AH-APACHE crashes in Afghanistan

Senator diverts hearing to get answers on PTSD care

WASHINGTON — Sen. Patty Murray interrupted a budget hearing Wednesday to question the Army’s top brass about why hundreds of soldiers had mental health diagnoses overturned because of the expense of paying for their medical retirement.

Army Secretary John McHugh and Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno visited Capitol Hill to discuss the military’s fiscal needs with the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Murray instead steered the discussion in a different direction.

Doctors at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state stripped post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses from more than 40 percent of soldiers in the medical retirement process since 2007, said Murray, D-Wash.


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“The challenges of mental health care and PTSD are real and no one, no one should be denying any servicemember care purely because of a question of cost,” she said.

McHugh told Murray that the Army was re-evaluating the more than 300 soldiers whose PTSD diagnoses were taken away at Lewis-McChord.

The number of reversals clearly called for an investigation into whether it was done appropriately, he said.

The Army’s inspector general was also investigating all the forensic psychiatric units service-wide that evaluate whether a servicemember should be allowed to medically retire, McHugh said.

“Fiscal considerations should be nonexistent, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure they are,” he said.

At Lewis-McChord, one forensic psychiatrist cautioned his colleagues that it can cost taxpayers $1.5 million to treat a soldier for PTSD over a lifetime should they be allowed to medically retire with the diagnosis. The Seattle Times reported that of 690 patients with a PTSD diagnosis, the forensic psychiatry unit reversed at least 290 diagnoses.

That servicemembers were diagnosed during their miltiary service and received treatment, only to have their diagnoses changed when they entered the medical retirement process is “one of the most troubling aspects,” Murray said at the hearing.

She said that the medical evaluation process must be consistent across the service in order to work properly.

McHugh said part of the Inspector General’s investigation would be to make “very, very clear” to all bases that they cannot diverge from the Army’s standardized system for evaluating medical retirements.


ByMegan McCloskey
Stars and Stripes
Published: March 21, 2012

Medal of Honor- SPC Ross A. McGinnis

Spc. Ross Andrew McGinnis will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously during a White House ceremony June 2, 2008 (tentative).


The Story of SPC Ross A. McGinnis

1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division (attached to 2nd BCT, 2ID)


Parents: Tom and Romayne McGinnis

Siblings: Becky Gorman and Katie McGinnis

Hometownv: Knox, Pennsylvania

Enlisted: Delayed Entry Program June 14, 2004 at the Pittsburgh MEPS. Completed initial entry training at Fort Benning, Georgia

Assignments: 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment (Schweinfurt, Germany)

Deployments: Operation Iraqi Freedom

Spc. McGinnis’ dedication to duty and love for his fellow Soldiers were embodied in a statement issued by his parents shortly after his death:

“Ross did not become our hero by dying to save his fellow Soldiers from a grenade. He was a hero to us long before he died, because he was willing to risk his life to protect the ideals of freedom and justice that America represents. He has been recommended for the Medal of Honor… That is not why he gave his life. The lives of four men who were his Army brothers outweighed the value of his one life. It was just a matter of simple kindergarten arithmetic. Four means more than one. It didn’t matter to Ross that he could have escaped the situation without a scratch. Nobody would have questioned such a reflex reaction. What mattered to him were the four men placed in his care on a moment’s notice. One moment he was responsible for defending the rear of a convoy from enemy fire; the next moment he held the lives of four of his friends in his hands. The choice for Ross was simple, but simple does not mean easy. His straightforward answer to a simple but difficult choice should stand as a shining example for the rest of us. We all face simple choices, but how often do we choose to make a sacrifice to get the right answer? The right choice sometimes requires honor.”

Ross Andrew McGinnis was born June 14, 1987 in Meadville, PA. His family moved to Knox, northeast of Pittsburgh, when he was three. There he attended Clarion County public schools, and was a member of the Boy Scouts as a boy. Growing up he played basketball and soccer through the YMCA, and Little League baseball. Ross was a member of the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Knox, and a 2005 graduate of Keystone Junior-Senior High School.

Ross’s interests included video games and mountain biking. He was also a car enthusiast, and took classes at the Clarion County Career Center in automotive technology. He also worked part-time at McDonald’s after school.

His mother, Romayne, said Ross wanted to be a Soldier early in life. When asked to draw a picture of what he wanted to be when he grew up, Ross McGinnis, the kindergartner, drew a picture of a Soldier.

On his 17th birthday, June 14, 2004, Ross went to the Army recruiting station and joined through the delayed entry program.

