Payments by the Department of Veterans Affairs in the decade after 9/11 went to grieving families, ranging from Iraq War veterans who committed suicide after being turned away from mental health treatment to botched surgeries and fatal neglect of elderly veterans.
Returning Home to Battle
For many veterans, the end of active duty means the beginning of a new fight with the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs – for benefits, housing and a chance to rebuild their lives.
Posted inReturning Home to Battle
How CIR is helping localize our reporting on veterans’ wrongful deaths
Whenever we get our hands on a good dataset, we try to identify and encourage opportunities for other journalists and media partners to use the information as well. CIR’s veterans coverage has been particularly fruitful for collaboration and localization.
Posted inHealth Care for Veterans, Returning Home to Battle
House panel questions VA officials on veterans’ preventable deaths
Getty Images A freshman congresswoman broke into tears this morning after an Army veteran testified that he is dying of terminal cancer because doctors at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in South Carolina failed to perform a routine colonoscopy when he had blood in his stool. “I don’t know how they sleep at night. I […]
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Posted inHealth Care, Health Care for Veterans, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
Action on the VA’s pain pill habit
On our debut pilot, reporter Aaron Glantz uncovered how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been prescribing highly addictive pain medications at an alarming rate. He returns to the show to discuss how lawmakers might address the spike in opiate prescriptions.
Posted inHealth Care for Veterans, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
Ex-VA doctor says she was forced out after limiting opiate prescriptions
Dr. Basimah Khulusi says she was forced out of her job as a rehabilitation specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Kansas City, Mo., after patients complained that she would not prescribe high doses of opiates. She says many of her patients had been addicted to opiates for years yet received escalating doses […]
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
VA’s lack of pain treatment options led to opiate addiction, veteran says
Justin Minyard, an Army infantryman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, says he became addicted to opiates prescribed by VA doctors to mute chronic back pain that began after he helped in the 9/11 rescue effort at the Pentagon. “There were better options to treat my pain, and those weren’t presented to me first,” he […]
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
In SF, VA doctors renewed opiate prescriptions without seeing patients
Getty Images Doctors at the San Francisco VA Medical Center regularly renewed prescriptions for highly addictive narcotic painkillers for veterans they had never seen, according to a new report by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ inspector general. The report also documented seven cases of opiate overdose among patients at the facility and determined doctors “did […]
Posted inBenefits, Returning Home to Battle
Overtime, new computer system put sizable dent in VA benefits backlog
Far fewer veterans are facing long waits for disability compensation after the Department of Veterans Affairs spent the past six months focusing on the backlog.
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
Video: Drugging America’s Veterans
When it comes to painkillers, the United States consumes 80 percent of the world’s supply, according to American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. More Americans now die from painkillers than from heroin and cocaine combined according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among military veterans, the problem of painkiller abuse is especially striking. […]
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
VA doctors tell House lawmakers of pressure to prescribe veterans opiates
Heather McDonald speaks about her husband’s death at a House subcommittee hearing. Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran Scott Alan McDonald died of an overdose of Percocet on Sept. 13, 2012.Amanda Voisard/The Center for Investigative Reporting Department of Veterans Affairs physicians told a House subcommittee today that hospital administrators regularly pressured them to prescribe highly addictive […]