Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
On Veterans Day, White House To Push Measures To Improve Private Medical Care For Vets
The Obama administration on Wednesday will call on Congress to enact measures to help military veterans gain easier access to health care, disability and educational benefits, part of a push to spotlight its efforts to improve the way the government treats veterans after a scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs. President Obama will urge Congress to improve a program that allows veterans to receive private medical care, speed the appeal process for disability claims and pass legislation aiming to improve the quality of schools that serve veterans. (Hirschfeld Davis, 11/11)
As he tries to repair a sprawling agency beset by poor morale, growing caseloads, a shortage of medical staff and a crisis last year over manipulated waiting lists to paper over delays in health care, the retired chief executive of Procter & Gamble has felt bipartisan criticism. VA may be the one corner of the government that, because there are veterans in every congressional district, Democrats and Republicans can agree on. And the public criticism of how he is leading the agency — more biting from Republicans, not surprisingly — has been unrelenting, from inaction on firing executives who engaged in misconduct to battles over funding. (Rein, 11/11)
David McIntyre Jr., president and chief executive officer of TriWest Healthcare Alliance, concedes he's in a challenging race to meet the needs of U.S. military veterans who have been backlogged in the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system. To date, the Tempe-based company is still running slightly behind, unable to meet the escalating demand for timely care. Still, 12 months into a rush job — and on the verge of Veterans Day — McIntyre eagerly discussed the progress that's been made. (Wagner, 11/10)
Elsewhere, media outlets write about post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health challenges vets face --
Von Wiggins laughed at the small troubles he got into back in his Army days. "One time I was hanging around the female barracks [at Fort Meade] and I didn't leave when they told me to," he recalled last week over breakfast near his home in Rhawnhurst. It was around 1971. He was 23, just back from Vietnam, feeling carefree. But the memory of that bloodied old man hunched over those rocks still haunted him. So did the wave of terror he'd felt when that flapping motion outside his bunker revealed itself to be a hand in the moonlight. (O'Reilly, 11/11)
Veterans sentenced to death in Texas murder cases — and nationwide — might have escaped the punishment if juries had been told about their military service and any ensuing mental health problems, according to a Death Penalty Information Center report released Tuesday. (Silver, 11/10)
And STAT reports on an ambitious VA project to sequence the DNA of a million veterans to uncover clues about disorders ranging from diabetes to PTSD --
Since its launch in 2010, the VA has spent $30 million building and running MVP. Caring for 8.76 million veterans enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration, it has a strong interest in understanding the role that genes play in the diseases they develop. The VA is also uniquely situated to carry out this kind of project, in part because veterans tend to have medical records in the system that stretch back decades. But the research being done as part of the MVP — which has already enrolled more than 420,000 participants — could have implications that reach far beyond the VA. (Zimmer, 11/11)