After initial entry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, McGinnis was assigned to 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment in Schweinfurt, Germany. According to fellow Soldiers, he loved Soldiering and took his job seriously, but he also loved to make people laugh. One fellow Soldier commented that every time McGinnis left a room, he left the Soldiers in it laughing.

The unit deployed to Eastern Baghdad in August 2006, where sectarian violence was rampant. Ross was serving as an M2 .50 caliber machine gunner in 1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment is support of operations against insurgents in Adhamiyah, Iraq.

According to the official report, on the afternoon of Dec. 4, 2006, McGinnis’ platoon was on mounted patrol in Adhamiyah to restrict enemy movement and quell sectarian violence. During the course of the patrol, an unidentified insurgent positioned on a rooftop nearby threw a fragmentation grenade into the Humvee. Without hesitation or regard for his own life, McGinnis threw his back over the grenade, pinning it between his body and the Humvee’s radio mount. McGinnis absorbed all lethal fragments and the concussive effects of the grenade with his own body. McGinnis, who was a private first class at the time, was posthumously promoted to specialist. Spc. McGinnis’s heroic actions and tragic death are detailed in the battlescape section of this website and in his Medal of Honor Citation.

Army Decorations: Medal of Honor (to be presented to Tom and Romayne McGinnis at a June 2, 2008 White House Ceremony), Silver Star (awarded for valor exhibited during the events of Dec. 4, 2006, pending processing and approval of Medal of Honor), Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, and Combat Infantryman Badge.

Marines in Action

VA aims to get better data on vet suicide rates

Better data on suicide rates among veterans could be available by summer under an agreement forged between Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and 49 states.

The figure often noted in press reports and analyses — an average of 18 veteran suicides each day — is derived from information available from the Centers for Disease Control’s National Violent Death Reporting System, which receives input from 18 states, and other sources.

VA now has a commitment from 49 state governments to furnish statistics on veterans’ deaths in their states to the department, said Jan Kemp, VA’s National Mental Health Program Director for Suicide Prevention.

The lone holdout is Colorado, although Kemp said VA is in talks with the state governor to provide the information.

“By April, hopefully, we’ll have a more realistic view of the scope” of veterans’ suicides, Kemp said Monday at the American Legion convention in Washington, D.C.

VA knows when a veteran in its care commits suicide, but only 6 million of the nation’s 22 million veterans are enrolled in VA health services.

VA relies on various sources, including the NVDRS and its own Office of Environmental Epidemiology and Serious Mental Illness Treatment, Research and Evaluation Center, to extrapolate much of its information.

According to VA, 20 percent of the suicides that occur in the U.S. are committed by veterans.

Between 2008 and 2010, about 950 veterans enrolled in VA health care attempted suicide each month.

By Patricia Kime
The Marine Corps Times

Medal of Honor Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman

You're a 19 year old kid.

You're critically wounded and dying in
The jungle somewhere in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam ..

It's November 11, 1967.
LZ (landing zone) X-ray.

Your unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense from 100 yards away, that your CO (commanding officer) has ordered the MedEvac helicopters to stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're not getting out.

Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again.

As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter.
You look up to see a Huey coming in. But.. It doesn't seem real because no MedEvac markings are on it.

Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you.

He's not MedEvac so it's not his job, but he heard the radio call and decided he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.

Even after the MedEvacs were ordered not to come.He's coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 3 of you at a time on board.

Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses and safety.

And, he kept coming back!! 13 more times!!
Until all the wounded were out. No one knew until the mission was over that the Captain had been hit 4 times in the legs and left arm.
He took 29 of you and your buddies out that day. Some would not have made it without the Captain and his Huey.

Medal of Honor Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman, United States Air Force, died last Wednesday at the age of 70, in Boise , Idaho

May God Bless and Rest His Soul.

I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we've sureheard a whole bunch about Lindsay Lohan, Dr. Murray, that sicko Sandusky , and a 72- day sham marriage.

Shame on the media !!!

Medal of Honor Winner Captain Ed Freeman
Now... YOU pass this along. Honor this real hero. Please.

Theodore Lasser
Viet Nam Veteran
Executive Director /
CoachVeteran Entrepreneurial Transfer, Inc.
a veteran founded nonprofit organization
ted.lasser@vetransfer.org
www.vetransfer.org

New Jersey Aims To Open Veterans Haven North At Hagedorn This Summer

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie “announced plans last week to convert the Sen. Garrett W. Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Lebanon Township into a second such facility: Veterans Haven North.” Christie allocated “$2.3 million in state money to use 100 of Hagedorn’s 288 beds for the program, but provided few other details.” A spokesperson for Christie “said the governor would release more information later this week.”