Obama, Bayh Urge Gates to Increase Medical Care for Iraq Vets
Monday, August 4, 2008
Printable FormatABC News' Teddy Davis and Matthew Jaffe report: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., along with rumored vice-presidential possibility Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and eight other senators, wrote Monday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging him to expand medical coverage for Iraq war veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries, ABC News has learned.
The letter to Gates comes just two days before Obama will appear with Bayh at a campaign stop in Elkhart, Indiana. Bayh, long rumored to be a leading candidate for Obama's vice-presidential slot, will introduce Obama at Wednesday's event.
Obama, Bayh, and eight other senators want Gates to increase TRICARE coverage to include specialized treatment for Iraq vets who have experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) during deployment. In the letter, citing a RAND Corporation study that 19 percent of all vets have experienced a TBI, the lawmakers argue that the most promising treatments are not readily available for many injured vets who are often forced to get special permissions to get access to critical care. This letter is an effort to petition the Pentagon to remove those barriers.
"We are concerned that at a time when TBI is recognized as the signature wound of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the most widely accepted and critical rehabilitative treatments for this injury, known as cognitive rehabilitation therapy, is excluded by the military's TRICARE health insurance program," the lawmakers write in the letter.
"We urge you to provide official TRICARE coverage for cognitive rehabilitation as an instrumental therapy in the recovery process of America's wounded warriors."
The senators note that almost 20,000 vets were medically retired with serious injuries in 2007. "We believe these soldiers should be able to access cognitive rehabilitation services at outside care facilities," they write.
The group of lawmakers, which along with Obama and Bayh also includes Senators Hillary Clinton, D-NY, Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., John Kerry, D-Mass., Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., among others, notes the case of ABC News' correspondent Bob Woodruff, injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006.
Citing Woodruff's recovery as evidence of "the vital role that cognitive rehabilitation plays in facilitating meaningful recovery from brain injury", the senators argue that Gates should make more treatment available to US military members.
"His remarkable recovery from a severe TBI has been widely cited as a powerful example of the great innovations of our military healthcare system," they write in the letter. "Mr. Woodruff has repeatedly emphasized that his cognitive rehabilitation therapy was a vital part of his healing process. Yet the treatment made available to Mr. Woodruff may be denied to U.S. military personnel who are similarly afflicted."
"We urge the Department of Defense to provide official TRICARE coverage of cognitive rehabilitation therapies, so that all returning service personnel can benefit from the best brain injury care this country has to offer."
Woodruff has started a foundation to increase wounded soldiers' access to cognitive rehabilitation when they return from war with a brain injury.
Senators Ken Salazar, D-Co., Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, and Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., also co-wrote the letter to Gates.
Bayh, a lead sponsor of the letter, has been active in fighting for increased care of soldiers with TBI since the death of Indiana national guardsman Gerald Cassidy, who came home from Iraq last year suffering from a TBI but could not gain access to a private care facility and later died at Fort Knox.
Bayh, addressing Army Secretary Pete Geren at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last November, said of Cassidy, "The enemy could not kill him, but our own government did."