Say Anything Blog

Government-run health care trying to ration health care services through bureaucrat-manipulated diagnosis standards?  Who would have thought that would happen?

From a press release email sent out by VoteVets.org and Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington:

Washington, DC – Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and VoteVets.org released an e-mail obtained from a Veterans Affairs (VA) employee directing VA staff to refrain from diagnosing soldiers and veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

On March 20, 2008 a VA hospital’s PTSD program coordinator sent an e-mail to a number of VA employees, including psychologists, social workers, and a psychiatrist, stating that due to an increased number of “compensation seeking veterans,” the staff should “refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out” and they should “R/O [rule out] PTSD” and consider a diagnosis of “Adjustment Disorder” instead.

Here is the entire text of the email:

This doesn’t sound totally alarming to me.  The idea that bureaucrats are telling doctors how to diagnose illnesses is troubling, but hardly surprising given that this is a government-run health care system (makes you want to go right out and sign up for universal health care so that these people can run everybody’s health care, no?).  But even so, it seems to me that the imperative here is not “don’t diagnose soldiers with PTSD” but rather “don’t just diagnose soldiers with PTSD right away.”

It seems to me like VA doctors are being cautioned not to jump to conclusions with diagnosis of PTSD and that they’re not being told to avoid the diagnosis completely.

But whatever.  CREW and VoteVets are two liberal outfits looking for an issue, and I’ve guessed they’ve found an email vague and out-of-context enough to suit their purposes.