ptsd Att'n All Hands: Cong. Filner

[Berta]

from Colonel Dan and other vet orgs:

PS all Congressman Filner will be our guest speaker again on August 1, 2007 at SVR Veterans broadcast-podcast www.stardustradio.com

---------------------

"To contact the Committee, please write to:

House Committee on Veterans' Affairs

335 Cannon House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

or call: (202) 225-9756

Filner says PTSD misdiagnoses cheat vets

By Rick Maze - Staff writer

Posted : Thursday Jun 28, 2007 20:43:46 EDT

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/06/mili...edvets_070628w/

The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee plans a summer attack on the military’s disability review system, hoping that congressional hearings focusing on what he called the “terrible scandal of deliberate misdiagnosis” of mental health problems could lead to an overhaul of government policies.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said he expects to have veterans testify they were improperly diagnosed as having pre-existing personality disorders rather than post-traumatic stress disorder, a move that denies service members military disability benefits and could, under some circumstances, even leave them with no post-service veterans’ benefits if their mental health problems have led to misconduct, such as abuse of alcohol or drugs.

“This is a real scandal, in my opinion, to save a few dollars ... that wrecks lives,” Filner said Thursday in a meeting with reporters to talk about committee plans.

Dates for the hearings have not been set, but he mentioned August — when Congress generally takes a break — as a possibility in order to draw extra attention to the testimony.

Filner accused the military of “purposeful misdiagnosis” and of misleading service members into believing that accepting a pre-service personality disorder as the root of their problems would still leave them with government help.

“There were lies, real lies,” Filner said.

Filner said he has raised the issue with the Army, which said it had reviewed instances in which Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were determined to have personality disorders rather that combat-related mental health issues. Army officials said they did not find any instances of misdiagnosis.

“I guess they just went back and asked the doctors who made the diagnoses if they made any mistakes, and they all said they hadn’t,” Filner said.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has tried to address the issue in a bill to improve the government’s policies for wounded combat veterans. Under the Senate bill, S 1606, a person who has spent 30 or more days on active duty is presumed to be in sound physical and mental condition for the purposes of establishing eligibility for disability retired pay. The only exception would be if there is “compelling evidence” or medical proof the disability existed before military service began.

Filner said he had not seen the Senate proposal but agreed with the concept that the government should not look for excuses to deny benefits to military members and veterans.

“We need to change the adversarial process,” Filner said, adding that his long-term goal would be to attempt a dramatic change in the veterans’ health care system so that simply being a veteran would be sufficient to receive treatment, without having to first prove that an injury, illness or disease is service-connected."

__._,_.___

[john999]

Gee, the military cheating vets out of compensation by saying they have Personality disorders instead of PTSD or some other mental disorder? It happened 37 years ago to me and it is still going on today. How many thousands of vets were screwed out of benefits during that time? I was lucky since I got it turned around, but the VA is still trying to say my problems are due to a PD even after paying me at the 100% rate for mental/emotional disorder. It has only taken Congress 40 years to catch on to this fact. I guess Vietnam vets were not important enough for anyone to care if we got our lives ruined.

[Berta]

It is dejavu Vietnam all over again-

they got away with this then and many vets didnt appeal-

these days there is too much info on the net to help vets fight this stuff for them to get away with it much-- maybe----

hope those SOs know more about PTSD then they used to-

[Jay Johnson]

What ever happened to a presumption of health when entering the military? The regs are in the veterans' favor; they're just not being applied correctly. Perhaps with a government push they will clear it up.....PD is a very rare issue and not very well understood. There is NO way that many people have PD from the military...NO WAY.

[cloudcroft]

"Presumption of soundness" is still there...it's just that most vets probably aren't informed enough about it or, they just don't have the long-haul perseverance to continue their claim, or, they accept an initial denial decision and just give up. And other vets, for whatever reasons, just can't argue these points of their claim effectively...this kind of vet needs a very good VSO to do it for him/her.

-- John D.

What ever happened to a presumption of health when entering the military? The regs are in the veterans' favor; they're just not being applied correctly. Perhaps with a government push they will clear it up.....PD is a very rare issue and not very well understood. There is NO way that many people have PD from the military...NO WAY.

Edited June 30, 2007 by cloudcroft