you know not EVERY hero has a penis

our women veterans (and currently serving) need health care as well. they DESERVE it. let's make sure they get it (the male veterans and currently serving healthcare could be WORLDS BETTER too). let's make sure they ALL have it


Female Veterans Fight for Healthcare
The VA starts to adjust a system designed for a male military
By Amanda Ruggeri

As debate heats up over healthcare reform, military veterans are fighting for another kind of improvement: the expansion of health services for female vets.

Nearly 8 percent of the veteran population is female. But the Department of Veterans Affairs' health system was designed for a male military, and it shows. A Government Accountability Office report released this month found that two of 19 facilities audited did not offer even basic gender-specific services like cervical cancer screenings, and none fully complied with the VA's policy on privacy for female veterans. Overall, "none of the facilities had fully implemented VA policies pertaining to women veterans' healthcare," the report said. Critics say those shortfalls have deterred women from using the system. And statistics bear that out. While 22 percent of male veterans use VA healthcare, 15 percent of women do..........

i refuse to believe this

i absolutely believe when sarevil was mayor of wasilla, women had to pay for their rape kits. THAT i believe

i cannot believe or i will NOT believe the military charges for them (off base BUT that should not matter)

please, i beg you, tell me someone got their information wrong (although i know they didn't)

Raped in the Military? You'll Have to Pay for Your Own Forensic Exam Kit
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet.

Sarah Palin's decision not to pay for rape kits when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was an issue in the campaign for the White House. But allow me to introduce the large pink elephant that has been sitting quietly in the corner of the room: TRICARE, the Pentagon's Military Health System that covers active duty members, doesn't pay for off-base rape kits, either.

Spec. Patricia McCann, who served in Iraq with the Illinois Army National Guard from 2003 to 2004, raised the issue at the Winter Soldier Investigation in March. McCann read a memo issued to all MEDCOM commanders clarifying that "SAD kits" -- which are forensic rape kits -- "are not included in TRICARE coverage." *

That would put Alaska and the military in a very special category.

Women in the military are twice as likely to be raped as their civilian counterparts. In fact, "women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq," Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., told the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in May.

Harman said, "The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Health Center where I met female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen there say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the military, and 29 percent said they were raped during their military service."

In July, a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing subpoenaed Kaye Whitley, director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), to explain what the department is doing to stop the escalating sexual violence in the military. Her boss, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, ordered her not to appear..................