Good morning, Colonel Dan,
The VA has published the 2009 edition of the Federal Benefits for Veterans, Dependents, and Survivors on April 27. I do not know if you already have this information and the publication. I have not yet seen it being announced anywhere (e.g., a VA press release, a VSO newsletter, etc.).
The entire publication can be viewed online and downloaded in Adobe Acrobat/Reader PDF format at the following direct web links:
Online version
PDF Download in English
PDF Download in Spanish
I have attached the English copy in PDF format to this note. I hope you will find this information helpful and pass it on to our VeteranIssues group members, other veterans, and their families.
Thank you for everything you do!
Tanya Cobb
Service/Welfare Officer
Chapter 353, MOPH
VeteranIssues Group Member
Alexandria, VA
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Thank you Tanya on behalf of all veterans
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
2009 edition of the Federal Benefits for Veterans
War-funding bill to OK retro stop-loss pay
War-funding bill to OK retro stop-loss pay
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Monday May 4, 2009 17:11:12 EDT
By week’s end, about 170,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — many of them no longer in service — who were involuntarily kept on active duty by stop-loss orders before Oct. 1, 2008, could be cheering Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee.
At Murtha’s urging, the 2009 emergency war funding bill that will be taken up Thursday by the House Appropriations Committee includes money and authority to retroactively pay $500 for each month someone served under stop-loss orders from Sept. 11, 2001 through Sept. 30, 2008.
The bill would extend benefits to those who were left out last fall when Congress ordered stop-loss payments that applied only to people held on active-duty after the bill became law.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the House Appropriations Committee chairman, said the retroactive stop-loss allowances will cost about $734.4 million of the $81.6 billion included in the supplemental for defense and intelligence costs related to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
The $500 would apply to any month in which a person served as little as one day under stop loss. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the average period of stop loss was 6½ months, which means the average person who received stop-loss orders would get seven months of payments, or $3,500.
That would be tax-free for any month in which they were in a combat zone for any amount of time, and taxable for any month they were not.
While Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers make up the bulk of those who would be helped by the bill, people from every branch of the service would get money because all the services used stop loss orders to prevent retirements and separations after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
In addition to money for stop-loss allowances, the supplemental funding bill will include $44.8 billion for operations and personnel costs, $1.2 billion for defense health programs aimed specifically at military families and about $500 million for U.S. commanders to spend in Iraq and Afghanistan on humanitarian relief and reconstruction projects, Obey said.
War-funding bill to OK retro stop-loss pay
Good news for all those deprived veterans that were shafted
Celebrate the U.S. Army Birthday, Tell Your Army Story
May 05, 2009 06:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Celebrate the U.S. Army Birthday, Tell Your Army Story
The U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute Encourages All to Participate
ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--This June, Soldiers, Veterans, families, and supporters will celebrate the U.S. Army turning 234 years strong. In keeping with the tradition of celebration, the U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute, the Army’s official “Thank You” commendation program, is welcoming submissions of stories including accomplishments, memorable moments, and lessons learned, by those in the Army family.
The U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute Web site, www.freedomteamsalute.com, will feature a selection of compelling submissions, which will also be included in the special e-salute U.S. Army Birthday edition.
“The Army has a long and proud history, one that is celebrated by installations and commands all over the world,” explained Colonel David Griffith, Director, U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute. “We are asking for story submissions so that we can capture the accomplishments and defining moments of our Soldiers, Veterans, families, and supporters.”
Submissions should be 500 words or less and submitted by Friday, June 5.
Topics can be (but are not limited to):
A defining moment in your Army life
A lesson learned from the Army
How the Army changed your life
The reason you decided to join the Army
Your most memorable Noncommissioned Officer
To submit a story, please go to:
https://www.freedomteamsalute.com/people/armystory.aspx
U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute was established in 2005 by the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Army to give the public the opportunity to thank all U.S. Army Veterans for their service by recognizing them with Commendations. The program also honors and recognizes the Parents, Spouses, Employers, and Supporters of Active Duty, Army Reserve, and National Guard Soldiers. Commendations consist of a personalized letter and certificate signed by Pete Geren, Secretary of the Army, and General George W. Casey Jr., the Army Chief of Staff. Honorees also receive official Army lapel pins and The Salute, a quarterly newsletter that contains information on military history and today’s Army. To date, the U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute program has honored over 1.9 million Army Veterans, Spouses, Parents, Supporters, and Employers.
For more information on U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute and honoring Supporters or Veterans, please visit www.freedomteamsalute.com.
