment for combat-related mental health conditions like PTSD.

Indiana Soldier Denied VA Benefits
An Indiana veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury upon his return was denied benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder after Veterans Affairs doctors failed to properly diagnose him. When first examined, he was told he had depression and anxiety. After a second examination determined he suffered from PTSD, the VA wanted specific dates and details of combat incidents. Though his disability claims have been denied twice, he hopes the recent change made to PTSD claims will give him the opportunity to receive his benefits.  

Coming Home: 'Support Our Troops' More Than a Catchphrase
Recent reports show that U.S. soldiers killed themselves at the rate of one per day in June, a rate that made it the worst month on record for Army suicides. The count of confirmed or suspected suicides was 32, and 22 of the soldiers had been in combat at some time during their service. This is a grim reminder that many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan face problems - especially when they return home. Readjustment can be tough - and sometimes impossible - even for soldiers who have not endured extreme physical trauma.

Army Reports Record Number of Suicides for June
Soldiers killed themselves at the rate of one per day in June, making it the worst month on record for Army suicides. There were 32 confirmed or suspected suicides among soldiers in June, including 21 among active-duty troops and 11 among National Guard or Reserve forces, according to Army statistics. Seven soldiers killed themselves while in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan in June, and of the total suicides, 22 soldiers had been in combat, including 10 who had deployed two to four times.

New PTSD Rules Give Veterans Benefits Owed
The federal government has taken a big step forward in tackling one of its failures - identifying, treating and providing benefits for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. A new federal regulation is intended to make it easier for veterans to document PTSD and get the disability benefits they're owed and treatment they need - and it's about time. No longer will veterans have to jump through hoops, trying to pinpoint specific events that might have caused their PTSD. Instead, they will be able to get benefits if a Veterans Administration psychiatrist finds that conditions surrounding the time and place of their service could have contributed to their illness.

New Rules Mean More Benefits for Vets
While it's understood that veterans coming home from war have most likely been psychologically changed by the experience, some veterans have devastating and long-lasting effects. Recently, the Veterans Administration announced it's relaxing the burden on vets who are seeking benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder. Not everyone is in favor of the changes - some say it will increase the number of fraudulent claims. However, most veterans groups are applauding the new rules as an increased commitment from the VA to address the emotional wounds suffered by soldiers of America's wars.

Improved Treatment for PTSD 'Should Have Been Done a Long Time Ago,' Vietnam Vet Says
A Pennsylvania veteran of the Vietnam War who was repeatedly denied disability benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder welcomes the significant easing of the verification requirements for veterans seeking benefits and treatment. Though he left Vietnam 38 years ago, he dreams every night of his tours of duty and often wakes up screaming. Despite his verified combat service and obvious symptoms, it took him several years to secure disability benefits for service-related PTSD from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

West Virginia Rep Urges Vets to Seek PTSD Treatment Following VA Rule Change
U.S. Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV) applauded the Veterans Administration's plan to improve care for our nation's veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The new rules will make it easier for veterans - including those who may have been denied benefits in the past - to receive the care and benefits they need and deserve. "The VA has removed a huge roadblock between our veterans the help and benefits they deserve," Rahall said. "I urge veterans suffering with PTSD to apply or re-apply for VA Disability Benefits as quickly as possible. Veterans are eligible for VA health care and disability compensation packages regardless of their period of service. Nearly one in five veterans suffer from PTSD or major depression, and many veterans have been silently suffering without the care they need and have earned."

VA and Vets Groups Oppose Akaka's Proposal On Claims
The Veterans Affairs Department and major veterans groups have showed a united front in the battle to reduce the large and growing backlog of benefits claims. They agree that the 17 percent increase since the start of the year in the number of pending claims - including 207,568 pending for more than 125 years - is a sign of serious problems in the claims system. They also agree that the Claims Processing Improvement Act introduced by Senator Daniel Akaka, the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee chairman, is not the answer. Advocates have "grave concerns" over the bill, which attempts to improve and speed payments by developing a new standard for determining the severity of disabilities - adopting the same procedures currently used for Social Security disability benefits and workers' compensation. The proposed pilot program assumes - without any proof - that veterans and civilian disability is the same.

