From the AP through the Military Times (subscription or viewing an ad required):
North Carolina Guard to recognize Same-sex marriages
Spokesman Lt. Col. Maury A. Williams said the Guard will abide by U.S. Department of Defense orders extending benefits to the same-sex spouses of uniformed service members. Williams said couples who wed in states where same-sex marriage is legal can begin applying for benefits immediately.
“In accordance with all applicable DOD directives, rules and regulations, we will do our best to facilitate effective and efficient assistance for these service members and their partners,” Williams said.
With the announcement, North Carolina sidesteps a potentially thorny legal issue.
Gay Va. Guard couples get benefits
Gov. Bob McDonnell says legally married same-sex partners of Virginia Guard members will be eligible for the same federal benefits as opposite-sex married couples.
McDonnell said that 90 percent of the state Guard’s funding comes from the federal government, so Virginia intends to follow the Defense Department’s rules, regulations and policies.
From a Military Times Staff Writer:
Texas: Same-sex spouses can’t enroll for benefits at State Guard facilities
In an Aug. 30 memo, Texas Adjutant General John Nichols said until legal clarification is provided, officials are unable to enroll same-sex families for benefits at state-supported facilities.
“It is important to note, this is not a denial of benefits, but rather a processing issue that is currently awaiting legal clarification from the Texas State Attorney General’s Office,” said Laura Lopez, a spokeswoman for Texas Military Forces. She said Texas Military Forces officials have been working closely with the governor’s office and attorney general’s office for the past few weeks on the issue.
There are five state-supported Guard facilities and 20 federal installations in Texas, Lopez said.
So that’s two states doing the right thing, and another state following Oklahoma’s lead of adhering to the legal fiction that state constitutions trump the US Constitution.
In other military news, a civilian jury acquitted USAF Lt. Col Jeffrey Krusinski of assault charges related to the former head of the USAF’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office’s alleged groping of a woman in Virgina last year (Military Times staff writers):
A jury of five men and two women found the former chief of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response office not guilty of assault and battery related to allegations he groped a woman’s buttocks in Arlington, Va., in May.
Jurors deliberated for about one hour and 15 minutes Wednesday before clearing Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, 42, of the misdemeanor charge. Krusinski was at first expressionless when the verdict was read, but within seconds he was smiling and talking with his attorney. He exited the Arlington County courthouse without commenting on the two-day trial’s verdict.
The USAF may also try him by court-martial for the alleged assault because the state of Virginia and the US Government are different Sovereigns, and are therefore immune to the Double Jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. That decision is up to the General Court Martial Convening Authority, who presumably is the first General Officer in a command billet in Lt. Col. Krusinki’s chain of command.
The military suicide rate is down 22%, but we aren’t sure why (AP through Military Times):
Suicides across the U.S. military have dropped by more than 22 percent this year, defense officials said, amid an array of new programs targeting what the Defense Department calls an epidemic that took more service members’ lives last year than the war in Afghanistan did during that same period.
Military officials, however, were reluctant to pin the decline on the broad swath of detection and prevention efforts, acknowledging that they still don’t fully understand why troops take their own lives. And since many of those who have committed suicide in recent years had never served on the warfront, officials also do not attribute the decrease to the end of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan.
Still, they offered some hope that after several years of studies, the escalating emphasis on prevention across all the services may finally be taking hold.
A proposal has been put forth to merge the VA and all DoD medical commands into one structure in the Military Retirement and Compensation Modernization Commission :
The idea surfaced after veterans service organizations discussed the failure of VA and the Pentagon to create a single electronic health record system. The $1 billion program, launched in 2008, largely was abandoned in February in favor of a less expensive system built on existing technology.
I don’t see how that can work with VA merged so intimately, given their different missions (caring for Veterans out of the service vice maintaining combat strength) but I also don’t see why DoD doesn’t start using VistA/CPRS, our very robust and stable patient care management system that we send all over the country to subclinics and contract clinics, including places in the middle of nowhere, but I don’t work at that level, either. Also note that this program spent $1 billion over ten years to merge two stable existing systems and failed miserably. And yet people act surprised when a program that came into existence three years ago, had $300 million available, and had thirty-odd unwilling stakeholders trying to sabotage it doesn’t work like Amazon.com.
Baud
Thanks, Soonergrunt. The states are essentially engaging in their version of the filibuster, it seems.
Fogeyman
I’ve wondered the same thing about DoD not using VistA. I don’t work with it intimately (I’m a Windows/Web developer) but if you work in VA you can’t escape it entirely. I think the M language is awful, but VistA is just so damn stable and seems to give VA clinicians what they need to so their jobs.
Soonergrunt
@Fogeyman: Well, VistA/CPRS is used by clinicians for something like %95 of their work, but it only uses up about 5% of our network storage and about 5% of our bandwidth capacity because it was built at a time when the typical VA network was less than 1mb/sec. In my experience, it’s the most robust part of VA IT. Everything else might go to shit, but as long as there’s something approximating network connectivity, we can provide VistA and the clinicians can do their jobs.
mai naem
I’m surprised at McDonnell’s decision. He was on Mornin’ Ho this AM and I guarantee you if it was a Dem governor accused of the same crap, Ho wouldn’t have been as solicitous of them.
