A House committee on Tuesday blocked an amendment in a VA spending bill that would have expanded access to medical marijuana for veterans. Because marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance, it is banned by the federal government. Even as states legalize cannabis for medical and recreational purposes, veterans have struggled to gain access to medical marijuana through the VA.

Sponsored by Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), the Veterans Equal Access amendment would bar federal funds from blocking veterans’ access to medical marijuana in states that have legalized it. The amendment, proposed as part of the 2018 Military Construction bill, would have permitted VA doctors to “make appropriate recommendations, fill out forms, or take steps to comply” with medical marijuana programs in states that have legalized it.

In the 29 states–plus D.C.–that have legalized medical marijuana, VA doctors cannot prescribe or recommend medical marijuana to their patients, because the VA is a federal agency. For veterans afflicted with psychiatric conditions, like PTSD, medical marijuana can be an effective tool–and is much less dangerous than opiates. The American Legion and other veterans groups support greater access to medical marijuana for veterans.

“Given that veterans are more likely to commit suicide or die from opiate overdoses than civilians, our fight to provide them safer alternatives won’t stop here,” Blumenauer, a founding member of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said in a statement. “We have stronger support in the House and Senate than ever before, and we will keep advocating for a more rational approach.”

For the last several years, a growing group of lawmakers from both parties have tried to tie the equal access amendment to the VA spending bill. Last year, both the House and the Senate passed the amendment, but it was dropped during conference discussions on the final bill. This year’s effort is not entirely dead. Earlier this month, the Senate Appropriations Committee easily passed a similar amendment, so when both chambers meet to hash out the final VA bill, it could still make the cut.

“All we want is equal treatment for our wounded warriors,” Blumenauer added. “This provision overwhelmingly passed on the House floor last year – and bipartisan support has only grown. It’s outrageous that the Rules Committee won’t even allow a vote for our veterans. They deserve better. They deserve compassion.”

Despite the federal government’s reluctance to reform marijuana laws, or to reclassify marijuana, a bipartisan chorus is growing in support of legalization–Blumenauer’s amendment was co-sponsored by nine Democrats and nine Republicans. And though the House committee did not pass the amendment, at least one Republican member publicly supported it.

“I’ve seen firsthand the benefit people can derive from medical marijuana,” Representative Dan Newhouse (R-WA) said. “It seems to me if it’s available and it works, we should make that available to our veterans as well.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs announced a new pilot program on Tuesday that would allow veterans in Phoenix to receive outside care at CVS MinuteClinics. The program is a new effort designed to alleviate the exorbitant wait times veterans face when seeking care at VA facilities. For now, the program is limited to the Phoenix area, where VA facilities treat about 120,000 veterans.

“Our number one priority is getting veterans’ access to care when and where they need it,” Baligh Yehia, the VA’s deputy undersecretary for health for community care, told the Associated Press. “The launch of this partnership will enable VA to provide more care for veterans in their neighborhoods.”

The current Veterans Choice Program (VCP) restricts veterans from seeking outside care unless they have to wait more than 30 days for an appointment. If the nearest VA clinic is over 40 miles away, then a veteran is allowed to seek outside care as well. The new Phoenix-area program allows VA staff to recommend a veteran to go to a MinuteClinic when “clinically appropriate.” VA Secretary David Shulkin has indicated he would like to scrap the current VCP restrictions.

Congress recently passed legislation that would funnel $10 billion into the VCP program. “Congress has once again demonstrated that the country stands firmly united when it comes to supporting our nation’s Veterans,” Shulkin said at the time. President Donald Trump, who promised throughout his campaign to reform the VA, is expected to sign the legislation on Wednesday.

In 2014, then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned after it was revealed that officials in Phoenix falsified reports about the wait times veterans faced at VA clinics. The fake reports covered up the fact that in some instances, veterans died while waiting for care. In a recent survey conducted by the VA, only 61 percent of veterans said they could get a medical appointment for primary care when they needed one.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a veteran of the Vietnam War, where he was also a POW, supports the new program. “Veterans in need of routine health care services should not have to wait in line for weeks to get an appointment when they can visit community health centers like MinuteClinic to receive timely and convenient care,” he said.

