Iraq war veteran Justin Bailey checked himself in to the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center just after Thanksgiving.

Among the first wave of Marines sent into battle, the young rifleman had been diagnosed since his return with posttraumatic stress disorder and a groin injury. Now, Bailey acknowledged to his family and a friend, he needed immediate treatment for his addiction to prescription and street drugs.

On Jan. 25, Justin Bailey got prescriptions filled for five medications, including a two-week supply of the potent painkiller methadone, according to his medical records.

A day later, he was found dead of an apparent overdose in his room at a VA rehabilitation center on the hospital grounds. He was 27.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office is awaiting toxicology reports and has not ruled on the cause of death. Numerous other investigations are underway, including one by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Whatever the outcome, Bailey’s family and friends hold the VA directly responsible. The young man’s medical records contain multiple references to his history of abusing prescription drugs — even a note about a warning from his concerned mother.

In view of that, his father wonders, why was Bailey allowed to administer his own medication?

Hospital officials say the death has prompted immediate reforms — including more random urine tests, increased staffing on weekend nights and room checks for drugs.

The death comes amid a national furor over the poor treatment and squalid conditions experienced by some patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Even before the scandal broke, however, questions had arisen nationally about the ability of military and VA hospitals to handle the influx of Iraq veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

An Army-funded study published in January in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that almost one in five combat veterans returning from Iraq suffered from PTSD, which increases the risk of substance abuse. Many of those returning troops also suffer physical pain.