"My name is Susie Flynn. I am running for President of the United States of America to help the nine million children living without health insurance."
Yeah, but will she invade Iran?
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Child Dies for Lack of Dental Care
Confusion over Iraq soccer explosion - US carried out blast - 18 children dead
"Employer-based coverage is melting away like a Popsicle on the sidewalk in August," said Wyden, a Democrat and member of the Senate Finance Committee's subcommittee on health care.
Wyden's proposal, which he planned to unveil on Wednesday, is an outgrowth of work by the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, a 14-member panel that went to 50 communities around the country and heard from 28,000 people about how to reform health care.
The group, created in 2003 by legislation sponsored by Wyden and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, recommended that the government take steps to guarantee all Americans have basic health insurance coverage by 2012.
Wyden said his plan would allow workers to carry their health insurance from job to job without penalty and would cost the federal government no more than it's paying today for health insurance coverage. It would cover all Americans except those on Medicare or those who receive health care through the military.
Called the "Healthy Americans Act," the plan would require that employers "cash out" their existing health plans by terminating coverage and paying the amount saved directly to workers as increased wages. Workers then would be required to buy health insurance from a large pool of private plans.
After two years, companies would no longer have to pay the higher wages. Instead, Wyden said, they would pay into an insurance pool, based on annual revenues and the number of full-time workers.
The Lewin Group, a Virginia-based health care consulting firm that reviewed Wyden's plan, said it would reduce health spending by private employers by nearly three-quarters, and would save $1.4 trillion in total national health care spending over the next decade.
Increases in premium payments for individuals and families would be offset by higher wages and subsidies provided under the plan, the report said. As an example, Wyden cited a worker who earned $60,000 last year, and received about $12,000 worth of health care coverage.
The worker's health insurance would be terminated, but his salary would increase to $72,000, which would cover his health care coverage. The plan would bar workers from buying a "bare-bones" health package and pocketing the savings, Wyden said.
"You can't take your $9,000 and go to Hawaii," Wyden said, adding that the tax code would be adjusted so that workers who earn more money would not be thrust into a higher tax bracket.
Wyden said he's aware of the political pitfalls of health care reform, but believes the time has come to address the issue again.
"I think the country wants health care fixed," he said, citing skyrocketing costs and an estimated 46 million people who are uninsured. "There's been lots of rhetoric and position papers. It's time for action."
| Memo: Administration tried to cut payouts to nuke workers |
The investigation focuses on a federal program created in 2000 to compensate people with cancers and other illnesses tied to their work at government and contractor-owned facilities involved in Cold War nuclear weapons production. About 98,000 cases have been filed under the program, and the Labor Department has approved compensation in about 24,000 of those cases. However, program records show that not all of those approved claims have been paid.
Since 2002, "there is a continuous stream of (administration) communications … strategizing on minimizing payouts," according to the Nov. 30 memo by staff for the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, border security and claims. The memo, prepared for the panel's chairman, Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., summarizes and quotes from thousands of pages of records reviewed by the subcommittee in its probe.
The subcommittee holds a hearing Tuesday on the investigation. Hostettler is pressing ahead despite losing re-election last month, vowing to release key documents and urging Democrats to continue the probe when they take over in 2007.
Administration officials say the memos reflect internal brainstorming on how to avoid compensating workers who aren't eligible.
"We're not pursuing those ideas," says Shelby Hallmark, the Labor Department's director of workers' compensation programs. "What we've been doing all along is trying to ensure that the program is implemented in a way that is fair and consistent and in accord with the law."
Hostettler was not available for comment, but he said at a November hearing that records reviewed in the investigation "do not support" the administration's stance. "This program was supposed to assure workers … (that) their government was finally going to do right by them," he added. "Those tasked with implementing (it) have failed that purpose miserably and they need to be exposed."
The program covers workers from about 350 facilities nationwide, as well as uranium miners. Claimants can get up to $150,000; some also can get paid for medical bills, lost wages and disability.
