Ok, found some numbers. This isn't a thread about is the war right or wrong. However I am posting this in hopes that you, the citizens of our country, help us fight for better medical care.

Vets' Lawsuit Opens Door on Suicides, Poor Care

by Aaron Glantz
April 23, 2008

The United States government does such a bad job of caring for wounded war veterans, advocates told a federal judge in San Francisco Monday, that 18 veterans commit suicide every week.

"The suicide problem is out of control," said Gordon Erspamer, an attorney representing the groups Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth in a class action lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). "Our veterans deserve better."

Erspamer's comments came in opening arguments for what is expected to be a week-long trial, the first class action brought on behalf of 1.7 million Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

Early arguments were punctuated by allegations top government officials deliberately deceived the U.S. public about the number of veterans attempting suicide.

In one e-mail made public during the trial, the head of the VA's Mental Health division, Dr. Ira Katz, advised a media spokesperson not to tell reporters 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill themselves every month.

"Shh!" the e-mail begins.

"Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?" the e-mail concludes.

According to CBS News, Katz's e-mail was written shortly after the VA provided the network with data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all of 2007 – a fraction of Katz's estimate.

Earlier this month, the city of Dallas, Texas, closed its psychiatric unit after the hospital experienced its fourth suicide of the year.

"On April 4, a man fastened a bed sheet to the bottom corner of a door frame, draped a noose over the top, and hanged himself," the Dallas Morning News reported last week. "Before that, a veteran hanged himself on a frame attached to his wheelchair. And in January, two men who met in the psychiatric ward committed suicide in Collin County days after being released."

"The system is in crisis, and unfortunately the VA is in denial," Erspamer told the court, urging U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti to appoint a special master to oversee the troubled agency. The veterans' groups are also seeking a judge's order forbidding the VA from turning away any veteran who shows up at a facility seeking mental health care.

In a number of high-profile cases, Iraq war veterans have killed themselves after being turned away from the VA.

Lawyers for the government argued strongly against the veterans, countering the VA runs a "world-class health care system." Multiple times during his opening statement, Justice Department lawyer Richard Lepley portrayed the veterans' groups as "special interests" and argued the changes the groups seek in their lawsuit – better and faster mental health care, and more rights for veterans appealing denials of benefits – are beyond the judge's authority.

"You have no standards to judge," Lepley told Conti. "This court shouldn't be trying to be a substitute for what the medical professionals at the VA decide."

No veterans are set to testify at the trial, which focuses on the nature of the Byzantine bureaucratic system veterans must navigate to receive health care and disability benefits. According the Department of Veterans Affairs, the average time a veteran must wait to learn if his or her disability claim has been approved is 185 days, or about six months.

Veterans' groups countered the real wait is much longer, noting that if a veteran appeals the disability ruling, the appeals process can drag on for years. According to internal VA documents provided by the plaintiffs, 526 veterans have died this year while their disability claims were being reviewed.

None of this surprises Kelly Conklin of Chunchula, Alabama.

Her husband Manuel was reduced to a wheelchair after experiencing a negative reaction to an anthrax vaccine administered as he was preparing to deploy to Iraq with the U.S. Navy in 2003. Military doctors pumped him with steroids and other medicine in hopes he would recover, Conklin said, but in 2005 she came to realize that was unlikely and filed a claim with the VA for disability compensation.

After three years, the family is still waiting.

"It's an every day battle," Kelly Conklin told IPS. "We're having grits and eggs for supper tonight and a lot of nights. Sometimes we don't eat anything but lima beans for supper – it depends on what we have."

In the absence of a regular paycheck or a disability check, Conklin says her family of four is now living almost completely off charity, with much of the food they eat coming from the local food bank.

She said she used to be proud of her husband for his service in the Navy, but has now forbidden her youngest son from joining the Armed Forces.

"If it sounds like I'm down, yes I am down," she told IPS. "If I sound like I'm bitter, you got that right. They've taken everything away from me. The only thing left for them to take from me is my birthday."

"When we give them our spouses, we give them whole," she said. "And if you can't make him whole [again], then you make sure he's taken care of."



VA Hid Suicide Risk
By Armen Keteyian/CBS News
Posted: 2008-04-22 13:39:57

(April 21) - In federal court Monday in San Francisco, attorneys for veterans' rights groups accused U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs of nothing less than a cover-up - deliberately concealing the real risk of suicide among veterans.

"The system is in crisis and unfortunately the VA is in denial," said veterans rights attorney Gordon Erspamer.

The charges were backed by internal e-mails written by Dr Ira Katz, the VA's head of Mental Health.

In the past, Katz has repeatedly insisted while the risk of suicide among veterans is serious, it's not outside the norm.

"There is no epidemic in suicide in VA," Katz told Keteyian in November.

But in this e-mail to his top media adviser, written two months ago, Katz appears to be saying something very different, stating: "Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities.

Katz's e-mail was written shortly after the VA provided CBS News data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all 2007 - a fraction of Katz's estimate.

"This 12,000 attempted suicides per year shows clearly, without a doubt, that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans," said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense.

And it appears that Katz went out of his way to conceal these numbers.

First, he titled his e-mail: "Not for the CBS News Interview Request."

He opened it with "Shh!" - as in keep it quiet - before ending with "Is this something we should (carefully) address … before someone stumbles on it?"

On Monday, CBS News showed the e-mail to Rep Bob Filner, D-Calif, who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

"This is disgraceful. This is a crime against our nation, our nation's veterans," Filner told CBS News. "They do not want to come to grips with the reality, with the truth."

And that's not all.

Last November when CBS News exposed an epidemic of more than 6,200 suicides in 2005 among those who had served in the military, Katz attacked our report.

"Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate," he said last November.

But it turns out they were, as Katz admitted in this e-mail, just three days later."

He wrote: there "are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans."

That works out to about 6,570 per year, which Katz admits in the same e-mail, "is supported by the CBS numbers."

In an e-mail late Monday to CBS News, Katz wrote that the reason the numbers were not released was due to questions about the consistency and reliability of the findings - and that there was no public cover up involved.

Please help us in our fight for better care.

Casey