Why do all the European countries seem to have a national computerized system with healthcare records but we can’t seem to pull it off? I know their stuff starts at birth and they’ve had their systems for decades but jeezus we seem to have figured out our medicare system why is it so hard to do it for the rest?
Tommy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22751415
Belafon
@mai naem: I think you have answered your own question. For those countries, enrollment starts at birth and everyone is expected to be on it.
piratedan
@mai naem: because of socialized medicine… here in the US, you do have certain standards when it comes to healthcare but while hospitals treat the sick and that they contain physicians and nurses, that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Separate software systems for equipment, the hospital and the lab, some hospitals do outreach, others have a buffet of outpatient services, some places specialize in types of care and there are least 20-30 multi-hospital entities all ranging from for profit cartels to religious organizations that handle these facilities and getting everyone to agree on what standards should be built into the standard is like herding cats.
People talk about it and are generally in favor of it, but details and models matter, not just for implementation but for compliance and conversion issues.
mai naem
@Tommy: Yeah, but they’re shoshulist commie pinko Old Europe. Also too, that’s for after the baybee is born – dontcha know we are only supposed to give a crap about the baybee before it’s born. Also too, charities can do all this with fruit boxes from from Food Banks and rich people can trickle down their used toys and clothes from their Little Lord Fauntleroys.
NotMax
Our esteemed bloghosts’s state of W. Va. is also still refusing to omor the directive to honor same-sex marriages.
NotMax
#9: honor, not omor.
Mikeyes
The idea of a “Purple” medical corps (single medical corps for active duty and dependents, not one for each service) has been around for a long time and never got much traction. The fact is that in today’s Armed Services, on the battle field at least, cross service hospitals, etc. are already in use.
As you point out, the VA and the military have totally different responsibilities and goals. A merger as suggested would only decrease the number of medical professionals who want to serve these separate parts of the government.
Most posts and bases have a certain number of civilian medical specialists, often retired military, who want no part of deploying. The same is true of the VA system. The physicians, psychologists, ect. at the VA often are not interested in military life and they would be lost to the systems as their services are very portable.
The bottom line would be fewer, not more highly trained medical specialists in a combined system.
As for the VA medical record software, I think everyone should use it. Instead there are at least 10 incompatible systems out there and the two I am familiar with suck. The VA system, according to my collegues who used it in training, is much easier and more flexible.
One of the reasons the military would not like to integrate with this system has to do with privacy and HIPPA regs. Military medical records are not subject to the same privacy rules as civilian/VA records and there would be great difficulty in trying to meld the two systems just on that problem alone.
KG
@piratedan: population size probably has so etching to do with it too. The US has a little under 320 million people. The EU is 28 countries with about 500 million people. One system for 320m vs 28 systems for 500m is a big difference
piratedan
@KG: you also have that double standard of “I want my privacy and get the government out of my bidness” and “where is that social security check and farm subsidy payment?” outta the same person… can you imagine the blowup about a national patient ID?
Roger Moore
@KG:
Even if we get fully socialized medicine in the US, we’re likely to wind up with different systems for each state, rather than a single monolithic system. That will make us look more like your 28 systems for 500 million people than one system for 320 million.
KG
@Roger Moore: I tend to agree that we will end up with different systems by state. My point was mainly that it is easier to do with smaller populations. It’s something that I think is lost when we make comparisons to other countries
Elizabelle
President speaking right now re healthcare law.
On C-Span 2 and elsewhere.
Elizabelle
On all DC local channels.
They did this to preempt the noon news nationwide. Yippee.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Fixt your East Coast media bias for you.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore:
Guilty as charged!
It’ll be housefires, embezzlement, local weather and maybe the president in Central, Mountain and Pacific.
Cassidy
AHLTA. The services are already using an integrated system across all the branches. I would assume that tying the VA into them would be better than developing something new.
@Mikeyes: I disagree. It would be very easy to integrate everyone into the same system as the bulk of the medical records of veterans are already maintained in a central database. Secondly, the military has already consolidated a lot of medical training in one spot. It wouldn’t take much to finish it and place everyone under one single command structure.
Chris
@piratedan:
Yeah, this.
Honestly, a ton of the problems with this country are a simple matter of ideology. A national database, like single payer and multiple other things, makes sense for all kinds of reasons. But for a huge chunk of the population it’s simply a nonstarter, because our national mythology says Big Government Bad, Individualism and Local Government Good, and you just can’t contradict that.
sacrablue
I currently receive my medical care at a joint VA/DoD facility. My insurance is Tricare. Some facilities are shared and some aren’t. The building itself is now a VA clinic. So far, I have experienced labwork, radiology and physical therapy with staff that work with VA, retiree and active duty personnel in shared spaces. Physical therapy has separate computer systems for VA and Tricare. They also use separate therapy technicians, but share equipment. The primary care clinics are completely separate and I believe there are other services that are VA only that I have no experience with. There is a VA-only pharmacy and I believe dental and opthomology. So far, I have no complaints.
Mike G
Obviously the only Republican solution in this situation is to abolish all medical care for veterans and servicepeople.