Record Number of Army Suicides in June
The U.S. Army has reported a record number of suicides in a single month among active duty, Guard and Reserve troops, despite an aggressive program of counseling, training and education aimed at suicide prevention. Suicides for the first half of the year are up 12 percent over 2009. In June, 32 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide, including 21 on active duty. And the problem is not isolated to the Army; in 2009, 52 Marines and 48 sailors took their own lives, and Air Force officials reported 41 active-duty suicides, a 12.5 per 100,000 ratio, in the same year. 

Veteran Advocates Applaud New PTSD Care Rules
Thousands of veterans and advocates were heartened when President Obama announced new rules to make the claim process easier and faster for military veterans suffering from PTSD. Previous to the changes, unless a veteran was a combat medal winner or had other obvious documentation showing combat experience, VA adjudicators were required to examine military records to verify whether he or she had actually experienced the incident in question. Those veterans who ultimately are classified as PTSD sufferers become eligible for a monthly payment, depending on the level or percentage of their disability. Medical help is also made available from the VA in the form of support groups, occasional one-on-one visits with a psychologist and prescription medications when called for.

VA Makes It Easier to Get Benefits for Post-Traumatic Stress
Veterans Affairs announced an improvement in the way it will handle veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Veterans seeking treatment no longer need to prove they experienced a specific traumatic event - or "stressor" - to receive benefits; they just need to prove they were in a war zone. Previously, the VA had to do a lengthy records search to prove a veteran seeking treatment for PTSD actually had experienced trauma. Now, they need only to be diagnosed by a VA doctor, and veterans previously rejected for PTSD benefits can reapply.

Shinseki: Proposals Would Boost Efficiency and Fairness at VA
Veterans Affairs Department Secretary Eric Shinseki has proposed a package of legislative changes to VA policy ranging from rules on presumption of service connection for illnesses to time limits for disagreeing with VA benefit claims decisions. Shinseki says the several pages of proposed changes would make life easier for veterans and for VA officials. Shinseki is also seeking more substantive changes, such as giving the VA more time to determine whether a condition should be presumed service-connected in Agent Orange and Gulf War cases.

VA Rules Help Veterans with PTSD Get Benefits
For many veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs has long been seen as an adversary, not an advocate. However, under retired Army General Eric Shinseki, the department has made some changes and issued new rules making it easier for veterans who say they're suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder to receive benefits and medical care.

New VA Rules Help Vets with PTSD
New rules announced by the VA mean veterans won't have to prove what caused their PTSD; instead, they would have to show that the conditions surrounding the time and place of their service could have contributed to their illness. The new rules also consider "perceived threats" as stress-causing events, such as a truck driver living in constant fear of a roadside bomb. The new rules will apply not only to veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to those who served in previous conflicts.

VA Simplifies PTSD Claims Process for Veterans
Starting this week, the Department of Veterans Affairs is making it easier for veterans to file claims for post-traumatic stress disorder. Scrapped were regulations requiring records searches, incident documentation and witness statements, which even the VA said could frustrate many veterans when those resources weren't readily available and slow the claim-approval process. Under the new rules, veterans need only provide basic evidence that they served in a war zone - not necessarily in combat - and were in a position to be exposed to hostile military or terrorist activity. A diagnosis of PTSD by a VA psychiatrist or psychologist is also required.

VA Finally Changing for the Better
Veterans Affairs Department Secretary Eric Shinseki has issued a simple regulation declaring an end to the old rule that VA adjudicators used for decades to deny service-related benefits to tens of thousands of veterans who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. The old rule required that veterans had to provably identify a specific combat-related "stressor" incident that caused their PTSD. But the reality of war, as psychiatrists have long maintained, is that there often isn't one single stressor that can be cited definitively as having caused a service member's PTSD.