And Tobias Barker, the chief medical officer of CVS MinuteClinic, told the AP he hopes the new program can be one of several solutions to providing medical care to America’s veterans. “We believe in the MinuteClinic model of care and are excited to offer our health care services as one potential solution for the Phoenix VA Health Care System and its patients,” he said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Two years ago, Congress created a new program, the Veteran’s Choice Program, to fix the well-publicized problems facing health services at the Veterans Affairs Administration, known as the VA. These problems ranged from poor care to wait times to see a doctor that were so long a person was likely to end up dead before they could be told why they were dying. Two years later, the program meant to put an end to these issues is experiencing the same problems and may be even worse than it originally was.

How did the VA healthcare system get to this point? Read more to find out how the VA system was originally crafted, and the issues it faced and continues to face as those in charge search for answers.

The VA System

Since the beginning of war, disease–not actual conflict itself–has been the number one killer of soldiers. With that consideration in place, the United States has offered benefits of some kind to veterans going all the way back to the Revolutionary War. While the system is still serving veterans of wars long over, it became more codified in 1930 when President Hoover created the Veterans Administration. At the time of its inception, the system had 54 hospitals, served 4.7 million veterans, and employed 31,600 people. Over the following years, a number of other agencies were created, including the Board of Veterans Appeals in 1933, the Department of Medicine and Surgery in 1946, and the Department of Veterans Benefits in 1953. All of these departments were eventually organized under the singular umbrella of the VA, which was also made a cabinet level department in 1989.

Over the years, the system has grown in size to become a massive department today. Now, the Veterans Health Administration operates with an annual budget of $59 billion. This budget covers a lot; according to the VA, it funds “150 medical centers, nearly 1,400 community-based outpatient clinics, community living centers, Vet Centers and Domiciliaries.” The system also employs over 305,000 health care professionals. On top of this, the VA is the largest Medical training system in the United States, serving the most graduate-level students and contributing greatly to continued medical research and discovery. This includes 76,000 volunteers, 118,000 trainees, and 25,000 faculty.

Overall, this massive system serves over 9 million veterans in the United States. Based on VA guidelines, once enrollment is initiated veterans undergo a means test to see if they are a priority and if they are able to afford the co-pays. Once these steps are completed, veterans then go to see a doctor within 14 days if they are new patients and between 14 and 30 if they are existing members.

Problems with the VA

The issues plaguing the VA primarily center on wait times. This concerns one of the three branches covered by VA system, namely the Veterans Health Administration. The other two primary branches deal with benefits and burials for veterans. The VA scandal involved a variety of issues, but wait times and the difficulty that many veterans have merely accessing medical care garnered most of the public’s attention.

Some veterans have had to wait for longer than 125 days to see a doctor, a stark contrast to the 30 days required by the system. In facilities across the country, there have been allegations that administrators falsified records to make it appear as though patient wait times were not longer than required. It had gotten so bad that some may have even died while waiting; however, due to record keeping issues, we don’t know exactly how many veterans with pending records were actually waiting for care when they died.

These complaints were not isolated to just one or a few places either, locations in Phoenix; Fort Collins, Colorado; Miami; Columbia, South Carolina; and Pittsburgh, to name a few, all reported problems. There were also issues with claims, especially as more Vietnam veterans were included in disability coverage. Claims have no time limit and can be filed at any point. The primary backlog that most are concerned with is not for decisions on claim appeals, but for the initial claim decisions themselves. These issues were severe enough that the head of the VA resigned in 2014 after the extent of the scandal became known.

Two years after the initial reports broke, results are still not much better for the VA system. This year there have again been reports from states about inaccurate wait times, cost overruns, poor care, and refusal to discipline employees despite poor care.

The following video looks at the scandal with the VA system:

The New System and Lingering Issues

In an attempt to solve the problem Congress created the Veteran’s Choice program. At a cost of $10 billion, this program was supposed to put an end to the problems facing the VA system, particularly long wait times to see a doctor. Under the program, eligible veterans are able to get healthcare from nearby medical centers rather than traveling to VA facilities if wait times or distance are an issue. However, instead of helping, the effort has by many measures made things worse. Wait times have actually increased under the new program, though, according to the VA that is in part because so many veterans are trying to use it. In some places, veterans were never referred to the program or the doctor they were designated to see was too far away.

