Veterans Legal Support Center Blog

By Ed O’Keefe

http://www.washingtonpost.com

This is not your typical training video.

With thousands of military veterans returning regularly from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Veterans Affairs is facing new pressures to adapt and serve a new generation that still regularly refuses government-backed health care and benefits provided to them.

Consistent with a push to use the Internet and social media to help turn around its reputation as obstructionist, antiquated and overwhelmed, the VA recently hired U.S. Army veteran Kyle Hausmann-Stokes to produce a new four-minute training video for department employees and new hires.

“Doubts” cost the VA about $18,000 to produce and stars a reluctant young Army veteran who is dropped off outside the VA Greater Los Angeles Health Care System. In the video above (or here), you hear a veteran’s voiced-over thoughts as he walks through the lobby. He’s concerned no one will listen to him, that he’s not worthy of the care, and that various veterans programs don’t work. But the myths are quickly dispelled as he walks through the building.

The film ends with a VA physician asking the veteran, “Is this not what you expected?”

“You know what? It’s not what I expected at all,” the veteran says.

VA officials said they hope the video will remind department employees to provide good customer service to veterans and that it will remind them of what the system — often confusing, time-consuming and daunting — looks like to veterans just getting home.

The VA has hired some of its toughest critics to help woo Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans as just a quarter of all living U.S. military veterans regularly access the department’s services. Most notably, it hired Army of Dude blogger Alex Horton as its official blogger to continue calling out the department for its shortfalls. Though he has ruffled feathers, Horton’s new VAntage Point blog is widely read among veterans and VA staffers.

By MARGERY A. BECK

The Associated Press October 7, 2011, 6:45PM ET

OMAHA, Neb.

By DENNIS YUSKO Staff writer

Published 12:00 a.m., Tuesday, October 4, 2011

BALLSTON — The Capital Region’s first residence for female homeless veterans opened in Saratoga County Monday amid other exciting developments for women who have served in the military.

The Guardian House, the second shelter in New York strictly dedicated to female veterans, debuted with two full-time residents, Budd Mazurek, executive director with the Saratoga County Rural Preservation Co., said. The home has 10 beds and will expand to 12 in the coming weeks.

The agency operates the women’s home at 1214 Route 50 collaboratively with its male veterans’ transitory home, the VET House in Ballston Spa, which it has run for 22 years.

“If our male house is any indication, we will fill up and remain full with a waiting list,” said Mazurek.

The Guardian House is working with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other organizations to locate homeless female veterans. As residents of the home, the women can try to reintegrate into society with the assistance of mental health and substance counseling, job training and other services.

The home’s supporters raised about $300,000 in private donations over three years and received a $212,000 grant from the VA to purchase the home, make repairs and furnish it, Mazurek said.

One of the driving forces behind the home was county Supervisor Joanne Yepsen. The Saratoga Springs Democrat is now spearheading a Women Veterans Symposium from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 17 in the state Military Museum on Lake Avenue in Saratoga Springs. The event aims to identify struggling female veterans so they can be connected to services and programs, Yepsen said.

Also, the Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany in the coming months will open a women’s wellness center on its eighth floor, where former female military personnel will access gender-specific care through a single physician for the first time, said Jane Weber, female veterans program manager at Stratton. Women now make up 2,300, or 8 percent, of patients at the VA hospital, up from 4 percent, Weber said, and the VA wants to increase that number to 14 percent.

Women comprise an estimated 14 percent of all military personnel. The VA does not know exactly how many homeless female veterans there are in the state or Capital Region. Female veterans face many of the same stress-related combat illnesses as their male counterparts, but they are also vulnerable to sexual attacks and trauma, Weber said.

About 12 percent of homeless veterans under age 34 are female, Weber said. Sometimes, the women have children, which creates an additional set of problems, she said.

On Saturday, 342 veterans who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless visited the 23rd annual Stand-Down for Homeless Veterans event at the Colonie Elks Lodge 2192, Chairman Doug Williamssaid. Local hospitals and medical students examined the veterans for health problems and connected them up with the VA. At least 28 of the veterans were women, Williams said.

Those who would like to participate in the Oct. 17 Women Veterans Symposium should contact harriettfinch@aol.com. Those seeking to apply for a bed in the Guardian House should contact Patricia Whitaker-Torres at 885-0091, Ext. 109.

10:29 AM EDT on Monday, October 3, 2011

By G. Wayne Miller

Journal Staff Writer

By March 2008, John DiRaimo had been home from Iraq for nearly two years.

Still an active member of the Rhode Island Army National Guard, he was living in a Cranston apartment and periodically visiting the Providence VA Medical Center for treatment of what he now understood was PTSD. He was not fully complying with the terms of his care, and his life had become unbearable.

