House Veterans Affairs Health Subcommittee Explores How Best to Support Military Families

Yesterday, another important hearing, Mental Health Treatment for Families: Supporting Those Who Support Our Veterans, was convened on Capitol Hill by the House Veterans Affairs health subcommittee. [Audio now online; video link not presently available]

Rick Maze, Army Times:

A House subcommittee was urged Thursday to expand the Veterans Affairs Department’s authority to provide mental health counseling for the families of veterans, including National Guard and reserve members who have returned from combat.

Current law restricts VA to providing “limited services to immediate family members,” said Kristin Day, VA’s chief consultant for care management and social work service.

“The law provides, in general, that the immediate family members of a veteran being treated for a service-connected disability may receive counseling, education and training services,” Day told the House Veterans’ Affairs health subcommittee.

That leaves a lot of gaps for people who fall outside the military health care system, some critics say.

Illinois Action: Sauk Valley Veteran Feedback Sought Regarding New Area Medical Clinic

For many veterans, in rural areas especially, a trip to the local VA can be an irritating if not daunting, all-day affair.

As younger Afghanistan and Iraq vets stream home in need of -- at times specialized -- health care services in greater numbers, they join those in their area who've served in previous conflicts and continue to draw on their health care benefits.

Not surprisingly, the need for local VA medical clinics has grown by leaps and bounds. Veterans in my area of Illinois are no different, and they've been advocating for more easily accessible options closer to home.

Experts, Advocacy Groups, Officials: VA Disability System Fixable

From Kelly Kennedy via Navy Times:

Medical experts, advocacy groups and Veterans Affairs Department officials say VA’s disability rating schedule needs to be updated — continually — but they denied the system is so bad that it needs to be dumped completely.

A Tuesday hearing of the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on disability assistance and memorial affairs also focused on studies conducted over the past year that point toward needed improvements not only in the ratings schedule, but in VA’s disability retirement system itself.

Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., chairman of the subcommittee, said VA needs to remove “archaic” criteria from the rating schedule; update psychiatric criteria to better reflect symptoms of troops diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder; find out why so many veterans with PTSD have been rated fully disabled; and update neurological criteria to include new research on traumatic brain injuries.

“The VA needs the right tools to do the right thing,” Hall said.

VA argued that it is already doing the right thing and has been updating the rating schedule, though officials acknowledged they could do better. From 1990 through 2007, VA had updated 47 percent of the ratings schedule, but 35 percent of the codes had not been touched since 1945. However, VA said it updated the codes for TBI in January and is working on an update for PTSD.

Sunday's NIU Memorial to be Simulcast at Iraq's Camp Victory; Remembering Another Lost Huskie

On January 31, 2008, indirect fire ended the life of 1st Lt. David Schultz serving in Iraq with the 82nd Airbone Division.

Two short weeks later, on February 14, the 2005 NIU alum was joined by five other Huskies -- one of them a 12-year Army veteran herself -- after the senseless events that unfolded in Cole Hall that day.

This coming Sunday, NIU and its supporters will draw together throughout the community, throughout the state, throughout the country -- their embrace even extending as far as the sands of Iraq -- to honor those lost.