by Brad Racino / inewsource / June 17, 2020
Following an inewsource report that the VA San Diego Healthcare System has stopped paying for a drug treatment that helps suicidal veterans, a panel of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs has begun investigating the decision.
El Cajon veteran AJ Williams, featured this month in the inewsource investigation, was interviewed Monday by a staff member from the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. A representative from San Diego Congressman Scott Peters’ office also participated.
Williams is one of several veterans pulled from ketamine treatments at a private clinic and ordered back to the VA to be treated with a controversial nasal spray President Donald Trump has touted as “incredible.”
Ketamine is an FDA-approved anesthetic used off label to curb suicidal thoughts in depressed patients resistant to other medications. The San Diego VA has for years authorized and paid for dozens of high-risk veterans to receive the drug at the Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute, a La Jolla clinic operated by Dr. David Feifel, a former UC San Diego psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of ketamine treatment.
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