Looking Forward to New VA Regulations
There are now guidelines in place that will help soldiers file claims for post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the most common after-effects of war. The Secretary of Veterans Affairs signed off on the change to try and streamline the process. VA officials say the new rules will speed claim filing time and lessen the requirements for approval.

As Brigade Returns Safe, Some Meet New Enemies
Though the soldiers of the Fourth Brigade, First Armored Division, have been home from Iraq for months now, the odds that some of them will die violent deaths continues. Given the brigade's record at Fort Bliss of suicide, murder, assault, drunken driving and drug use, its troops are statistically at greater risk at home than while deployed in Iraq. During the past year, only one of the unit's soldiers died in combat, but in 2008, seven soldiers were killed and six others committed crimes in which at least four civilians and soldiers from outside the brigade died in a little more than a year. And as the military continues to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, it has begun to shift some focus to the home front in an effort to ensure a smooth transition for soldiers.

Groups Find Trauma Rule for Veterans Lacking
A new federal regulation that is intended to make it easier for veterans to receive disability benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder is coming under fire from some of the advocates who had pushed for it. While the rule is a major improvement, it does not go far enough in lowering obstacles for veterans seeking health care or disability compensation for PTSD, veterans advocates say. At issue is a provision saying that a final determination on whether a veterans' disorder is tied to service - instead of, say, a car crash - can be made only by a physician or psychologist working for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Advocates are urging the department to allow private clinicians to make those determinations as well.

VA Easing Rules to Cover Stress Disorder
The government is preparing to issue new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits, a change that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars of Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. The regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs will essentially eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events like bomb blasts, firefights or mortar attacks that might have caused PTSD, an illness characterized by emotional numbness, irritability and flashbacks. Under the new rule, which applies to veterans of all wars, the Department will grant compensation to those with PTSD if they can simply show that they served in a war zone and in a job consistent with the events that they say caused their conditions. They would not have to prove, for instance, that they came under fire, served in a front-line unit or saw a friend killed.

Senator Pushes Follow-Up Check for PTSD, TBI in Soldiers
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wants to improve screening and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, both of which are common among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 700 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in the North Country suffer from PTSD, 675 from TBI and 400 from both. Gillibrand is co-sponsoring legislation to embed mental health providers with National Guard and Reserve units, and she also wants the Department of Defense to screen soldiers for these conditions six months after their return as well as right after.

Recognizing the Sacrifices of Family Members Who Care for Injured Service Members
For the thousands who have provided loving care for an injured soldier, a new law signed by President Obama in May offers some hope by providing a stipend, health insurance and counseling to family members who give up so much to provide care to their loved ones.

Veterans Struggle with Life Outside the Military
A new study indicates that while military members are generally happier and healthier than other American workers, military veterans fare worse than the general work force when it comes to their emotional and physical health, work environment and access to basic necessities. The study indicates veterans' overall well-being may depend on a wide range of subtle factors. It might help chart a path for veterans officials to follow for helping those who have served in the military by paying attention to what the active-duty military is doing to care for its troops.

Local Veteran's Suicide Reflects Troubling Trend
A Seattle native is among the war casualties that the Department of Veterans Affairs has just begun to track - young men and women who served in the post-9/11 military and killed themselves after struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and other war wounds. In 2007, the last year figures were available, the suicide rate for veterans ages 18 to 29 was 37.1 per 100,000, which is more than 80 percent higher than the rate for the civilian population and the active-duty military.

Policies Urged to Help Returning Veterans
U.S. Senator Gillibrand has announced efforts to improve services and care for veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suffering from mental illnesses and traumatic brain injuries. Mental illness and brain injuries affect more than 35 percent of those veterans. Gillibrand said that she is urging Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to adopt specific policy changes within the VA and Department of Defense systems to bolster monitoring and treatment. She pointed out troubles now in the system that prevent veterans from getting the best care in a timely manner.