In a memo from October 2005, program director Hallmark complains to White House officials that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which reviews some claims, is adopting "extreme exaggerations of (worker exposure) on the grounds that every decision point must be as 'claimant favorable' as conceivably possible." The documents also show officials debating ways to change the balance of a program oversight panel by adding members skeptical of workers' claims.
"You've got bureaucrats pressuring the scientists and when they can't get what they want, they try to squeeze the (adjudication) process wherever they can," says Richard Miller, a claimants' advocate with the Government Accountability Project. "These workers are dying with every day that goes by."
Morning Edition, December 4, 2006 · The military promises to help soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with emotional problems, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But an NPR investigation at one base in Colorado finds that soldiers aren't getting the services they need.
Medical records show that when Tyler Jennings returned from Iraq last year, he was severely depressed and used drugs to cope. When the sergeants who ran his platoon found out, they started to haze him. He came close to hanging himself after officials said they would kick him out of the Army.
Share your comments about this report, or tell us your own story about coping with mental-health problems related to your military service. Don't forget to tell us your full name and how to pronounce it, and your city and state. Tell us if you wish to share your thoughts only with NPR's editors. Send us your thoughts.
-- Read some of the letters we've received so far.
Corey Davis was a machine gunner in Iraq. He says he began "freaking out" after he returned to Ft. Carson; he had constant nightmares and began using drugs. When he sought help at the base hospital one day, he says he was told he'd have to wait more than a month to be seen. Courtesy Corey Davis
Jason Harvey was diagnosed with PTSD. In May, he slashed his wrists and arms in a cry for help. Officials at Ft. Carson expelled Harvey from the Army a few months ago for "patterns of misconduct." Harvey had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Alex Orum, pictured with his wife Donna, was diagnosed with PTSD. He was dismissed from the Army earlier this year for "patterns of misconduct" -- such as showing up late to formation and coming to work unwashed. Psychiatrists say such behaviors are consistent with PTSD.
Referring to soldiers with PTSD, recently retired sergeant Nathan Towsley told NPR that "I don't like people who are weak-minded." He said he'd never be caught going to a therapist. Since that interview, he's acknowledged that he's depressed and has trouble controlling his anger. He has just started therapy.
Corey Davis, Tyler Jennings and Sgts. Drew Preston and Gabriel Temples all served in the same platoon in Iraq. Preston and Temples say Davis and Jennings were great soldiers in Iraq. But the sergeants think they've been "faking" their mental-health problems to avoid returning to war. Courtesy Corey Davis
After Liz Kaplan's son, Adam, returned to Ft. Carson from Iraq in late 2004, therapists diagnosed him with PTSD. They said his illness was triggered partly by an incident in Iraq: He accidentally caused the death of a fellow soldier as he blew up the doors of a suspected weapons cache.
But Liz and her husband say that after their son started doing drugs -- which studies show is common among soldiers with PTSD -- officials at Ft. Carson failed to give him the help he needed. Liz threatened to chain herself to a statue at the base's entrance until officials answered her family's pleas to help her son. (In the end, she didn't.) Adam Kaplan was eventually court-martialed on drug charges and sentenced to 15 months in military prison.
Military officials say that soldiers diagnosed with PTSD or other serious mental-health disorders can attend group therapy sessions at their Army bases. But soldiers at Ft. Carson said that in some cases, the group sessions make them feel more upset, not better.
Soldier Michael Lemke attended those sessions before he was discharged from the Army because of PTSD and other medical disabilities. As Lemke and others told NPR, Army therapists told soldiers they were not permitted to criticize Army officers during the therapy sessions -- even though officers were allegedly harassing and punishing them for being emotionally "weak."
Army studies show that at least 20 percent to 25 percent of the soldiers who have served in Iraq display symptoms of serious mental-health problems, including depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Administration officials say there are extensive programs to heal soldiers both at home and in Iraq.