Contacts
U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute
Lindsey Brothers
Media Relations
Office: 703-325-3965
Cell: 410-977-2082
Lindsey.Brothers@us.army.mil
or
David Thompson
Media Relations Manager
Office: 703-325-3963
Cell: 301-785-7670
David.Thompson57@us.army.mil
Monday, May 4, 2009
Health record plan may open VA to all veterans
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=62251
Military Update: Health record plan may open VA to all veterans
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes, Pacific edition, Saturday, April 25, 2009
President Obama’s ambitious plan to establish a lifetime electronic record for service members and veterans will improve delivery of benefits, speed processing of claims and, over time, open VA health care to any veteran, regardless of their medical condition or income level.VA Secretary Eric Shinseki first raised the idea of a more sophisticated electronic record system, and linked it to automatic enrollment by all veterans in the VA health system, during a House hearing in February.
This week, through a press spokeswoman, Shinseki confirmed that universal access to VA health care is integral to the administration’s plan to develop as quickly as possible a 21st Century electronic record system.“Secretary Shinseki and the whole [VA] team believe that ‘uniform registration’ ” in the VA health system “is an essential part of the lifetime virtual record,” said Katie Roberts, his press secretary, in an e-mail.Shinseki and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were with the president April 9 in the Old Executive Office Building when Obama announced to an audience of veterans a “huge step toward modernizing the way VA health care is delivered and [VA] benefits are administered.”
Obama described a comprehensive electronic record system, to be developed and used jointly by the Department of Defense and VA, which would hold all service-related documents, administrative and medical, on individuals from the time they enter service until “they are laid to rest.”Members leaving service no longer would have to “hand carry” medical records to VA health facilities.
And VA health providers, like military counterparts, would have full electronic medical files on any member or veteran. VA claim processes likewise would have access to military administrative files, thereby reducing delays and mistakes for applicants.“And it would do all this,” the president said, “with the strictest and most rigorous standards of privacy and security so our veterans can have confidence that their medical records can only be shared at their direction.”
Shinseki, a retired four-star general and former Army chief of staff, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee Feb. 4 that he already was discussing with Gates a joint electronic record system.“An individual enters the ranks as a youngster and stays for several years, or stays for 20, and comes to us as a veteran. Those records ought to be transferable…accurate and complete.
Not just medical records but personal records as well, because the personnel records are also part of the disability adjudication process. If we can get to this agreement on what an electronic medical record looks like, we will solve the challenges we’re wrestling with today where we have two different records,” Shinseki said.With regard to medical records, Shinseki said features of the VA Vista system were preferred, even by military doctors, to the more cumbersome AHLTA system used by the Defense Department.At the same hearing,
Shinseki said mandatory enrollment in the VA health care system should be part of any move to a joint electronic record.“That alone will force the two institutions to begin to move together on what records need to be handed off,” said Shinseki. Mandatory enrollment is significant because current access to VA health care is restricted. Since January 2003, veterans in Priority Group 8 – those who have no service-connected conditions and have incomes above certain government thresholds – have been barred from enrolling in the VA health care system.
About a half million Group 8s since then have applied.Congress has taken a first step to life that ban. By July, income thresholds on new Group 8 enrollments will be raised enough to allow in about 266,000 more veterans. The Obama administration announced plans to more than double that number by 2013. But if launch of the “Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record”, as VA officials have dubbed it, would occurs sooner, so too would the VA medical system to all veterans.
That’s important, Shinseki told lawmakers.“Even for those who may not have a disability claim” on separation, he said, “10 years down the road, who knows? Twenty years down the road we don’t want to be doing what we’re doing now, which is chasing details and records that are hidden away some place.”Shinseki assured Congress that he won’t allow the health system to become so crowded that access to care is choked off for the war disabled or veterans having service-connected disabilities.
Chuck Hume, deputy chief information officer in the Veterans Health Administration, said it’s too soon to predict when VA and DoD will be ready to launch a single electronic record system.“The president has stated that he wants us to pursue this as aggressively as possible and to get this vision realized for the benefit of our service member and veterans,” said Hume. “But it’s premature – without [a system] architecture, without a detailed plan – to forecast a timeline.” Linda Fischetti, VHA’s top health informatics officer, said the vision embraced here presents wonderful opportunities for veterans.
