Government Policy

Stripes is reporting that the DoD has rejected the idea that troops suffering from PTSD should be eligible for a Purple Heart. Here are a couple good quotes from the story:

We've posted on the mil-civ conversion plans before. This is the general notion that uniformed physicians should be replaced with civilian contractors to save the MHS money in the long run. Is that really the case?

ABC News is running a story about deploying "mentally unstable soldiers to Iraq":

The military is increasingly medicating its warriors, and in some cases, returning them to the fight.

This NavyTimes story from December 2006 is from the wayback machine but it is very relevant today. The story describes efforts to replace uniformed providers with civilian physicians:

The Navy says it will eliminate more than 3,000 corpsman billets and about 600 physician, dentist, nurse and other medical officer billets between now and 2012 in an effort to focus the medical corps on supporting military operations.

NextGov is running a story about "re-engineering" plans for AHLTA:

The Defense Department has laid the groundwork for a radical shift in the way it processes and stores soldiers’ and veterans’ electronic health records, planning to re-engineer a system a network it spent $6 billion and eight years developing in-house for one based on industry standards, commercial software and re-use of existing code that will serve Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department, top officials told Nextgov.

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