But an NPR investigation at Colorado's Ft. Carson has found that even those who feel desperate can have trouble getting the help they need. In fact, evidence suggests that officers at Ft. Carson punish soldiers who need help, and even kick them out of the Army.
Soldier Tyler Jennings says that when he came home from Iraq last year, he felt so depressed and desperate that he decided to kill himself. Late one night in the middle of May, his wife was out of town, and he felt more scared than he'd felt in gunfights in Iraq. Jennings says he opened the window, tied a noose around his neck and started drinking vodka, "trying to get drunk enough to either slip or just make that decision."
Five months before, Jennings had gone to the medical center at Ft. Carson, where a staff member typed up his symptoms: "Crying spells... hopelessness... helplessness... worthlessness." Jennings says that when the sergeants who ran his platoon found out he was having a breakdown and taking drugs, they started to haze him. He decided to attempt suicide when they said that they would eject him from the Army.
"You know, there were many times I've told my wife -- in just a state of panic, and just being so upset -- that I really wished I just died over there [in Iraq]," he said. "Cause if you just die over there, everyone writes you off as a hero."
Services Out of Reach for Soldiers
Jennings isn't alone. Other soldiers who've returned to Ft. Carson from Iraq say they feel betrayed by the way officials have treated them. Army files show that these were soldiers in good standing before they went to Iraq, and that they started spinning out of control upon their return.
Since the war in Vietnam, military leaders have said that soldiers who are wounded emotionally need help, just like soldiers missing limbs.
"The goal, first and foremost, is to identify who's having a problem," says William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "Secondly, it's to provide immediate support. And finally, our goal is to restore good mental health."
The Army boasts of having great programs to care for soldiers. The Pentagon has sent therapists to Iraq to work with soldiers in the field. And at Army bases in the United States, mental-health units offer individual and group therapy, and counseling for substance abuse. But soldiers say that in practice, the mental-health programs at Ft. Carson don’t work the way they should.
For instance, soldiers fill out questionnaires when they return from Iraq that are supposed to warn officials if they might be getting depressed, or suffering from PTSD, or abusing alcohol or drugs. But many soldiers at Ft. Carson say that even though they acknowledged on the questionnaires that they were having disturbing symptoms, nobody at the base followed up to make sure they got appropriate support. A study by the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, suggests it's a national problem: GAO found that about 80 percent of the soldiers who showed potential signs of PTSD were not referred for mental health follow-ups. The Pentagon disagrees with the GAO's findings.
Soldiers at Ft. Carson also say that even when they request support, the mental-health unit is so overwhelmed that they can't get the help they need. Corey Davis, who was a machine gunner in Iraq, says he began "freaking out" after he came back to Ft. Carson; he had constant nightmares and began using drugs. He says he finally got up the courage to go to the Army hospital to beg for help.
"They said I had to wait a month and a half before I'd be seen," Davis said. "I almost started crying right there."
Intimidated by Superiors
Almost all of the soldiers said that their worst problem is that their supervisors and friends turned them into pariahs when they learned that they were having an emotional crisis. Supervisors said it's true: They are giving some soldiers with problems a hard time, because they don't belong in the Army.
Jennings called a supervisor at Ft. Carson to say that he had almost killed himself, so he was going to skip formation to check into a psychiatric ward. The Defense Department's clinical guidelines say that when a soldier has been planning suicide, one of the main ways to help is to put him in the hospital. Instead, officers sent a team of soldiers to his house to put him in jail, saying that Jennings was AWOL for missing work.
"I had them pounding on my door out there. They're saying 'Jennings, you're AWOL. The police are going to come get you. You've got 10 seconds to open up this door,'" Jennings said. "I was really scared about it. But finally, I opened the door up for them, and I was like 'I'm going to the hospital.'"
