The two reasons you list as probable causes for intentional misdiagnosis - retaining active duty service members and containing costs - are exactly the two reasons which were at the root of the Walter Reed/military healthcare problems.

The military never had a mission to care for service members who required intensive, prolonged inpatient rehabilitation in people whose prognosis wasn't highly suggestive of being able to return to active duty within weeks and with full restoration of ability to perform. It's mission is to care for the immediate needs of injuries/illnesses which are incurred during duty. Period.

Until Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld torture policy, service members with these types of injuries (complex fractures, traumatic brain injuries and PTSD)would have been given medical discharges and transitioned into VA or civilian health care.

I have always believed that one reason that Rumsfeld was so adamant about sending personnel on repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan was so that they would, by virtue of their health vulnerabilities, be killed off and would save the country from a normal lifetime of costs for their healthcare.

Again, by pressuring licensed healthcare providers to make intentional misdiagnoses and/or to deliver care which does not meet the needs of the patient, the US government is using healthcare providers as agents of abuse and torture.

Patients are suffering real harm and patients are dying because of this. These patients are soldiers - the troops.

Because Obama and Congress refuse to investigate and to charge those culpable with crimes, the only way I see to address this for the victimized patients and veterans is to go after the providers legally for malpractice.

The providers who are caught between a rock and a hard place, may well decide to resign their commissions as officers or to leave the VA. That's their responsibility to do. But it is also their responsibility to always refuse an illegal order or coercive directive.

First, do no harm, is the ethic which underlies every health profession.

The public can no longer trust any psychologist, nurse or physician to do them no harm, and this, for the military and authoritarian government, is just what they want.

This, for the insurers, big pharma and other for-profit parasitic industries which rely on suffering patients for their success and financial health, is great. It gives the non-professional power, control and the ability to kill off the population they deem unnecessary to maintain their market share and healthy bottom lines.

US torture policy is infesting not only the abstract idea of prisons far away, but also veterans who end up killing themselves when their needs go untreated, and civilians who are denied essential healthcare.

This, for the insurers, big pharma and other for-profit parasitic industries which rely on suffering patients for their success and financial health, is great. It gives the non-professional power, control and the ability to kill off the population they deem unnecessary to maintain their market share and healthy bottom lines.

Surely pharmaceutical companies benefit from keeping patients alive so they can take more drugs?

Pharmas don't want to keep ALL people alive because some of the surplus population require expensive orphan drugs or vaccines which do not cause undue permanent injury requiring pharmas to pay out settlements, or a host of other reasons which make the ROI bad.

It's always about the bottom line.

after running around the mess hall yelling Kill,Kill,Kill and getting juiced on video games in which they decapitate people with the touch of a finger. But they were more than willing to sacrifice the lives of others so they could become "heroes",which evidently only takes dressing up in the right uniform to be designated as such by the MSM.

If these guys have PTSD and deserve a lifetime of disability benefits,therapy and medicine,the whole country of Iraq deserves to be treated with meds and platoons of psychiatrists for the next two generations.

After all, they were just bystanders caught up in the macho posturing of an administration with deepseated psych problems and an unlimited blank check presented them by the majority of the American people to make us feel power, instead of grief and regret.

I am a Viet Nam Vet that was misdiagnosed in 1980. As was the custom at the time, I gave up on VA. I was encouraged by friends and family to go back to VA in 2008 and have received PTSD diagnosis and good therapy here in Austin. I recommend Vets to try VA. They have learned a lot in recent years.

Who knew?

I have been working for two years with a former JAG and current civilian attorney who helps soldiers like Matthew Marino get justice.

The military is capable of despicable behavior toward those they once valued. General Odierno being the worst. It is clear to me that the military treats its veterans pretty well IF they don't have PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury or a drug or alcohol problem If they do, they can expect to be thrown out on the street with nothing. I have seen it happen time and time again. I often wonder what happens to those who can't afford a civilian attorney. I'm sure it is nothing good.

"Surely pharmaceutical companies benefit from keeping patients alive so they can take more drugs?"

That's why it is alwasy a less than lethal dose that is prescribed. They make money off of treating the side effects of the medications they prescribe. All those drugs make people sick and ill and that requires more treaments, more drugs, more doctor visits, more hospitals and more paperwork so everyone makes money off of the deal but the patient.

The only drugs I generally take are antibiotics for when i have an infection and that is once a year. The pharmas and health care industry hate people like me. I don't generate cash flow.

Start off with a gateway drug like prozac or ambien and soon you will be forking over a hundred dollars a month for "treatment" and "care" because now you have health problems.

Who knew that Tylenol screws up your liver? I did - thirty years ago. They play us for chumps.