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Sunday, June 15. 2008

Falling Through the Cracks

For most of the past 30 years I’ve told anyone who cared to listen the Veterans Administration health care was far more preferable to the private sector health care system for the simple reason the V.A. health care system put the needs of the patients ahead of every other consideration. The health insurance industry has one priority: making a profit. Therefore, their system rewards doctors who don’t provide treatments and otherwise save the insurance companies money by denying patients care. The stories of how people have died from curable conditions because the insurance companies denied treatment have been told over and over again on news programs for decades now. The Veterans Administration was different.

Not anymore. Our government is abandoning our veterans, especially if they have been in the V.A. system before 9/11. It blew my mind Friday when my V.A. health care provider, the same woman I’ve had for ten years now, ran down the list of services I would no longer receive and then she said, “They are making it easier for you to fall through the cracks.”

The V.A. will no longer automatically set appointments, as they once did; they will no longer mail out notices and make reminder phone calls for upcoming appointments, as they once did. They will no longer suggest treatment for conditions that arise after the veteran leaves the military, as they once did, all in an effort to purge the system of the veterans who have been in the system before 9/11.

When a vet calls the V.A. now, we still here the “Hang up and call 9-1-1 if this is a medical emergency” message, but then they say, “If you are a returning Iraq/Afghan war veteran, press one.” Everyone else has to stay on the line and follow through the various prompts, as has been the case.

Never before has the Veterans Administration differentiated between the various eras of vets using the V.A. system. Certainly not in the 30 years since I’ve been in the system. Yeah, in the past, they directed vets who thought they might be affected by Agent Orange to certain prompts and more recently those who suspect they suffer from Gulf War Syndrome. But never have they set one era of veterans apart from the rest in order to make that one era a priority over the others.

How did this all come about? Easy answer: President Bush and his Republican Congress. In 2003, just before Bush launched his war in Iraq, Congress — a Republican Congress — cut President Bush’s budget for the V.A. by nearly a billion dollars for fiscal year 2004, just when the first casualties from the Iraq War would start coming into the V.A. system. And it called for another 10 billion in cuts over the next ten years. Just when the V.A. itself estimated they would increase the number of veterans they would be servicing by 10% or more.

In 2005 Congress, controlled by the Republicans, past an Iraq War supplemental bill that cut funding to the Veterans Administration to the tune of over 16 billion dollars over a five year period beginning with fiscal year 2006.

What did they do? They added enrollment fees the vets must pay before getting any benefits, cutting cash payments to vets with service-connected disabilities and conditions, cutting pension benefits and payments, reducing the vocational rehabilitation and education benefits and increasing the fees to veterans who apply for V.A. home loans.

So, in 2007, when Bush gushed about “raising” funding for the Veterans Administration by 7%, all he really did was stop some of the budget slashing mandated by these earlier budget cuts. In fact, in 2006, before the Democrats won control of Congress, such as it is, Bush’s plan was to drastically cut benefits and increase fees and co-pays for veterans starting in 2008 and then every year thereafter, increasing the cuts well beyond his presidency. In fact, the Bush Administration called increasing the V.A. budget “hurtful” to national security.

That’s the legacy of the party that claims it supports the troops louder than everyone else. Why my fellow veterans have overwhelmingly thrown their support to Bush and the Republicans is beyond me, but Americans, veterans or otherwise, often vote against their own interests, mainly because the Republicans know what buttons to push: anti-gay marriage, anti-flag burning amendments, and let’s not forget, “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and “Bring It On.”

Even while he was running for a second term in 2004, talking all about “supporting the troops” and not cutting and running, he was cutting the V.A. budget and running the military into the ground. Thanks George Bush. Thanks Congress. That’s sticking by the troops.

If you’re a veteran but not in the V.A. system yet — and you’re not an Iraq/Afghan vet — good luck getting any benefits now.

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Friday, one of my favorite journalists, Tim Russert, passed away. He made Sunday Morning an important time to watch TV. He was unequivocally fair to all the people he grilled on Meet the Press and I often thought he was too hard on my favorite politicians.

He wasn’t perfect and many people consider Russert to have been a shill for the White House because he was one of the first — if not the first — to call Florida for Bush in the 2000 election. Ironically, before he got into journalism, Russert worked as a lawyer for the Democratic Party. But you wouldn’t know that from watching his program every Sunday. He was the consummate professional.

Posted by Tim Forkes in Social Responsibility at 00:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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