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Authors, sign in!A sad story today was published in The Sun News about a veteran who took his life because he was denied health care.
A veteran who gave his all to this country and fought for the such "freedoms" U.S. Senator Jim DeMint uses sarcastically in his e-mail blasts. No, Jim. The freedom this person fought for was the real thing.
On the last day of his long, troubled life, Grover Cleveland Chapman packed a black duffel bag, washed out his coffee cup, put it in the dish rack and fetched his Smith & Wesson.He threw away his favorite slippers and left his house key on his bedside table in the two-bedroom yellow bungalow he shared with his daughter, tucked in an aging neighborhood full of 1950s starter homes a few miles from downtown Greenville.
Harriett Chapman called as she always did on her morning break at the Wal-Mart deli, checking on her 89-year-old dad. Everything is fine, he told her.
But his fight goes deeper...
The VA turned down Chapman's PTSD claims a half-dozen times, even though psychiatrists mentioned he had elements of PTSD as early as 1990. For the rest of his life, his records make frequent reference to PTSD, but the VA kept denying his claim for extra disability without a great deal of explanation.Chapman blamed his military service for the breakdown and asked the VA to pay him 100 percent disability. The military denied the problems were service-related, instead blaming the stress from dealing with his youngest daughter, Caroline, who had to be institutionalized with Down syndrome. The VA would eventually consider him 60 percent disabled from prostate problems he suffered during his service.
When are people going to get it? Are they going to continue telling people that military personnel
are just making things up in their head, there are other causes for their illness or that they simply don't have a problem?
In South Carolina, we've read a story where a veteran survived World War II. He fought against tyranny, against suppression and against a hostile regime. It seems to me, however, he came home and found the same thing he fought against in the form of our nation's health care system.
It, figuratively speaking, killed him.
Published November 29, 2009 by Jamie Sanderson |
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| Tags:
Health
PTSD
South Carolina
Veterans
Comments (2)
And government-run health care forced upon all of us, including sending those of us who will refuse to participate to federal prison is the solution?
This guy was a victim of bureaucracy and government-run health care.
My father is on their list of potential targets for extermination. Both bills will eliminate his Medicare Advantage and force him into 100% Medicare funded treatment. His cardiologist has told me that will mean rationing and the same denial of service that Mr. Chapman received.
Courtesy of your federal government.
... he came home and found the same thing he fought against in the form of our nation's health care system
Insert a reference to a part of it run by the government and you're dead on.
Leave my private health care alone.
Posted by Pdigaudio
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November 29, 2009 5:42 PM
Posted on November 29, 2009 17:42
Five fundamental facts that should be in the first paragraph of every essay on health care: (1) The U.S.is the only developed country that does not have some form of universal health care.(2) The U.S. pays twice as much on average as most other countries (3) The U.S. for-profit health care system gets no better results on nearly all counts, and worse on many. (4) The private health care industry,is pending a million dollars daily to derail any significant reform. If Americans really want a better system, the single-payer approach is vastly superior to what we have. (5) a single-payer or public option on insurance is NOT "government health care" but a non-profit insurance system.
Posted by Bob Hooper
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November 29, 2009 9:43 PM
Posted on November 29, 2009 21:43