His nightmares continued and sometimes, in his bedroom in the middle of the night, he saw the apparition of a young Iraqi girl who may have been tortured and killed by Saddam Hussein’s forces, her mutilated body buried in a distant part of what became the U.S. camp at Ar Ramadi, where DiRaimo was based.

Awake, he cycled through periods of anxiety, anger and depression. His engagement to Susan Storti had ended, the strain of his PTSD having proved destructive, but they remained close friends.

“I just couldn’t take it,” DiRaimo says. “The nightmares were too strong, too vivid. I was getting no sleep. I was just totally burnt out, and I just felt that life wasn’t worth it anymore.”

DiRaimo owned a pistol, and sometimes he slept with it, loaded, under his pillow. He had prescription drugs in his medicine cabinet, enough for a fatal overdose, he figured. And so on this day in March 2008 –– after three nights of no sleep, after binge drinking –– he sat on his couch, gun and pills within reach, and prepared to kill himself.

Storti found him. DiRaimo was not answering his phone, so she let herself in with her key.

Storti took away the gun and pills.

What were you going to do? she said.

I can’t live no more, DiRaimo said. It’s too much for me.

You have to live.

I can’t. All the horrors I’ve seen –– they won’t get out of my head.

DiRaimo hated this stranger he had become. He couldn’t resolve the guilt he felt over having lived while others died — others, including many half his age, their lives still ahead of them, that he could not save.

“My biggest thing is not what I did out there,” he says today. “It’s what I couldn’t do. That weighed so heavy on me. I just couldn’t handle it.”

Storti took DiRaimo to the VA Medical Center, where he was admitted to a psychiatric ward. He stayed a week. His medications were adjusted and he began to appreciate the therapeutic value of unburdening himself, of talking with professionals individually and with groups of other veterans who experienced similarly unspeakable things.

“I had so many issues to get out,” he says. “That started the whole thing.”

After discharge, DiRaimo joined a drop-in case-management class organized by Rochelle Fortin, a social worker and therapist at the VA Medical Center who coordinated the center’s PTSD clinic for two decades.

Growing numbers of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were joining the veterans of the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam who, to that point, composed the predominant population receiving treatment. Fortin helped arrange for DiRaimo and other post-9/11 soldiers to be admitted to a six-week inpatient PTSD program at Northampton VA Medical Center in Massachusetts.

At Northampton, he discussed his distress with a Catholic chaplain.

When I was in Iraq, he told the priest, I know I killed some people: insurgents and terrorists and people that were trying to kill us. And I killed several of them. I want to go to Communion, but am I a murderer? Am I a killer?

No, the priest said. As long as you were doing it to protect yourself or to protect others, as you do in war, you’re not considered a murderer. You can get Communion.

A Wednesday in August 2011 in a conference room in Building 14: the PTSD Clinic, Providence VA Medical Center.

To help relax, DiRaimo rides his Harley-Davidson on the open highway. He needs to be wary of large trucks, which trigger traumatic memories The Providence Journal / John Freidah

DiRaimo and several other Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have gathered around the table for the weekly drop-in session run by Fortin, who now has greater responsibilities as OEF/OIF/OND (Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn) Program Manager. But she continues to provide some individual therapy, and she hosts this two-hour meeting every week.

Typically at these meetings, discussion centers on mental health — its effects on the veterans themselves and the people in their lives. Fortin moderates and offers guidance on managing anger, stress and the withdrawal-like symptoms some veterans experience leaving the adrenaline rush of combat. She encourages the veterans to stay on the therapeutic road, regardless of setbacks.

On this August day, DiRaimo, 50 now, recounts recent events involving his girlfriend, Joyce LaForge, who he has been seeing since his engagement to Storti ended. DiRaimo is three years seriously into treatment, but his PTSD still sometimes overwhelms him. This is the nature of the disorder.

In this instance, DiRaimo has withdrawn completely for days, locking and barricading his apartment door and ignoring his phone. He zoned out with TV and his thoughts turned, as they have before, to the contrast of life in Iraq and life back home.

“How come I can’t handle it here?” DiRaimo says to the group. “This is easy stuff. The stuff we went through was horrendous and people around here couldn’t even deal with it. We dealt with it. But we come home and we can’t handle the easiest, easiest things. And I can’t even pick up the phone and say, ‘I’m having a bad time, yeah, I need you to come over.’ Or, ‘I’m having a bad time, I just need to be by myself.’ ”

When DiRaimo and his girlfriend did finally talk, he listened.

“I started thinking: a lot of stuff she said is true. I keep it to myself. I try to be the man, I try not to cry — and yet, I do cry. I’ll admit it. I do. I break down. I get to the point where I don’t want to call anybody and talk to anybody, and I don’t want to show my emotions but my emotions do come out.”