A supervisor in Jennings' platoon corroborated Jennings' account of the incident.
Disciplined, Then Purged from the Ranks
Evidence suggests that officials are kicking soldiers with PTSD out of the Army in a manner that masks the problem.
Richard Travis, formerly the Army's senior prosecutor at Ft. Carson, is now in private practice. He says that the Army has to pay special mental-health benefits to soldiers discharged due to PTSD. But soldiers discharged for breaking the rules receive fewer or even no benefits, he says.
Alex Orum's medical records showed that he had PTSD, but his officers expelled him from the Army earlier this year for "patterns of misconduct," repeatedly citing him on disciplinary grounds. In Orum's case, he was cited for such infractions as showing up late to formation, coming to work unwashed, mishandling his personal finances and lying to supervisors -- behaviors which psychiatrists say are consistent with PTSD.
Sergeant Nathan Towsley told NPR, "When I'm dealing with Alex Orum's personal problems on a daily basis, I don't have time to train soldiers to fight in Iraq. I have to get rid of him, because he is a detriment to the rest of the soldiers."
Doctors diagnosed another soldier named Jason Harvey with PTSD. At the end of May this year, Harvey slashed his wrists in a cry for help. Officials also kicked Harvey out a few months ago for "patterns of misconduct."
A therapist diagnosed Tyler Jennings with PTSD in May, but the Army's records show he is being tossed out because he used drugs and missed formations. Files on other soldiers suggest the same pattern: Those who seek mental-health help are repeatedly cited for misconduct, then purged from the ranks.
Most of these soldiers are leaving the Army with less than an "honorable discharge" -- which an Army document warns "can result in substantial prejudice in your civilian life." In other words, the Army is pushing them out in disgrace.
Anne Hawke produced this report for broadcast.
by | Posted on Tue, Dec. 05, 2006 |  | |
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| McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - During a recent visit to a military family center at Fort Hood in Texas, Joyce Raezer was dismayed to find a sign in a stall in the ladies' room. It asked women to clean up because janitorial service had been cut back.
"What message does that send to a family member when they walk into a family center?" asked Raezer, the director of government relations for the National Military Families Association.
At Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, swimming pools closed a month early this fall, and shuttle vans were sharply curtailed in an effort to trim spending. At Fort Sam Houston in Texas, unpaid utility bills exceeded $4 million, and the base reduced mail delivery to cut costs.
Belt-tightening at the bases is only the beginning. As the United States spends about $8 billion a month in Iraq, the military is being forced to cut costs in ways big and small.
Soldiers preparing to ship to Iraq don't have enough equipment to train on because it's been left in Iraq, where it's most needed. Thousands of tanks and other vehicles sit at repair depots waiting to be fixed because funds are short.
At the Red River Army Depot in Texas, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in October that at least 6,200 Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, trucks and ambulances were awaiting repair because of insufficient funds.
There's a virtual graveyard of tanks and fighting vehicles at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. Depot spokeswoman Joan Gustafson said that the depot expects to repair 1,885 tanks and other armored vehicles during the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. That's up from the 1,169 and 1,035 vehicles repaired in the prior two fiscal years.
Some of the depot's private-sector contractors haven't been able to supply enough parts in time to make all the repairs, she said. The depot is trying to reduce the time it takes to get repair and replacement parts from 120 days to 60 days.
Tanks and helicopters are one thing; the toll on America's warriors and their families is another.
More than 73,000 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and with problems such as drug abuse and depression. That's enough people to fill a typical NFL stadium.
Internet blogs written by soldiers or their wives tell of suicide attempts by soldiers haunted by the horror of combat, civilian careers of reservists who've been harmed by deployment and redeployment, and marriages broken by distance and the trauma of war.
"Back-to-back war deployments has changed both of us - to where it's as if a marriage does not exist anymore," wrote a woman calling herself Blackhawk wife on an Iraq war vets Web site. "We just go through the daily steps of life and raising children as best we can."
