Veterans Ask For Better Care
WASHINGTON-President Bush’s proposal to increase federal spending on veterans’ medical care, while putting the total significantly higher than when he took office, still falls far short of what the aging veterans’ population needs, lawmakers and former military service members said at a congressional hearing this week.
Further, the veterans and some Congress members said, care is not available in all the places they need it – such as New Hampshire.
“A nation that abandons its warriors once the swords of its enemies lie rusting on the ground dishonors itself and imperils its future,” Alan W. Bowers, national commander of the Disabled American Veterans, told a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs committees Tuesday.
There are about 140,000 veterans in New Hampshire , 15 percent of the state population, and more than 25 million veterans nationwide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And while the veterans’ population is slowly declining, its medical demands are rising, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Bush has proposed spending $29.5 billion for veterans’ medical care in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. That’s an increase of 4 percent from fiscal 2004 and 40 percent from 2001, the year Bush took office.
“As a result, today we provide quality medical care to a million more veterans than we did in 2001,” Anthony J. Principi, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, said earlier this month.
Still, said Jeb Bradley, R.-N.H., “it is not sufficient to take care of our veterans.”
“Veteran’s health care deserves priority,” said Bradley, a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
The number of veterans seeking care at VA facilities rose 134 percent between 1996 and 2003, an increase that dwarfs the growth in spending in recent years, according to the Partnership for Veterans Health Care Budget Reform, a consortium of nine veterans service organizations.
“We’re at war,” said Adjutant John Zachodny Jr. of the American Legion of New Hampshire. “We feel that the hospitals are not capable of handling our servicemen that are coming back with wounds,” Zachodny, 57 and a Vietnam War veteran, said in a telephone interview.
“Unfortunately, there’s never enough money,” said Richard E. Manner, 82, who was wounded in the leg and the back during World War II and who attended the hearing. “They can throw it overseas, but they always forget about the veterans.”
Some Congress members said they supported increased spending on veterans even in the face of a record federal deficit.
“Yes, we want to work towards eliminating the deficit,” said Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla. “But it shouldn’t come at the expense of our veterans.”
Bradley questioned why 5,000 New Hampshire veterans have to travel to other states to receive medical attention. The VA Medical Center in Manchester , servicing 17,000 patients, stopped providing in-patient acute services in 1999. Veterans who need hospitalization are transferred to VA medical facilities in other states or to a local hospital, said Jim Thompson, a spokesman for the center.
Veterans have to travel three hours each way to other states, such as Vermont and Massachusetts , to receive in-patient care at a VA hospital, said Dr. Brian K. Matchett, commander of Disabled American Veterans in New Hampshire .