“In order to survive over there,” Fortin says, “part of it was being able to numb out your feelings and not deal with really what was going on emotionally — but getting through the mission. Then you come home, and you have all of that kind of baggage with you. Things start to unfold. You’re in therapy, you’re processing some of what’s happened, and it’s OK to cry. We’ve said that over and over: It is OK to cry. It’s part of the healing process.”

“It kills me,” DiRaimo says. “All the time I was over there, I didn’t cry once. I didn’t break down. I was the sergeant. I was in charge of seven, eight other guys. I couldn’t afford to break down and I did my job and I did it well, and all my guys came back alive. Why the hell can’t I figure out [stuff] here? That’s what bothers me the most. I’m on medication and it helps, but lately… ”

Veterans, reservists and active members of all branches are welcome at Fortin’s Wednesday sessions. Newcomers sometimes join regular participants that also include Massachusetts Guardsman Joe Petrone of East Greenwich; Santo Lobuono, a Navy reservist from Scituate; ex-R.I. Guardsman Richard Krepp of North Smithfield; ex-R.I. Guardsman John Fournier of Lincoln; R.I. Guardsman Sekou Toure of Pawtucket; and ex-Marine and ex-Guardsman Robert Kohler Jr., originally from Coventry.

Former Army soldier Richard Menard of Whitinsville, Mass., is also a regular member — and on this August day he, like DiRaimo, has an episode of depression to share. It was prompted by what psychologists call a trigger: a noise, sound, smell, sight, anniversary, death, news report, conversation or other stimulus that resurrects traumatic memory, precipitating painful reaction.

In the case of Menard, who ordinarily brings an optimistic wisdom to the group, several recent triggers have combined to bring him low. He has further withdrawn into the security of his tool shed, the one place he truly feels safe. Seeking similar isolation, other veterans find comfort in a windowless basement or bedroom with blinds closed.

“I just lost a good confidante,” Menard says. “He was a Marine Vietnam vet. So I have no one to really cope with anymore. He was the person I could go to in the afternoon, just before I picked up my son, to break up the day — get me out of the shed for a while, because I spend most of my time in my shed.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Fortin says.

This week marks the anniversary of the suicide of Menard’s best friend’s son.

“A lot of times he’ll be sad, he’ll go the graveyard and visit his son, and then he’ll come and see me. And unburden his problems on me. Then, they trickle onto me the next day.” The dead Vietnam vet also used to visit Menard in his shed. “And my wife sits in the same chair and she’ll tell me her burdens. So I got this counseling room going on. And I ain’t doing too much counseling for myself right now.”

“You definitely want to take care of you in all of this,” Fortin says.

With hard effort, John DiRaimo has found a measure of peace. Honorably retired from the military, he receives income from government disability programs. He rents a new apartment in Cranston, where an American flag blanket covers his bed. He finds pleasure on his motorcycle and in his pickup truck, which he lovingly tends, and he enjoys the company of his daughter, Kristen, a 2010 Providence College graduate who works for a doctor and plans to become a physician’s assistant. She is protective of her dad.

DiRaimo continues in a relationship with his girlfriend, and Storti remains his friend as well. In her consulting work on veterans’ issues, Storti sometimes tells his story. And her early experiences with DiRaimo and other veterans and their families moved her to initiate the inter-agency study that produced “The Rhode Island Blueprint: Addressing the Needs of Returning Soldiers and Their Families,” a statewide plan to help the men and women who have fought the post-9/11 wars. It has become a national model, she says, recognized by the Department of Defense.

But war forever changed DiRaimo: For him, as for many, it was the monumental division of a life into two, sometimes irreconcilable, parts. DiRaimo agreed to share his story in the hope that other veterans who need help will get it — and that it will advance public understanding of PTSD and other issues facing many women and men for decades to come.

Coming home, he says, “the biggest thing that really, really pissed me off — and today, it still pisses me off — is [hearing] ‘Get over it.’ You know what? If I could get over it, I’d love it. I’d love it. And I would be as normal as whatever normal is. But there is no pill –– believe me, I’ve asked every friggin’ doctor. There is no pill. There’s no book you can read. There’s no movie you can watch.”

Asked his fondest wish, DiRaimo says:

“Let me not have so many triggers, let me not have so many visions, let me not have so many nightmares. But I don’t wish I’d never been there, because we did do a lot of good. And we got a lot of bad guys. I’m glad I was there, I’m glad I served my country. And I was with my guys and I’m proud of that, I’m very proud of all of them.”

A smile crosses his face.

“Maybe I wish I could forget it for a day — one whole day, one whole night. No, I’m going to be greedy: one whole week of not remembering any of it. Just one week! Oh, and I want eight hours’ sleep. Eight hours’ sleep with no dreaming.”