Based on the system’s structure, the patient had to be the one to initiate appointments, not the provider. However, that wasn’t entirely clear for everyone involved and many veterans were left waiting for calls to schedule appointments. And even in cases where veterans are able to schedule an appointment and see a doctor, the Choice Program has a long backlog of payments that prevents doctors from being paid on time. Doctors have reportedly waited for 90 to 180 days after a long claims process to simply get paid for their services. The situation got so bad that thousands of veterans referred to the new program actually ended up going back to the traditional VA system because it was more efficient.

Why Isn’t it Working?

So how has the new system that was meant to address these problems only exacerbated them in many cases? The answer starts with how the program was set up in the first place. The program’s basic tenet was to give veterans care faster and closer to home, specifically, this meant that if patients had to wait more than a month to make an appointment or drive over 40 miles to the nearest VA facility, they would be eligible. But the system has largely failed to live up to those promises largely because of how quickly the program was created and implemented.

Namely, once Congress approved funding and the president signed the Choice Program into law, the VA was only given 90 days to implement it. This was a program that would affect millions of veterans, hundreds of thousands of medical care professionals, and the families of both. The deadline was so short, in fact, that the VA quickly excluded itself from the process because it knew it would be unable to meet the requirements. This forced the agency to look to the private industry. However, most companies in the private industry were also turned off by the 90-day timeline.  While the VA was ultimately able to settle on two organizations, they have been scrambling to build the requisite network of health care professionals and still rely on the VA for referrals leading to the delays. The system proved to be too complicated and difficult to use for everyone involved, from veterans to doctors and VA administrators.

The accompanying video looks at the problems with the Choice Program:

Conclusion

When the true reality of the VA scandal broke two years ago, everybody agreed that the system was broken and needed to be fixed, fast. However, this is not the type of system that can be repaired and streamlined in just a few months. Unsurprisingly, the quick fix has turned into a disaster in need of a fix of its own. So what is the appropriate action moving forward?

Some have called for a total dismantling of the VA healthcare system as it is known today. Instead of providing care directly to veterans, the new system would simply pay for their care. However, critics are quick to denounce a system that would leave veterans to their own devices. It does seem unlikely an organization as sprawling as the VA will be torn down completely. Consequently, more internal reforms are likely. While the situation is in dire need of a solution, new fixes should not be rushed. Lawmakers will need to create a system that works well and gives veterans the care they need when they need it.

Resources

NPR: How Congress and The VA Left Many Veterans Without A ‘Choice’

NPR: For The VA’s Broken Health System, The Fix Needs A Fix

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: 10 Things to Know About the Choice Program

House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs: History and Jurisdiction

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: Veterans Health Administration

The Washington Post: Everything You Need to Know About the VA–and the Scandals Engulfing it

The Washington Times: VA Still Plagued by Problems Two Years After Scandal

The Military Advantage Blog: Care Commission Shocker: The Push to End VA Healthcare

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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It’s been a week since Nicole Lovell’s body was found on the side of North Carolina’s Highway 89, and yet there’s still so much we don’t know about the 13-year-old’s bizarre murder.

How 13-year-old Nicole Lovell’s tragic murder was planned out by two college students: https://t.co/ShMVHPlWjw pic.twitter.com/t49VTfkdTu

— Teen Vogue (@TeenVogue) February 5, 2016

I can start off by telling you what we do know.

The Blacksburg, Virginia teen had already been through a lot in her 13 years. She survived a liver transplant as an infant, and was taking daily medication to support her liver. She was also a victim of bullying at school, and often used social media to gain self confidence, make friends, and talk to boys.

Then on January 27, Lovell snuck out of her home in the middle of the night to meet up with David Eisenhauer, an 18-year-old freshman and standout track athlete at Virginia Tech; they are believed to have met online. The full extent of their relationship has not yet been released to the public, but the pair is presumed to have been involved romantically.

