This story actually highlights how inept any kind of health care system run by the government would be:
The government’s sweeping list of promises to make wounded Iraq war veterans whole, at least financially, has not reached this small house in the hills of rural West Virginia, where one vehicle has already been repossessed and the answering machine screens for bill collectors. The Turners have not been making it on an $860-a-month disability check from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
After revelations about the poor treatment of outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center earlier this year, President Bush appointed a commission to study the care of the nation’s war-wounded. The panel returned with bold recommendations, including the creation of a national cadre of caseworkers and a complete overhaul of the military’s disability system that compensates wounded soldiers.
But so far, little has been done to sort out the mess of bureaucracy or put more money in the hands of newly disabled soldiers who are fending off evictions and foreclosures.
In the Turner house, that leaves an exhausted wife with chipped nail polish to hold up the family’s collapsing world. “Stand Together,” a banner at a local cafe reminds Michelle. But since Troy came back from Iraq in 2003, the burden of war is now hers.
Michelle has spent hundreds of hours at the library researching complicated VA policies and disability regulations. “You need two college degrees to understand any of it,” she says, lacking both. She scavenges information where she can find it. A psychotic Vietnam vet she met in a VA hospital was the one who told her that Troy might be eligible for Social Security benefits.
Of course the MSM being as biased as they are try to spin this into scoring some political points. “See! Look how veterans are treated!”
But in reality this shows how screwed up huge bureaucracies are, and the veteran health care bureaucracy wont even compare to what kind of huge behemoth socialized medicine will be. Macsmind, someone who knows what he is talking about in this regard, has a few points:
I hate the story because as a disable veteran I know how screw up the system can be. I also hate it because the only time you see the MSM covering such a story is when they’re trying to make political points – period.
As some of you know I do public speaking on the side and the area I speak of is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.
I advise people on filing claims for PTSD (which can happen to anyone who experienced a life threating situation), that they are facing an uphill battle. That is true whether or not you are filing it with the VA or the Social Security Administration or even for State Benefits.
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So a detailed diagnosis is difficult. One of the things psychiatrists – the only one qualified to make a diagnosis – will try to ascertain in a diagnosis is whether or not the disability occured specific to duty, or was agravated by duty. Each will award the individual a disability rating, but in the case of agravation by duty the rating will be lower.
In Troy’s case the VA acknowledged his disability yet not at the level that would satisfy. I have three blown out disks caused by service (bad drop), and have a 20 percent rating although I live on pain meds and have a possibility of becoming totally paralyzed in the future due to degeneration of the vertebrae.
There is nothing on the surface wrong with Troy’s award , many get a lot less.
Instead of the MSM acknowledging that huge bureaucracies cause this kind of red tape, including HillaryCare if ever enacted, they instead chose to write a typical BDS type article. It’s all Bush’s fault. Once he’s gone then the bureaucracy will suddenly and magically become a well oiled machine.
Sigh….
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