This, too, DiRaimo remembers.

A summer day in 2005, a distant area of the vast Camp Ar Ramadi, Anbar Province, Iraq. The Guard’s 861st Engineer Company has recently arrived and, on this day, DiRaimo is observing heavy-equipment operations. Men with machines are fortifying perimeter defenses.

DiRaimo is having a smoke when his boot contacts something hard.

“I kicked something and it looks like a bone,” DiRaimo says. He thinks it’s the remnants of a meal, of a rib of beef. “I said, ‘What the hell is a rib bone doing down here?’ It was broken, snapped, but not all the way. What the hell? I kick again and I see another one.”

DiRaimo digs into the sand.

“I see these little things that look like teeth. I find this little jaw. Little teeth. All the bones were all broken, the teeth all knocked out.”

Other bodies would be discovered in this outer region of Camp Ar Ramadi. The rumor would spread that deposed dictator Saddam Hussein operated a torture center in the vicinity.

“I found out later that’s where Saddam tortured old people and little children to make the parents talk,” DiRaimo says. “This evil man did that.”

The little girl, who was estimated to be about 7 or 8 years old, was given a proper burial. The Americans never learned her identity.

Back in Rhode Island, in his bedroom in the middle of the night, DiRaimo sometimes wakes up sweating. The little Iraqi girl stands at the foot of his bed. She has long black hair and wears a pretty dress. She is silent. DiRaimo thinks he must be completely crazy.

This year, in the summer of 2011, he finally shares this burden. He tells Storti about the girl.

She’s in heaven, Storti says. You released her from the horror.

Months have since passed. The girl has not visited DiRaimo again.

Coming Sunday: Day Three, Skyping from Kabul. Families hold it together when mom or dad is deployed to a war zone.About this series

On Oct. 7, 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States and Great Britain attacked Afghanistan in what was labeled Operation Enduring Freedom. The War on Terror had begun. On March 20, 2003, when allied forces invaded Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom was also under way.

In the decade since then, 43 soldiers with Rhode Island and Southeastern New England ties have died. Thousands of veterans have returned forever changed.

In “The War on Terror: Coming Home,” a seven-installment series beginning Oct. 2 and concluding Nov. 6, The Providence Journal tells the stories of several who served.

By Karen Caffarini Post-Tribune correspondent September 26, 2011 5:26PM

CROWN POINT — Married couple Jeremy and Lindsey Lloyd, of Valparaiso, returned home from serving in Afghanistan together a month ago, both with anxiety issues and difficulties adjusting to life back home.

“We still can’t sleep. We heard a commercial the other night and we thought it was a rocket attack,” Lindsey Lloyd, 31, a member of the Army, said. It turned out to be an ad for a video game.

Being around a lot of people and driving have been difficult as well for the couple, both of whom were truck drivers overseas. Jeremy, 29, with the Army Reserves, did convoy security and Lindsey made sure another base had a full supply of food, water and fuel.

The Lloyds were among many active service members and veterans seeking help at the new replacement Adam Benjamin Jr. VA Outpatient Clinic in Crown Point on Monday, its opening day.

Jill Carley, clinic director at the Crown Point clinic, said the facility is expert at treating post-traumatic stress disorder like the Lloyds are experiencing.

Providing comfort

Employees of the Crown Point clinic said the first day had been going smoothly. Staff members were escorting patients to the particular areas they needed to visit — primary care, rehabilitation, women’s care, dental, etc. — as a courtesy as they adjust to the new surroundings.

“We don’t want to make people more anxious,” she said.

Carley said the building was specifically designed to make it easy for patients. Pharmacy and the blood lab are to the left as you come in; transportation service to the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago and enrollment are to the right; and check-in was straight ahead.

Those who had been going to and working at the adjacent, smaller 40,000-square-feet clinic, gave thumbs up to the new, 70,000-square-feet building at 93rd and Broadway.

“This is something else. Beautiful,” said George Kramer, of Valparaiso, an Army veteran.

Virginia O’Leary, 74, a former Marine who lives in Hammond, was one of the first people to use the new expanded women’s health section inside the building.

“I like having our own section. It is private and makes you feel more special,” said O’Leary, who added she has been going to the VA clinics since 1983, beginning with Lakeside.

Special women’s section

Carley said the expanded women’s section is a directive from Washington, which said female veterans must have a separate area from men.

“Women veterans have very different needs. Some don’t want to be with men; some have small children and they like to be in an area where the children won’t bother the other patients,” Carley said, pointing out the waiting room has toys for small children.

She said 14 percent of veterans today are women.

Cindy Berg, a registered nurse in the women’s health clinic, said 700 women are enrolled in the clinic and about eight to 12 females are seen each day.