Wounds of a Modern War Harm Troops' Families, Too
Nearly 40,000 U.S. service members have been wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the wars. Two types of wounds are considered the "signature injuries" of those battlefields - traumatic brain injuries and amputations. Diagnoses by the military health system of traumatic brain injuries rose 136 percent between 2001 and 2009, from 11,830 cases to 27,862 cases.

VA to Develop Fully Automated Online System to Handle Disability Compensation Claims
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki has announced plans to develop a fully automated online system for handling veterans' disability compensation claims. More than a simple digitization of existing paper-based claims, the new system is part of the VA's modernization of the end-to-end processing workflow. Automation will substantially reduce processing time and increase accuracy while simplifying the way that veterans interact with the claims process.

How We're Failing Our Female Veterans
More than 230,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past nine years, and women account for 15 percent of the active duty military. But when they arrive home, become civilians again and start seeking help for PTSD, reproductive disorders and other maladies, they are shuffled into a veterans' hospital system that can feel like a relic. Some female veterans' health care needs are more obvious than others, but treatment for mental health issues can be hampered by a doctor who is not accustomed to female patients.

Program Helping Service Women Cope with PTSD
Many soldiers will return home bearing the scars of battle, but some will be the invisible wounds of post-traumatic stress disorder. For women - traditional caregivers - PTSD can be especially disabling - which is where Project Odyssey comes in. Run by the Wounded Warriors Project, the program weaves activities like horseback riding with counseling sessions to treat the cancer of the soul that can take hold in emotional fissures, opened by the invisible wounds inflicted by war on these women.

War Games: Video at the Heart of Modern Warfare and the Attempt to Heal Our Modern Soldiers
Gamer skills have a key role to play not only in fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but in healing the wounded. Doctors across the nation are now perfecting the use of virtual reality to re-create the trauma that many soldiers can't access on their own but still plagues their civilian lives. The key to treating patients with PTSD is to get them to re-experience the triggering situation in a way that allows them to realize that it happened in the past and that they are now safe.

Pentagon Orders System to Track Soldiers for Brain Injuries
Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, III has issued a memo calling for the Defense Department to develop systems that would track soldiers who experience concussions on the battlefield and match them to specific events in combat in an effort to better treat them, a shortcoming that the department has been sharply criticized for not resolving.

Toxic Sand: Another Enemy in Afghanistan?
In a recent presentation at a neurotoxicology conference, a senior scientist with the Navy Environmental Health Effects Laboratory said that dust kicked up in sandstorms contains manganese and other metals. His remarks were the result of a study that showed returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq are experiencing impairments such as memory loss and difficulty concentrating, which may not always be attributable to traumatic brain injuries. Soldiers caught in sandstorms may inhale toxic particles, which can be carried to the brain, lungs and other organs.

Cloud of Smoke Could Put Soldiers' Lives at Risk
The American Lung Association recently issued a strong recommendation for the military to discontinue the use of open-air trash burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan because they are a dangerous health risk. Hundreds of soldiers who've been exposed to the burn pits say inhaling the toxic smoke has inflicted them with severe breathing problems and even cancer.

For Wounded Warriors, Orland Nonprofit Brings Healing on a Leash
A handful of soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and anger issues are being helped by a new nonprofit organization founded by an Orlando woman. Paws for Vets is her grassroots attempt to provide psychiatric service dogs, canine trainers and supplies to servicemen and women in need.

Military Attacks Mental Health Stigmas
Several military leaders testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about their progress in coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and reducing the suicide rate among service personnel. The military is working to provide better access to care through technology, which includes a program that provides soldiers with instantaneous online counseling.

Military Suicides Remain High, Especially Among Reservists
While the Army is reporting a decline in suicides among active duty soldiers, suicides among reservists who have returned home and aren't on active duty totaled 53 this year through mid-June, up 26 percent from the comparable period last year. Suicides among active duty Army dropped 30 percent through mid-June from a year earlier, to 62.

