Editorial: Congress, Take Care of Our Returning Troops

From the Daytona News-Journal:

When the United States sends soldiers to another country under any premise, and those soldiers are injured in performing their duty, they are owed care.

The government may not be able to give them back everything they lost -- the unscarred skin, the strong legs or arms, the clear eyes, the untroubled psyche. But it can provide treatment: Physicians' care, rehabilitation, prosthetics, counseling.

Instead, the care given to veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan has become a national scandal. Some wait months for care, or fester in dismal facilities. Others go home to be cared for by their families, who aren't prepared to shoulder the burden of round-the-clock nursing. ...

Congress can do better, by removing the barriers that too often deny soldiers the treatment they need -- like the cruelly adversarial process used to "prove" that a combat veteran legitimately suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.