Good News - Bad News, Bad New, Bad News

The Good News is that the Senate passed the bill to ease restrictions for Stem Cell Research.

The vote broke down to 63/34 and was 4 votes shy of the margin of votes they needed to over-ride a veto from Pres. Bush. And that's the bad news. Read the rest here.

And this is bad news for the disabled. From USA Today:

Life in Medicare's waiting period
Group fights 2-year delay for
disabled
By Julie ApplebyUSA TODAY

The rare muscle disorder that twisted her spine and compressed her lungs, making it hard to breathe, finally forced Roxianna McCutchan to quit her job as a clerk and dispatcher at the Rockport Police Department in Rockport, Texas, in July 2002.

"I was so independent and had an attitude that, 'I'm going to work, I am going to be a success, and no one is going to stop me,' " says McCutchan in an e-mail because she has now nearly lost her voice. "And then my body says, 'I can't keep up. You have to stop.' "

Each year, tens of thousands of Americans like McCutchan find themselves disabled and unable to work. After going through the process to get Social Security disability income, most are shocked to discover that they have to wait two more years to be eligible for Medicare, the federal health program for elderly and disabled people.

"I would still be there working and loving my job if I could," says McCutchan, 36, who now lives in Victoria, Texas. "I lost all that and had no clue that Medicare wouldn't be there to help me."

McCutchan and 20 others tell their stories about life in the two-year waiting period today in a report released by New York-based advocacy group the Medicare Rights Center, which is lobbying to end the waiting period.

"There's no more desperate group of uninsured Americans than people who are severely disabled, suddenly unemployed and without any access to health coverage," says Robert Hayes, the center's president.

The report, funded by the center and the Commonwealth Fund, comes amid renewed interest among lawmakers in Congress and the states to reduce the umber
of uninsured. Among the nation's 45 million residents without health coverage, the center's report says, an estimated 400,000 are disabled people in the waiting period.

And some more bad news for our troops. Sec. Gates and General Pace
held a news conference today to tell us that they were extending the tours of
duty in Iraq from 12 months to 15 months.

From the AP:

Gates announces longer tours in Iraq
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press
Writer1 hour, 20 minutes ago

Beginning immediately, all active-duty Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve 15-month tours — three months longer than the usual standard, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

It was the latest move by the Pentagon to cope with the strains of fighting two wars simultaneously and maintaining a higher troop level in Iraq as part of President Bush's revised strategy for stabilizing Baghdad.

"This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step," Gates told a Pentagon news
conference, adding that the goal is to eventually return to 12 months as the standard length of tour in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the new policy does not affect the other main components of the U.S. ground force in Iraq: the Marines, whose standard tour is seven months, or the Army National Guard or Army Reserve, which will continue to serve 12-month tours.
Gates acknowledged that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are making life difficult for many in the military.

"Our forces are stretched, there's no question about that," Gates said.
He said the new policy also seeks to ensure that all active-duty Army units get at least 12 months at home between deployments. He said it would allow the Pentagon to maintain the current level of troops in Iraq for another year, although he added that there has been no decision on future troop levels.

Soldiers will get an extra $1,000 a month for the three extra months they serve, he said.

**They get an extra $1,000 a month. And if they die during those three months?

From the Army Times - Army holding down disability ratings

Why would anyone want to join the Army when they don't help their Vets. I can see how this admin "supports the troops". With yellow ribbon magnets and lies:

Update: found this political cartoon by Mike Luckovich that fits right in here.

The Army is deliberately shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs, according to veterans’ advocates, lawyers and service members.

“These people are being systematically underrated,” said Ron Smith, deputy general counsel for Disabled American Veterans. “It’s a bureaucratic game to preserve the budget, and it’s having an adverse affect on service members.”

The numbers of people approved for permanent or temporary disability retirement in the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force have stayed relatively stable since 2001.

But in the Army — in the midst of a war — the number of soldiers approved for permanent disability retirement has plunged by more than two-thirds, from 642 in 2001 to 209 in 2005, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. That decline has come even as the war in Iraq has intensified and the total number of soldiers wounded or injured there has soared above 15,000.

The Army denies there is any intentional effort to push wounded troops off the military rolls. But critics say many troops being evaluated for possible disability retirement accept the first rating they are offered during their first informal board — but that if they were to request a formal board, and then appeal the decision of that board, they would receive higher ratings.

The system is complicated — “unduly so,” the Rand Corp. think tank said in a 2005 report — and the counselors who advise troops often have insufficient training or experience. Service members also assume that after months spent in a war zone, the military will look out for them, critics say.

Snip

‘I couldn’t believe it’
Smith said he began hearing tales about two years ago of service members who said they were not getting proper disability ratings based on the VA Schedule for Rating — the document used by both the military services and the VA to determine percentage ratings for disabilities, which in turn sets compensation rates.

“I finally decided to take on a case myself,” Smith said. “It’s been a while since I took a case.”

He found an Army captain whose radial nerve in his right arm had been destroyed in Iraq — the same injury that has left Bob Dole, the World War II veteran and former Kansas senator, unable to use his arm to do more than hold a pen.

Smith followed the captain through the physical evaluation board process. He said that under the ratings schedule, this was an easy call: 70 percent disability. But at his first informal medical evaluation board, the captain initially was offered just 30 percent, and he had to fight to raise it to 60 percent through a subsequent formal evaluation board and then a final appeal.

“His first offer … I couldn’t believe it,” Smith said. “I was just incensed.”

Read the rest here

New Blog you MUST read!

PTSD = Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

There's a new post at PTSD Combat blog. It's from the Navy Times and speaks to the Vets being granted permanent disability today. Here are some excerpts and the link:

Fewer Vets Granted Permanent Disability Today Than in 2001

In 2001, 10 percent of soldiers going through the medical retirement process received permanent disability benefits. In 2005, with two wars raging, that percentage dropped to 3 percent, according to the Government Accountability Office. Reservists dropped from 16 percent to 5 percent.

Soldiers go to VA to try for more benefits, but the department had a staggering 400,000-case backup on new claims in fiscal 2006, according to VA. For that reason, Van Antwerp faces another wait at VA. Cases there have an average of a one-year wait. ... [M]any of the soldiers leaving Walter Reed face post-traumatic stress disorder. Studies have shown that if soldiers receive treatment within a year, they fare much better. ...

On Christmas Day, six soldiers spent their time at Walter Reed picking up trash, mopping floors and emptying garbage. “I was planning to go home for the holidays,” said Spc. Ruben Villalpando, who dropped from sergeant rank when he came up hot for marijuana on a urinalysis while at Walter Reed. “There’s a 100 percent urinalysis policy for med hold.” In other words, every soldier in the medical hold company is tested for drugs.

The other five soldiers also came up hot, he said. Not only did Villalpando lose his holiday, the reduction in rank means that if he does receive a disability payment, it will be lower than it would have been a month before.

I was angry and saddened yesterday, when I read the Walter Reed article of how our vets were treated. This article just adds sand to the wound! Compassionate Conservatives!?! To whom are they compassionate?

Here's the LINK