Unfortunately, it appears as if far too many of us are being treated with contempt instead of compassion. Years ago, when I was first diagnosed bipolar and my cocktail of meds began to grow, I asked my psychiatrist, a prominent old man who headed the Board of Behavioral Sciences in the county, "What are the long-term effects of taking all these meds?, to which he replied , without even looking up from typing his notes, "can't be good." A neurologist I saw told me that my tremors and other symptoms of Parkinson's were due to the medications I'd been taking over the years--prescribed by the VA and symptomatic of troops who served in Vietnam and were exposed to Agent Orange; so, she was the first of many gatekeepers for the government whose job it was to deny health claims to vets. I'm frustrated, isolated, and irritable--afraid to leave the house (I have a roof over my head, for now, thank goodness). There are many homeless veterans camped out nearby, and their number is rapidly growing. Now, the government wants to privatize the VA--a ruse to siphon money up the line from doctors and patients to the healthcare corporations. I hope you get the care you deserve. The good economic times are over for the working class and even a good portion of middle-class. It's now come down to survival. The only way to beat the billionaires, trusts, and monopolies is at a grass roots level. We're a force only if we stick together, something Americans have been indoctrinated not to do, as we're taught for early on to value rugged individualism instead of cooperation. I feel like an evangelist whenever I need to visit the VA, where I hang out all day after appointments to try to organize veterans of all ages and backgrounds to understand how important it is to keep both our political parties from destroying the VA by underfunding and privatization. We all need to fight for a just cause in what will soon be extremely rough times.