A mother of a returning soldier posted this: "Since he has been back, he has had 3 DUIs, wrecked his truck, attempted suicide, been diagnosed with PTSD" and is being kicked out of the Army.
The length of the war in Iraq has strained all aspects of the armed forces, said Dov Zakheim, who was the Pentagon's chief financial officer from 2001 to 2004.
"In 2003, I don't think anybody predicted it would go as long as World War II and the wear and tear on equipment would be as intense," said Zakheim, now a vice president for global strategy consultant Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. "When I left the department, we were spending less than $4 billion a month on Iraq. Now it's pretty much doubled."
The length of the Iraq war surpassed that of World War II last month. The costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global fight against terrorism are expected to surpass the $536 billion in inflation-adjusted costs of the Vietnam War by spring. That's more than 10 times the Bush administration's $50 million prewar estimate.
Through the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, Congress authorized about $436 billion in war spending, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
In October, President Bush signed legislation that tacked on $70 billion, bringing the total to more than $506 billion. That number will rise again once Congress appropriates Iraq stabilization and reconstruction funding.
The armed services, seeking to replace aging equipment and address quality-of-life issues for military families, are believed to be seeking $100 billion to $160 billion in a supplemental spending bill for spring.
If that's approved, war funding - three-quarters of it going to Iraq-related operations - would reach nearly $700 billion. If U.S. troops remain in Iraq through 2010, it will approach $1 trillion.
In January, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz released a study that said the true costs of the Iraq war could exceed $1 trillion and perhaps reach $2 trillion.
"When I saw that figure, I thought it was an exaggeration. I no longer think it's an exaggeration," said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Vietnam veteran who's criticized how the war has been fought and funded.
The Stiglitz report focused on hard-to-measure things such as lifetime care for injured soldiers and the economic effect of higher oil prices as a result of the war. But his final numbers for unofficial costs are on pace to be matched by the official costs - which don't add the intangibles.
"We were very conservative on the numbers, and the numbers have repeatedly come in higher than we estimated," said Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank, in a telephone interview from Spain. "Those costs continue to pile up: the health care costs, the disability costs, the replacement costs - and there's obviously an open question now if we ever reconstruct" Iraq.
Here's a look at some of the costs:
-RESET
Until recently, little of the authorized war funding went toward reset, the military term for replacing fighting vehicles, tanks, helicopters and other equipment that are wearing out from heavy use.
"We have a backlog of maintenance work to reset, fix, retool all our equipment, and at the same time we have to take care of our civilian soldiers," said Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, who in January will become chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on readiness. "Many of the units in the United States Reserve or National Guard do not have any equipment because their equipment stayed in Iraq ... Humvees, weapons, trucks, tanks. You name it, they need it."
Gary Schmitt, a defense expert for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the problem existed before 2001. "The war has obviously made that much worse," he said. "People would be surprised, but the reality is the increases in defense spending have been personnel and operational," not for upgrading or modernizing the armed forces.
The October bridge funding, which bridges the gap that occurs when the fiscal year begins before funds have been appropriated, included $24 billion for reset costs across the armed services. The Army's deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. David Melcher, told Congress in March that he expected reset costs of at least $12 billion a year while troops are in Iraq and for two years after withdrawal. In the 2006 fiscal year, the Marine Corps' reset request was three times bigger than its regular procurement budget.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated a $60 billion reset price tag through 2016, assuming a reduction in U.S. troops in Iraq by 2010.
"As long as the current level of intensity is maintained in Iraq operations, there's not going to be enough money to meet all the services' needs," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. "We're really burning up money over there at a furious pace."
Policymakers are stymied in their efforts to predict war costs, partly because the Department of Defense provides only vague estimates of future costs.
"DOD has provided little information about overall requirements to replace worn equipment or to upgrade capabilities, or how war requirements relate to ongoing peacetime investment," Amy Belasco, a defense budget analyst for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, said in a September report.