In the rehabilitation room, physical therapist Ramon Gerona was admiring the view from the windows and the modern equipment that came with the new surroundings, including a True Stretch machine that resembles monkey bars and other machines to help with frozen shoulders and other issues.

Carley showed an area where patients who have lost limbs can learn how to take a shower and bath.

In a nearby classroom, an educator was giving a class on diabetes.

The only area that was not up and running on Monday was the dental area, but it should be operational by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Carley said the clinic treats about 13,000 patients a year from Lake, Porter, Newton, Starke and Jasper counties. It also provides transportation service three times a day to Jesse Brown Medical Center in Chicago.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned for 1 p.m. Nov. 4, she said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-bc-us–tv-extrememakeover-michelleobama,0,5657238.story

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michelle Obama found an unusual ally — reality TV — in her effort to bring attention to the needs of military families.

The first lady, appearing Sunday on the two-part season premiere of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” (7-9 p.m. EDT) says the program was the right platform for the cause.

“We live in a media age, and one of the things we still share is our love of television” and the stories it can tell so effectively, Obama said. “We thought this was an extraordinary venue to highlight the struggles and challenges and triumphs of a special family.”

Barbara Marshall of Fayetteville, N.C., who served in the Navy for 15 years, was dismayed by the number of homeless female veterans and established Steps-N-Stages Jubilee House to provide shelter, counseling and other aid. When the house grew cramped and inadequate, “Extreme Makeover” and the first lady stepped in.

She joined with series host Ty Pennington, a local builder and community volunteers on the Jubilee House project and was on hand at the unveiling to surprise Marshall.

The episode focuses on a “powerful story, powerful woman, powerful group of women who are coming together and helping one another. So we’re pretty excited about this as a vehicle for telling their story,” Obama said.

Marshall is evidence that many military families who face their own challenges “still find ways to serve others,” Obama said.

The show should also carry the message that strong, independent veterans might not ask for help and seek assistance, she said. Obama said she hadn’t seen the program in its finished version.

“So it’s incumbent upon us to not make them ask for help. And, hopefully, by watching this show, viewers will get some ideas in their heads of how they can come together, whether it’s as individuals, or as church groups, or as school groups, or as teachers or as employers” and find ways to help military families, she said.

The first lady is also seen on more familiar ground in the show, giving Pennington a tour of the White House grounds.

She and Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, help lead Joining Forces, an initiative intended to increase public awareness and support of families of the men and women serving in the military.

The American Legion – September 23, 2011

The Department of Veterans Affairs has finally posted an expanded list of U.S. Navy ships exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The so-called Brown Water ship list comes a year after U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chided the agency for failing to obtain key military records showing that sailors on the ships were presumed exposed to the toxic herbicide. The updated list – which is not complete – was supposed to be available Aug. 1. The agency has not offered an explanation for the delay.

Akaka’s staff found hundreds of cases in which VA regional offices across the country did not request deck logs from the National Archives before rejecting Agent Orange claims from Vietnam Navy veterans. The senator, then chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, asked VA to review the cases of sailors whose claims appear to have been inappropriately rejected. VA expanded the list of oceangoing Navy vessels presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange from 150 to 170 ships, in part because of information Akaka’s staff provided.

As of April, VA had re-examined about 6,700 of the 16,820 cases Akaka called to the agency’s attention, said Tom Pamperin, deputy under secretary for Disability Assistance. Many will receive disability compensation and medical care for illnesses connected to Agent Orange exposure. VA has not said when it will complete its review of all 16,820 cases.

Read “Brown Water Bungle,” on the situation of Brown Water veterans, in the August 2011 issue of The American Legion Magazine, or here.

By JAMES DAO and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

updated 9/19/2011 5:29:28 AM ET

http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Sources/Art/nyt_logo_140x252.gif

Deficit agreement under which Pentagon must find billions in reductions may force cuts once considered unthinkable

As Washington looks to squeeze savings from once-sacrosanct entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, another big social welfare system is growing as rapidly, but with far less scrutiny: the health and pension benefits of military retirees.

Military pensions and health care for active and retired troops now cost the government about $100 billion a year, representing an expanding portion of both the Pentagon budget — about $700 billion a year, including war costs — and the national debt, which together finance the programs.

Making even incremental reductions to military benefits is typically a doomed political venture, given the public’s broad support for helping troops, the political potency of veterans groups and the fact that significant savings take years to appear.

But the intense push in Congress this year to reduce the debt and the possibility that the Pentagon might have to begin trimming core programs like weapons procurement, research, training and construction have suddenly made retiree benefits vulnerable, military officials and experts say.

And if Congress fails to adopt the deficit-reduction recommendations of a bipartisan joint Congressional committee this fall, the Defense Department will be required under debt ceiling legislation passed in August to find about $900 billion in savings over the coming decade. Cuts that deep will almost certainly entail reducing personnel benefits for active and retired troops, Pentagon officials and analysts say.

