The Department of Veterans Affairs is experiencing a surge of treatment requests and disability claims as soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan, overwhelming VA clinics . The Christian Science Monitor reports "the VA is experiencing an unprecedented demand for its services. Among the roughly 2 million people who have deployed, there are some 300,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and thousands more of traumatic brain injury, according to a RAND report last year. And in the past decade, the number of disability claims that the VA processes has skyrocketed. Depakote Even with a heavy infusion of funding - a 50 percent increase since 2006 - the VA has been hard-pressed to meet veterans’ needs. President Obama has outlined yet more funding, but the question remains: Will a new generation of vets get the resources and help it is likely to need from the VA for years to come?" (Lubold, 8/30).
Meanwhile, The Seattle Times reports on how the VA is receiving increased attention for a booklet it produced on end-of-life care: "While Republicans are calling a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health-planning booklet a "death book" that encourages veterans to kill themselves or forgo care, ethicists and legal and medical experts say it’s a reasonable attempt to help veterans plan for the end of their lives" (Adams, 9/3).
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