Death toll from Veterans Affairs delays, incompetence climbing

By: American Decency Staff

Psychiatrist Dr. Margaret Moxness said she feared the worst but felt powerless because officials in the Huntington, W.Va., Department of Veterans Affairs treatment center where she worked turned a deaf ear to her warnings about delayed treatment.

She was counseling Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans struggling to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and had grown increasingly frustrated as patients she needed to see within 10 days were forced to wait months to schedule follow-up appointments after being prescribed powerful antidepressants.

“You're setting them up for problems if you don't monitor them early in the treatment,” she told Fox News on Monday.

“Their bodies heal before their emotions do, so now you have desperate, angry, depressed veterans that are activated. That’s where you get in trouble,” she said.

Moxness said she knew the problems were serious from her review of the cases of two veterans who committed suicide at the facility just prior to her arrival in 2008. She believes things didn't become even worse only because of the West Virginia facility's location.

“I was in a very tight-knit community where there was lots of extracurricular supports — family, faith, vet centers — so we had help, but no thanks to the VA, I’m sorry,” Moxness said.

The Fox News report was the latest in a rapidly lengthening list of examples of what appear to be horrendous examples of bureaucratic incompetence and malfeasance in the treatment of American military veterans.

The VA is the largest civilian department in the federal government, with an annual budget of more than $78 billion and a workforce of nearly 313,000 civil servants.

The department enjoys bipartisan political and public support but has struggled throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to keep up with growing demand for veterans benefits and medical services.

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