Actually Helping Veterans Is Too Expensive

While the Pentagon and the Veterans' Administration have tried to reject it, cover it up, or define it out of existence, it can no longer be denied that American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a mental-health crisis of staggering proportions. Huge numbers are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a crippling problem often resulting from a severe personal trauma. Since so many veterans are coming home with PTSD, the VA has come up with a truly Bush-like way of dealing with it: refuse to admit it exists and shaft its victims.

An E-mail message from March 20 of this year was leaked, and it is truly ugly to read. A VA hospital's PTSD program coordinator sent a message to various staffers, including psychologists, social workers, and a psychiatrist:

Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder, R/O [ruling out] PTSD.

The contempt is staggering. Deny suffering veterans the help they desperately need because it costs too much? Which heartless bean-counter wrote this? Why has he or she not been held accountable?

What will it take for these people to realize that the people they so callously used as cannon fodder are paying the price, and that to shortchange them in this way is simply obscene?