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CALL FOR REFORM ON VETERANS' CARE LOOKS TO
VETS'
COMMISSION FOR ANSWERS -- Editorial from the
Evansville, Indiana Courier and Press.
Be sure to read the last paragraph.
This editorial is telling us that the
Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission will have the answers to cure
the ills of the VA.
Expect more of this as those opposed to
full benefits and full VA funding use their political power to influence
the press.
Story here...
http://www.courierpress.com/
news/2007/mar/30/veterans-care/
Story below:
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Veterans' Care
As the recent outrages inflicted on soldiers receiving out-patient care
at Walter Reed Army Medical Center showed, the nation's system of
veterans' medical benefits is foundering, overloaded by current demands
and poorly positioned to handle the flood of disabled troops yet to
come. It is certainly in no position to waste money and time on what
seem like thoroughly sketchy claims.
Yet, as Scripps Howard News Service reporter Lisa Hoffman wrote,
estimates are that "perhaps 775,000 of the 2.6 million veterans on the
rolls in 2005 are getting monthly checks for ailments that don't hurt
their ability to work, often are treatable, are common in the civilian
world, and frequently are the result of the ordinary aging process."
And, as critics have noted, the ailments often show no demonstrable
connection to veterans' time in the military.
Hoffman noted that more than 120,000 vets of earlier eras are receiving
lifetime benefits for hemorrhoids at a cost of $14 million a year.
Disability benefits have been approved for tiny scars and skin rashes.
Indeed, the congressional Government Accountability Office recommended
that a whole list of ailments — osteoarthritis, uterine fibrosis,
arteriosclerotic heart disease — be dropped as compensable disabilities
because they're generally not caused or aggravated by military service.
Veterans groups told Hoffman that government denial of legitimate claims
is a far greater problem than approving illegitimate ones. And estimates
are that about $1 billion a year is spent on trivial ailments. Further,
the benefits are generally small, typically $115 a month, and it's hard
to blame vets for applying for them if the government is going to grant
them. But these demands contributed to the current 600,000 and growing
backlog of claims, and that, one expert told Hoffman, is a disservice to
both the truly disabled and the men and women returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan who must go to the end of the line.
Hope for reform lies in a congressionally impaneled select commission on
veterans' disability benefits whose report is due out next October. The
quality of veterans' care tends to drop out of public sight when there
isn't a war, or two wars, going on. Walter Reed thrust disabled vets
into public sight, and now is the chance to make real improvements in
the quality and efficiency of care for those who have borne the battle.
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Larry Scott --
