Congress and prior presidents have been long on rhetoric but short on results when it comes to soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders.
They’ve sent troops into war pledging the best care possible for those who carry the burden of service, but looked away when returning warriors who suffered severe emotional trauma were denied help by the barbed wire of red tape.
A new rule announced Monday by the Department of Veteran Affairs should greatly relieve those who suffer PTSD.
The Obama administration’s rule, which is retroactive to cover all of veterans of prior wars, lifts the strict regulation that previously required veterans to document the time and place of specific actions that induced their PTSD. They no longer will have to prove that a particular event in a combat zone – an attack, bomb or fire-fight, for example – caused their PTSD.
Though a VA physician still must certify a claim of PTSD, veterans may now qualify for benefits for counseling or disability for service rendered in a war zone, whether or not they were in combat.
The change is entirely sensible and is rightly being welcomed by veterans and cheered their advocates across the board. It makes sense because many of the stresses that cause post traumatic stress disorders occur broadly in war zones.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, truck drivers who transport food and equipment around Baghdad, Kabul or Kandahar to bases in other cities or to the countryside are as likely to be shot at or blown up, or nearly blown up, by IEDs (improvised explosive devises) as are combat troops on fighting missions.
Soldiers in Vietnam had to contend with similar asymmetrical warfare. Children or women could walk up to soldiers unchallenged and ignite TNT strapped to their bodies. Village farmers could hide weapons near their rice paddies or in tunnels, where they disappeared at night to fight.
The cumulative effect of seeing death and maneuvering as a soldier in such hostile environments may produce PDST as surely as an horrific battle. Indeed, experts estimate that as many as 20 percent of the 2 million service members deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 will develop PTSD.
Yet just 78,000 veterans have had disability claims approved in that period, well short of the 400,000 who might be affected.
In fact, only some 150,000 PTSD cases have been diagnosed by the VA, many of which have qualified only for free counseling. Veterans’ advocates say the number is so low because so many applications have been denied on overly strict grounds.
Critics of the new rule, however, say they fear that easing the standards to qualify for benefits will make it too easy for cheaters to claim aid.
Benefits may range from free counseling and health care to disability payments from a few hundred dollars to $2,000 per month, and that may attract some bogus claims.
The rule, however, not only requires a VA physician’s certification for a particular level of benefit, but benefits may also be trimmed over time as symptoms are treated and relieved.
The initial estimate is that more compassionate care, and a pent-up backlog, may cost up to $5 billion over the next seven years. That would be expensive, but it would also be significantly more fair to veterans who deserve the benefits promised them – and wrongly denied.
The VA must look for reasonable signs for cheating, but its priority focus should be to assure that all veterans’ wounds, including PTSD, are properly treated.