Electronic health records evolved, she said, to ease workloads within medical offices, then inside medical departments, across hospitals and then entire systems.What’s endorsed here, she said, is a system with a different purpose.“It’s not about the department. It’s not about the hospital. It’s about the person,” said Fischetti. “What do we need to move all of this information to support the best decisions and services for the person? How do we make this information available so they can partner in their health care?”
To comment, e-mail milupdate@aol.com, write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111 or visit: militaryupdate.com
Health record plan may open VA to all veterans
Government injected veterans with cocaine for drug addiction research
Subject: Government injected veterans with cocaine for drug addiction research
Veterans being used for guinea pigs again!
Government injecting veterans with cocaine for drug addiction research
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
04/29/09 9:05 PM
Drug-addicted veterans are being injected with cocaine by researchers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in taxpayer-funded studies, The Examiner has learned.
The study subjects are being given the injections as part of a search for medicines that researchers hope will block cocaine absorption in the body, said Timothy O'Leary, the VA's acting director of research and development.
All the subjects were recruited because they were addicted to cocaine, O'Leary said. About 40 volunteers -- most of them veterans -- are being given injections at VA labs in Kansas City and San Antonio, he added.
Hundreds of veterans have apparently been used as human subjects in the past decade, according to records and interviews with officials.
The VA has handed over several other abstracts from studies over the past decade, and O'Leary said his agency has been conducting such research for at least 25 years.
O'Leary said that the subjects' safety was paramount. But documents of a decade-old study that tested morphine on veterans found nearly 800 ''adverse events'' from anorexia to heart tremors.
Last month, The Examiner reported that the federal government had spent millions of taxpayer dollars to give addicts drugs such as crack and intravenous cocaine as well as morphine and other opiates in publicly funded clinical studies. The VA documents and interviews suggest that the programs have been even more widespread than previously suspected.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, more than 6,000 licenses have been given to scientists to use otherwise illegal drugs in their experiments. DEA officials declined to hand over their records.
O'Leary said the studies were desperately needed to find ways to treat addiction. An estimated 140,000 vets suffer from drug addiction, according to VA officials.
''As you know, there are a lot of people out there who suffer from addictions. It's a huge societal problem,'' O'Leary said in a phone interview.
Critics say that experimenting on addicts runs contrary to ethical guidelines on ''informed consent.'' The doctrine requires that human laboratory subjects understand the risks of the experiment and can say no. For at least 20 years, scientists have recognized that addiction is a disease, which means that addicts can't simply say no.
Pressure is mounting on the government to come clean about its drug experiments.
''How many ways can the government get it wrong?'' Cato Institute scholar Tim Lynch asked The Examiner.
Compared with the CIA's former habit of testing dangerous drugs on unwilling volunteers, these programs are ''an improvement if the research deals with volunteers and full disclosure of the risks involved,'' Lynch said. ''But it is not clear to me why the government has to subsidize such research.''
U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said through a spokesman that he was ''closely reviewing'' the matter.
O'Leary said that the cocaine injections in San Antonio and Kansas City were being given in ''extremely controlled conditions,'' but when asked to detail what he meant by that phrase, he said he wasn't familiar with those labs.
VA officials have not acted on a Freedom of Information Act request for access to their files.
URL: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Government-injecting-veterans-with-cocaine-for-drug-addiction-research-44007367.html
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This seems to much related to this mess I was involved in more than 35 years ago
Vietnam Veterans of America, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, et al. Case No. CV-09-0037-CW, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Cal. 2009)
What This Case Is About
Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief only – no monetary damages – and Plaintiffs seek redress for 25 years of diabolical experiments followed by over 30 years of neglect, including:
the use of troops to test nerve gas, psychochemicals, and thousands of other toxic chemical or biological substances and perhaps most gruesomely, the insertion of septal implants in the brains of subjects in a ghastly series of mind control experiments that went awry;
the failures to secure informed consent and other widespread failures to follow the precepts of U.S. and international law regarding the use of human subjects, including the 1953 Wilson Directive and the Nuremberg Code;
an almost fanatical refusal to satisfy their legal and moral obligations to locate the victims of their gruesome experiments or to provide health care or compensation to them;
the deliberate destruction of evidence and files documenting their illegal actions, actions which were punctuated by fraud, deception, and a callous disregard for the value of human life.
The Complaint asks the Court to determine that Defendants’ actions were illegal and that Defendants have a duty to notify all victims and to provide them with health care going forward.
Why does this nation seem to be determined to repeat the mistakes of the past and using veterans as "volunteers" is no different than using active duty soldiers as "volunteers" from 1953-1975 the doctors licenses need to be revokedSphere: Related Content