“We’ve got to put everything on the table,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said recently on PBS, acknowledging that he was looking at proposals to rein in pension costs.

Under the current rules, service members who retire after 20 years are eligible for pensions that pay half their salaries for life, indexed for inflation, even if they leave at age 38. They are also eligible for lifetime health insurance through the military’s system, Tricare, at a small fraction of the cost of private insurance, prompting many working veterans to shun employer health plans in favor of military insurance.

Unfair and untenable?
Advocates of revamping the systems argue that they are not just fiscally untenable but also unfair.

The annual fee for Tricare Prime, an H.M.O.-like program for military retirees, is just $460 for families and has not risen in years, even as health care costs have skyrocketed. Critics of the system say the contribution could be raised substantially and still be far lower than what civilians pay for employer-sponsored health plans, typically about $4,000.

Those critics also argue that under the current rules, 83 percent of former service members receive no pension payments at all — because only veterans with 20 years of service are eligible. Those with 5 or even 15 years are not, even if they did multiple combat tours. Such a structure would be illegal in the private sector, and a company that tried it could be penalized, experts say.

“It cries out for some rationalization,” said Sylvester J. Schieber, a former chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board. “Why should we ask somebody to sustain a system that’s unfair by any other measure in our society?”

But within military circles, and among many members of Congress, the benefits are considered untouchable. Veterans groups and military leaders argue that the system helps retain capable commissioned and noncommissioned officers.

Story: GOP not always against entitlements

And having volunteered to put their lives at risk, those people deserve higher-quality benefits, supporters argue. The typical beneficiary, they add, is not a general but a retired noncommissioned officer, with an average pension of about $26,000 a year.

“The whole reason military people are willing to pursue a career is because after 20, 30 years of extraordinary sacrifice, there is a package commensurate with that sacrifice upon leaving service,” said Steven P. Strobridge, a retired Air Force colonel who is the director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America, which is lobbying against changes to the benefits.

Exit from Iraq, Afghanistan
A wild-card factor in the debate is the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, which some experts say could avoid the stigma of cutting benefits while troops are at war.

“The fact that you are getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan does make it easier,” said Lawrence J. Korb, a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration who was a co-author of a recent proposal for reducing the cost of military health care. “When the war in Iraq was in terrible shape, it was hard to get people to join the military, and no one wanted to touch any military benefits.”

By far the most contentious proposal circulating in Washington is from a Pentagon advisory panel, the Defense Business Board. It would make the military pension system, a defined benefit plan, more like a 401(k) plan under which the Pentagon would make contributions to a service member’s individual account; contributions by the troops themselves would be optional. Mr. Panetta has said that if adopted, the plan would not apply to current military personnel.

While health care costs for active and retired troops are growing faster, military pension costs are larger. Last year, for every dollar the Pentagon paid service members, it spent an additional $1.36 for its military retirees, a much smaller group. Even in the troubled world of state and municipal pension funds, pensions almost never cost more than payrolls.

Citing the fiscal hazards and inequities of the system, the Defense Business Board proposal would allow soldiers with less than 20 years of service to leave with a small nest egg, provided they served a minimum length of time, three to five years. But it would prevent all retirees from receiving benefits until they were 60.

The business board says that its proposal would reduce the plan’s total liabilities to $1.8 trillion by 2034, from the $2.7 trillion now projected — all without cutting benefits for current service members.

Steve Griffin of Tallahassee, Fla., is the type of soldier the defense board is trying to appeal to: a former captain who did two tours in Iraq, he left the Army in 2010 after five years of service and thus receives no pension.

‘Retirement system now is fair’
Yet in a sign of the deep support for the existing system, Mr. Griffin says it should be left alone because it provides incentives for recruitment and rewards retirees who have endured great hardship.

“Yes, it would be nice for people like me,” Mr. Griffin, 28, said of the proposal. “But I think the retirement system now is fair. We shouldn’t take anything from it. If anything, we should add to it.”

Much like in the debate over Social Security, questions about the sustainability of the military pension system abound.

Each year the Defense and Treasury Departments set aside more than $75 billion to pay not only current and future benefits but also pensions for service many years in the past. But the retirement fund has not accumulated nearly enough money to cover its total costs, with assets of $278 billion at the end of 2009 and obligations of about $1.4 trillion.

The government tries to close the shortfall by simply issuing more Treasury securities each year, thereby adding to the nation’s debt.

Given the political potency of veterans groups, it is unclear whether anyone in Congress will lead an effort to revamp the pension or retiree health systems.

