Brandon Friedman from VoteVets reports in a diary at DailyKos [1]:

Senator Barack Obama involved himself in the VA email situation [2] today by sending a letter to VA Secretary James Peake demanding an investigation [3] into whether or not the Department of Veterans Affairs is under-diagnosing combat-related PTSD as a cost-cutting measure.  Obama then requested hearings on the matter and, within hours, those requests were granted [4] by the chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees.

This move by Obama comes after VoteVets.org [5] and CREW [5] produced an email [5] on Thursday from a VA official--Norma Perez--in which she advised a number of VA employees, including psychologists, social workers, and a psychiatrist that, due to an increased number of "compensation seeking veterans," the staff should "refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out" and they should "R/O [rule out] PTSD" and consider a diagnosis of "Adjustment Disorder" instead.

The story has now been picked up by the AP [6], the Washington Post [7], CBS News [8], the New York Daily News [9], MSNBC [10], CNN, the Politico [11], and the Military Times [12].

In his letter [13] to Peake today, Obama called on the VA Secretary

to launch an investigation into the incident to evaluate whether Perez was advised to send this e-mail or give this instruction at the urging of her superiors; whether staff members at the Teague Center followed Perez's advice, and if so, how many veterans were affected by incorrect diagnoses; whether officials at other veterans centers have given some similar admonitions to staff members charged with diagnosing PTSD; whether affected veterans have been given immediate re-diagnoses and; whether this is an incident or a trend through the VA system.

You can read the full text here [14].