Services and VA Use Technology for Stress and Resilience Outreach
The military services and the Veterans Health Administration of the Veterans Affairs Department increasingly use digital technology to reach out to identify and treat servicemembers with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Increasingly, they are turning toward the "virtual" intervention of the Internet and digital technology.

Military Tries Acupuncture to Treat Troops for PTSD
Acupuncture is endorsed by many Western medicine practitioners as a treatment for physical pain, and now the therapy - along with other Eastern practices, including yoga, meditation and tai chi - is slowly making inroads in Western medicine as a treatment for mental pain. The military is leading the pack.

Hawaii Senator Urging Coordination Over Traumatic Brain Injuries
Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka is urging stronger coordination between the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments over traumatic brain injuries. He and other senators are calling for prompt action to finalize and implement the Defense Department's draft policy mandating evaluation and rest periods for those with TBIs.

Suicide Rivals the Battlefield Toll on U.S. Military
Nearly as many American troops at home and abroad have committed suicide this year as have been killed in combat in Afghanistan. Alarmed at the growing rate of soldiers taking their own lives, the Army has begun investigating its mental health and suicide prevention programs - but the tougher challenge is changing a culture that is very much about "manning up" when things get difficult.

VA Faces Flood of New Claims and Charges of a 'Hostile' Work Environment
The Veterans Affairs Department faces a wave of more than a million new disability claims this year, a workload compounded by delays in developing automated systems to process them, department officials and representatives of veterans service organizations told House lawmakers recently.

VA Trims Benefits Paperwork by 13 Pages
Veterans Affairs officials announced today they've revised paperwork for first-time disability and pension claims, shortening the 23-page form down to a mere 10-page application. In a statement, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said the move symbolizes "changes underway to make VA more responsive to veterans and their families."

List Troops Exposed to Toxins, Hill Asks
The Department of Defense is under orders to consider creating an official registry detailing incidents of personnel who are exposed to toxic chemicals during military service, such as an event involving members of the Indiana National Guard serving in Iraq in 2003. The goal, according to the report, is "to monitor possible health risks and provide necessary treatment to those exposed."

With Traumatic Brain Injuries, Soldiers Face Battle for Care
Yet brain-injured soldiers at Fort Bliss have had to wait weeks and sometimes months just to get appointments with doctors, medical records show. Many have received far less therapy than is typical at well-regarded civilian clinics. In some instances, Fort Bliss medical officers have suggested that the soldiers are malingerers or that the main root of their cognitive problems is psychological.

One-Third of Veterans May Experience PTSD and Depression
Up to a third of veterans returning from combat may experience depression or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often along with alcohol misuse or aggressive behavior comorbidity, and the risk of developing dementia is nearly twice as high in veterans with PTSD as in those without, according to the results of two studies published in the June issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Military Still Failing to Diagnose and Treat Brain Injuries
The military medical system is failing to diagnose brain injuries in troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom receive little or no treatment for lingering health problems, an investigation by NPR and ProPublica has found.

Post-Combat Stress Disrupting Daily Lives of Returning Vets
Up to 14 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression that is severe enough to disrupt their daily lives, new research shows.

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
But despite the widely felt moral obligation to our veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs takes an average of four-and-a-half years to process veterans' disability benefits claims and appeals, while the private health care industry takes an average of three months, including the time it takes patients to dispute claims payments, as of 2008. These inordinate delays in distributing disability benefits are taking an unconscionable toll on our veterans.

More Help for Vermont Guard Members and Families
Soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injury and other signature injuries of those wars. Vermont has come up with a series of programs to deal with those issues. And what Vermont is doing is being seen as a national model.

Many Vets Missing Out on Thousands of Dollars
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a program for veterans over the age of 65 called Aid and Attendance. Despite some being able to receive more than $23,000 a year through the program, officials with Veterans Financial said only one in three eligible vets are enrolled.