But the debt ceiling agreement approved this summer by Congress, under which the Pentagon must find $400 billion in reductions over the next 12 years, may force cuts once considered unthinkable. And if Congress does not adopt the recommendations of the bipartisan committee studying deficit reduction, the mandated reductions in Pentagon spending would more than double, to about $900 billion, and fall on just about every category of defense spending.

Deficit hawks, led by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, have begun taking smaller steps, pushing for an array of cuts to military benefits, including ending subsidies for base commissaries and tightening disability compensation for diseases linked to Agent Orange.

But those trims are considered marginal compared with the deeper reductions many experts say are necessary to contain Pentagon spending.

“If the trend continues, it will call into question the military’s ability to do other things, like buy equipment, do maintenance, train troops and equip them,” said Nora Bensahel, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a nonprofit organization with ties to the Obama administration.

“At some point, the cost pressures by the retirement benefits will really start to impede military capabilities.”

September 16, 2011

TSGLI Payments Will Be Made for Qualifying Injuries

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is extending retroactive traumatic injury benefits to Servicemembers who suffered qualifying injuries during the period Oct. 7, 2001 to Nov. 30, 2005, regardless of the geographic location where the injuries occurred.

“Now all of our nation’s Servicemembers who suffered severe traumatic injuries while serving their country can receive the same traumatic injury benefits, regardless of where their injury occurred,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “We at VA appreciate the efforts of Congress and the President to improve benefits for our troops.”

Effective Oct. 1, the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI) Traumatic Injury Protection benefit, known as TSGLI, will be payable for all qualifying injuries incurred during this period.  This retroactive benefit is payable whether or not the Servicemember had SGLI coverage at the time of the injury.  

The Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act of 2010, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in October of 2010, removes the requirement that injuries during this period be incurred in Operations Enduring or Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF). This is welcome news for the many Servicemembers who suffered serious traumatic injuries while serving stateside or in other areas outside of OEF/OIF during this time period, but until now have not been eligible for TSGLI.  

TSGLI provides a payment ranging from $25,000 to $100,000 to Servicemembers sustaining certain severe traumatic injuries resulting in a range of losses, including amputations; limb salvage; paralysis; burns; loss of sight, hearing or speech; facial reconstruction; 15-day continuous hospitalization; coma; and loss of activities of daily living due to traumatic brain injury or other traumatic injuries.  

National Guard and Reserve members who were injured during the retroactive period and suffered a qualifying loss are also eligible for a TSGLI payment, even if the cause was not related to military service, such as a civilian automobile accident or severe injury which occurred while working around their home.  

National Guard and Reserve members make up more than 40 percent of the total force which has been deployed since 9-11.  Those who are no longer in the National Guard or Reserves can also apply as long as their injury occurred while they were in service.

“I am extremely pleased that these total force warriors who defend our freedoms are getting the recognition and benefits they have rightfully earned in service to our nation,” added Under Secretary for Benefits Allison A. Hickey. 

VA is working with the Department of Defense to publicize this change in the TSGLI law.  Additionally, all of the branches of service are identifying any claims previously denied because the injury was not incurred in OEF/OIF and reaching out to those individuals.

Although applications are currently being accepted by branch of service TSGLI offices, benefits will not be paid until Oct. 1, 2011, the effective date of the law.  

For more information or to apply for a TSGLI payment, Servicemembers and Veterans should go to http://www.insurance.va.gov/sgliSite/TSGLI/TSGLI.htm or contact their branch of service TSGLI Office (contact information available at above link).

He killed her, Joshua Stepp admitted. He slammed the face of his 10-month-old stepdaughter into a carpeted floor, roughed her up as he changed her diaper, stuffed wet toilet paper down her throat, and soon she was dead.

But Stepp, a 28-year-old former Army infantryman who saw combat in Iraq, insists that he is not guilty of first-degree murder. His post-traumatic stress disorder left him incapable of premeditating the killing of tiny Cheyenne Yarley in November 2009, he and his lawyers say.

Because of his severe PTSD, Stepp was not able to “form the specific intent to kill,” his attorney Thomas Manning said. He asked jurors last week to find Stepp guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder, which lacks the potential for the death penalty.

After a decade of combat overseas, growing numbers of veterans are relying on PTSD as a central element of their defenses in criminal cases. Stepp’s trial is being closely watched as one measure of just how far defense lawyers are able to push in arguing that the disorder influences veterans’ criminal behavior.

The number of such cases will rise as more veterans return from Afghanistan and Iraq with post-traumatic stress or other trauma from repeated combat tours; already, more than 170,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with PTSD, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Thousands of veterans accused of nonviolent crimes have had charges or sentences reduced in the last several years after citing their PTSD as a mitigating factor. Veterans with combat trauma are now often sent to counseling and treatment programs rather than to prison for low-level offenses.