2nd Va. Tech freshman student arrested over 13-year-old girl’s murder https://t.co/d8Y9OHTDOR pic.twitter.com/nweCs0YRWP

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 31, 2016

Eisenhauer was later charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder, and his fellow classmate Natalie Keepers was also charged as an accessory before and after the fact. The pair is said to have planned the murder weeks in advance, and drove to separate Wal-Marts to purchase cleaning supplies and a shovel with Nicole’s body hidden in the back of Eisenhauer’s Lexus.

We’re still trying to uncover a clear motive for why two college students would allegedly conspire to murder a young girl, but it’s already being speculated that the plot was an attempt to cover up a potential sexual relationship that Eisenhauer was having with the underage girl. Because Lovell often communicated with Eisenhauer using the popular social messaging app Kik, there have been growing concerns from parents wondering what the app is and if it’s safe for their kids.

Kik is a free instant messaging app that allows users to send messages, photos, games, and other media to one another using WiFi or a data plan. The app has become extremely popular among young teens, and can be used for communication in lieu of cell phones. The app is also similar to Snapchat in that it doesn’t keep records of any of the conversations or allow for messages to be filtered or tracked. Users can easily remain anonymous when using the app, which also makes it easy for people to develop fake profiles in order to disguise their true identities.

The combination of these features make it hard for police to use Kik as an investigative tool like Twitter and Facebook, which both store data. The app itself can, however, be perfectly safe for kids communicating with people they already know, but there’s always a potential danger when kids begin talking with users they meet online.

So if there’s underage kid using the app, a parent or guardian needs to keep up with them to monitor who they’re actually talking to. Everyone should be especially cautious of suspicious profiles and make sure not to share personal information over the internet. And I can’t stress enough the importance of making sure everyone, adults and children, know never to meet up secretly in person with anonymous people they meet online, because there’s always the possibility that what happened to Nicole could happen to them.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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For the majority of my life, war has been the norm in the United States. We entered Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. War is the new normal–and between 2004-2011 war was, as expected, mostly the leading cause of death for troops in the U.S. military. But for the last two years, that trend did not hold true. Suicide has surpassed war as the number one killer of American troops.

Suicide is also incredibly prevalent among veterans. According to a report released by the Department of Veterans Affairs, 22 veterans take their own lives every day. Given the way the VA collects that information it’s speculated that that number could be even higher. To put this in context, roughly 20 percent of suicides in the United States are committed by veterans, even though they make up just 10 percent of the population. That’s a startling and terrifying figure; as News21 put it:

Suicide rates within the veteran population often were double and sometimes triple the civilian suicide rate in several states. Arizona’s 2011 veteran suicide rate was 43.9 per 100,000 people, nearly tripling the civilian suicide rate of 14.4, according to the latest numbers from the state health department.

Now, the civilian suicide rate has also been rising. According to the New Yorker:

In the United States, suicide rates have risen, particularly among middle-aged people: between 1999 and 2010, the number of Americans between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-four who took their own lives rose by almost thirty percent.

Suicide is a gigantic issue among both our troops and our veterans. The ways in which we understand Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the effects of war continue to evolve, but clearly we haven’t done enough. See the infographic below for just some of the ways in which veterans’ and active service peoples’ duties can affect them.

Courtesy of Blackwater Law.

PTSD is tricky because it can show up suddenly or gradually, sometimes a long time after the traumatic event. In addition, medical care for veterans hasn’t always been as top notch as it could be–we all remember the VA hospital scandals earlier this year. PTSD can fuel depression, alcoholism, and various other problems. There are other reasons that veterans and service members are at particular risk. For some, reacclimating to civilian life can be very difficult. While there’s no dispositive list of risk factors, it’s clear from statistics alone that this is a significant problem.

The argument that the suicide rate will go down once we’re fully out of Afghanistan and Iraq seems like it should make sense, but it’s not that simple. Even while those wars have been slowly de-escalated, suicide rates have remained pretty constant. That ties back to the fact that PTSD can develop over time along with those struggles that veterans face when they return. A troubling portion of our nation’s veterans become homeless, which makes getting them access to health care and help even more difficult. After all, since 2010, there has been a thirty-three percent increase in homeless veterans.

The fact is that anyone who is a member of our military forces–or former member–deserves the utmost respect, help, and care. But that simply isn’t happening–and until I started looking up these statistics today I didn’t quite realize how much we are failing them. Something has to change–and it starts with awareness.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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