Comments on: VA Health Head Grilled Over Suicide Data

After E-Mails Obtained By CBS Show VA Hid Numbers; Now Lawyers And Legislators React

[starleo146]

Seems to me the only Senator that cares obout our veterans is Senator Webb he has tried time and time again to put bills in for these veterans and they are shot down be our Republican Senators senator Burr among others have a bill to cut back Senator Webbs Bill.I tell you these Republicans ,I hope they sleep good, just to make a majority he can not, but if I know Senator Webb he will never give up on these veterans.It just isn''t right you Republicans sent them to war and now want to cut back on there health care

[vndisabled]

I''m a disabled Vietnam veteran in VA "care" for over 30 years. If anyone thinks that this is just a rare case of lying in the VA medical system, they are very sadly mistaken. The first time I actually read copies of my VA medical records, I was totally shocked and furious at what had been written by VA doctors and other personnel about me. My VA medical records, PERMANENT and UNCHANGEABLE are riddled with lies, many of them dunning, outright assassination of my character . There is a doctor named Victor Perez at Mather VAMC in CA who wrote very serious false statements about me several years ago for which I even complained to a US Senator''s office, and even they were unable to do anything about them because
Perez refuses to change one single word. I am going to say this once and I mean it from the bottom of my disabled heart: personnel employed by the VA medical system have been literally GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER for decades, and no one can stop the injustices and malpractice. Does anyone remember the staff at the Long Beach VAMC who were caught trying to starve immobile patients who couldn''t defend themselves to death? And when they were caught, NO PROSECUTION of these people took place at all. The VA medical system is an abomination. It should be dropped immediately for national health care for everyone.

[macknmee]

An 85 year old WW2 vet shot his self just yesterday in SC. As a retired military and disabled vet, I can understand. The VA could care less. I''m a vet of Vietnam and desert storm, I thought I would be taken care of after I get out. I would have been better off now if I had not gone into the military.

[piercetheval]

...be all that you can be... and then regret it later.

[ic1ssbill]

Mark11a_99,
Thank you lucky stars that you even get seen,I live in the Northeast and You are lucky when you go to A VA hospital around here if you even see a Corpsman.

[termtex01]

As an example of what Congress has done to our military medical system, I had a chance to stop off during a cross-country trip at the hospital for Offutt to see if I could get a prescription filled. Years ago when I visited it, it was a full-blown hospital, but because of CONGRESSIONAL budget cut-backs, it''s now only a clinic, much of the building is unused, and they no longer provide emergency care 24 hours a day.

Lay the blame on the people (so-called) who write up the budget and vote on spending cuts against the military for all this. Your elected Congressmen!

[termtex01]

"The main goal of the VA is to provide goverment jobs not to care for veterans. The poor care give to our veterans has been an on going issue for over fifty years. We should give every veteran a health care card a let them make the selection.

Posted by badkidone at 09:11 PM : Apr 25, 2008"

Every vet has the option of going to a VA center, if one is available in their area (Congress has been closing military hospitals down at a rate worse than base closures) OR to be seen at a local civilian hospital. The vets who ONLY want to be seen at a VA center either do it because the VA doesn''t charge them an outrageous co-pay, or they don''t trust the civilian hospitals.

[termtex01]

And in the Nov 2007 story, CBullS just plain LIED!

They said, and heres the quote:

"One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.) "

http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html

The actual figures for that age group in 2005 is 2,195 suicides out of a nation-wide population of 10,858,108 20-24 year olds with a resulting 20.22 (NOT 8.3 as CBullS claims) per 100,000. But why can CBullS, even in it''s lie, give an exact figure for non-vets, but their figures for vets ranged from "22.9 to 31.9"?

[termtex01]

Geezuz! Is CBullS still trotting this old story out?

Don''t they ever compare the statistics with the US population at large and see that vet suicide rates are still LOWER than the US population at large?

For the most recent year the US Government provides data (2005):

Suicides (death)
Firearms 17,002
Suffocation 7,248
Poisoning 5,744
Fall 683
Cut/Pierce 590
Drowning 375
Other Spec 328
Other Spec NEC 228
Unspecified 166
Fire/burn 160
Transportation related 113

Total: 32,637

Suicide Attempts:
Self-harm Poisoning 207,199
Self-harm Cut/Pierce 78,867
Self-harm Other Specified 57,945
Self-harm Struck By/Against 10,294
Self-harm Unknown/Unspecified 5,569

Total Attempts: 359,874

[fibonacci_]

Astounding that we lose more of these people every year to suicide than we have in the whole Iraq war.