“The idea isn’t to get the guy off; it’s to help the veterans get the treatment they need. They deserve our help,” said Shad Meshad, founder of the National Veterans Foundation and a Vietnam veteran who has counseled soldiers for 40 years.

The prosecutor in the Stepp case told jurors that his defense insults veterans because it “taints their suffering” and “perverts this disease.”

On the night Stepp killed Cheyenne Yarley, he had downed rum, bourbon and beer, plus painkillers prescribed for his wife, an Army veteran and Cheyenne’s mother, his lawyers said.

He was angry about being called home from a bar by his wife to care for Cheyenne and Stepp’s 4-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, his lawyers said. His wife had to go to work.

In vague, halting testimony a prosecutor called “convenient,” Stepp said he couldn’t recall many details of that night. Cheyenne died of head trauma from multiple blows.

“I can only, like, remember really intense parts,” he testified.

He added later: “I don’t know, it just like happened, and then I’m there and I’m like, ‘What the hell?’”

Stepp’s PTSD and his drug and alcohol abuse left him incapable of plotting or intending Cheyenne’s murder, Manning said.

“People with untreated PTSD do not have the same checks and balances, or brakes, that the rest of us hopefully do,” Manning told jurors.

Stepp had seen fellow soldiers blown apart by roadside bombs in Iraq, his attorney said in court. In one instance, he had to put those pieces in the container available to him: a pizza box.

When Stepp came home from Iraq, he grew more and more damaged by deepening PTSD, his attorneys said. The night Cheyenne died, she wouldn’t stop crying and kept soiling her diapers, and Stepp lost control, Manning said.

“There is no pity being asked,” Manning told the jurors. All he asked was for them to find that Stepp’s PTSD left him incapable of deliberately killing his stepdaughter.

But prosecutor Boz Zellinger pointed out that Stepp repeatedly lied to his wife over the phone and to a police dispatcher while his stepdaughter was dying in the family’s apartment.

“What shows his competency more than his deceit?” Zellinger asked the jury. “He had a fixed purpose: to kill that child so no one would see what he had done to her.”

He added: “Every single piece of evidence shows the defendant was in control of his actions that night.”

Zellinger scoffed at Stepp’s PTSD claims, saying defense experts relied entirely on Stepp’s own, unreliable statements in concluding that he suffered from the disorder.

He raped Cheyenne intentionally, the prosecutor said. Blood was found on Stepp’s underwear, Zellinger said, and the girl’s injuries were so severe they could not possibly have been caused by vigorous wiping. “Every orifice that Cheyenne had was injured,” Zellinger said.

But Stepp denied sexually abusing Cheyenne; Manning said that the bruises around the infant’s anus and vagina occurred when Stepp wiped her roughly as he changed her diaper.

On Sept. 8, a jury of six men and six women found Stepp guilty of first-degree murder and sexually assaulting his stepdaughter.

Manning immediately began putting on witnesses in the penalty phase, where Stepp’s PTSD remained central to the lawyer’s attempt to save the veteran from the death penalty.

Courts and prosecutors are far more willing now than during the Vietnam era to consider a veteran’s combat trauma in sentencing for nonviolent crimes, lawyers say. Veterans’ groups credit a growing awareness of PTSD, activism by advocates for the mentally ill and a nation sympathetic to the conditions under which soldiers must operate.

“There is definitely a recognition that the emotional and psychological scars of our veterans are real,” said Stephen Saltzburg, general counsel for the National Institute of Military Justice, which studies the military justice system.

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2009 helped pave the way for combat trauma — and military service itself — to mitigate sentences. In that case, the court reversed the death sentence for a Korean War veteran because his military service and combat-induced psychological damage weren’t presented at sentencing.

Noting that the U.S. has “a long tradition of according leniency to veterans in recognition of their service,” the court said “juries might find mitigating the intense stress and mental and emotional toll” of combat.

Today, more than 80 special veterans’ treatment courts have been established nationwide and hundreds more are planned, said Christopher Deutsch, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Drug Court Professionals.

Veterans’ courts do not provide “a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Brockton D. Hunter, a Minneapolis lawyer and veteran who since 2002 has represented more than 100 veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Instead, the courts steer defendants toward treatment and probation, often working closely with Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers.

Although many prosecutors are sympathetic to combat veterans, some PTSD-related defense tactics are viewed with skepticism.

“Prosecutors are always wary of the ‘defense of the day,’ or trends that … may be overused because there is some perceived broader understanding or acceptance by courts and juries,” said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Assn.

The law, said Elizabeth Hillman, a law professor and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, “is uncertain and evolving.”

On Tuesday, jury members told Judge Osmond Smith that, after deliberating for two days, they could not reach a unanimous verdict on a sentence. Following state law, the judge sentenced Stepp to life in prison without the possibility of parole.