As the chief economist on President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers in 2002 and director of the CBO from 2002 until last year, Douglas Holtz-Eakin wrestled with that same problem. "It was hard to get actual cost data," he said.
-HEALTH
Between Oct. 1, 2001, and June 30, 2006, 35 percent of returning active-duty soldiers and 31 percent of Army reservists and National Guardsmen sought medical care from Veterans Affairs health centers. That figure from the Veterans Health Administration doesn't include treatment at VA hospitals.
In that period, more than 33,000 returning troops received preliminary diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder. Others experienced depression and drug abuse.
"The wear and tear on soldiers and the wear and tear on their families have been immense," said John Grady, a spokesman for the Association of the United States Army, a nonprofit group that lobbies on behalf of active and retired soldiers.
Problems are getting corrected, he said, "but they're getting corrected very slowly because the money is very slow in arriving."
In the first Gulf war, in which 700,000 U.S. soldiers were involved, 44 percent filed for some sort of disability compensation.
More than 1.4 million U.S. soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2001, and about 26 percent have filed disability claims, according to raw data provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. That percentage could grow as soldiers leave the armed forces.
"I see the whole thing as a mini-Medicare, another huge entitlement program which is going to be sprawling out over the course of our lifetimes and our children's lifetimes," said Linda Bilmes, a Harvard University public finance professor and co-author of the Stiglitz study. "The big costs come when they get back ... they stand a good chance of being really underfunded and not taken care of properly."
Veterans groups worry that they'll be forced to compete with other government programs for funds. Not enough attention is being given to the future mental health and medical needs of Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, they say, especially given how those wars differ from previous ones.
"First, they are deployed to war longer. Second, they are being deployed to the war zone two or three times. The combat there is more intense than the Gulf War for nearly every one deployed," said Paul Sullivan, a Desert Storm veteran and director of programs for Veterans for America. "There are no rear-area jobs. Everyone is on the front lines ... cooks and clerks and truck drivers ... the entire country is a war zone."
-FUTURE READINESS
Military commanders complain that they've been forced to fight a war on the cheap, despite its large costs. That's because military spending totals about 4 percent of the broader economy, a historically low level. Some critics, including Murtha, want to see more funds dedicated to the military's long-term needs.
"As the ships get older, the airplanes get older, we won't have the deterrent capability that we need," Murtha said.
Big-ticket U.S. military programs have been delayed since the 1990s, said Schmitt at the American Enterprise Institute. There are now so many unfunded replacements and upgrades scheduled in the years ahead that the nation faces a "procurement bow wave" that could swamp the federal budget.
A "spasm of endless spending in Iraq and Afghanistan" threatens future Air Force readiness, said Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Forces subcommittee on air and land.
Zakheim, the Pentagon's former CFO, said diverting money from acquisition programs is akin to "eating our seed corn for the future."
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For more on GAO concerns about funding and the global war on terror: www.gao.gov/new.items/d06885t.pdf
For the Congressional Research Service report on war costs, go to www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
For a military challenges report by Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, go to www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.25097/pub_detail.asp | ||
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) - The state's human-services chief was ordered to pay $80,000 for keeping mentally ill inmates in jail, a fine that came a week after she was charged with criminal contempt.
Judge Crockett Farnell imposed the sanction against Department of Children & Families chief Lucy Hadi on Thursday during a hearing on the status of seven Pinellas County jail inmates found incompetent months ago but only recently moved to mental health facilities.
Under state law, the inmates should have been moved sooner, and Farnell charged Hadi last week with indirect contempt of court.
The agency will appeal the fine, spokeswoman Al Zimmerman said. ``We'd like to work with the court in solving this problem, not against the court,'' Zimmerman said.
As of Monday, 237 inmates in the state's jails have been declared incompetent and have been in jail longer than 15 days, Zimmerman said.
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