|
|
 |
Social Movements & Civil Participation
In every war there are casualties. Critics say in this war, it is veterans’ healthcare.
While the government has spent more than a trillion dollars on the Iraq conflict, at least $127 billion has been spent on veterans’ healthcare since the war began, with drastic cuts to medical treatment for all veterans.
The VA Medical Center in Houston reports that the number of veterans receiving healthcare has grown by 53 percent locally while the number of veterans nationally has increased by seven percent in the past five years.
However, in four out of the past five years, the VA has submitted budget requests between $1 and $2 billion lower than the amount needed to cover the cost of veterans’ healthcare.
“Regarding VA's budget, while one can certainly always use more, we feel confident that we have adequate resources to continue providing high quality health care to our nation's veterans,” said Jessica Jacobsen, public affairs spokeswoman for the VA.
According to the Government Accountability Office, because of the shortfall, the VA has been forced to repeatedly request supplemental funding, which Congress has approved. VA officials weren’t able to estimate their budget between 2003 and 2006 because the GAO explained the VA was trying to meet budget caps imposed by the White House. 2004 is the only year that the estimated budget didn’t exceed the actual amount of money needed for healthcare. In 2004, the VA asked for and spent almost $32 billion for “total, mandatory outlays” for healthcare.
To meet Bush administration budget restrictions, the VA has suspended care for high-income veterans who do not have service-connected disabilities. For other veterans, the wait times for services, specialty clinics, prescriptions and doctors has increased. The VA assigns veterans in need of healthcare based to eight priority levels. A veteran’s classification is based on the veteran’s amount of disability, income, time spent in the military and time spent as a prisoner of war.
Jacobsen said the VA suspended health care for Priority 8, the lowest priority veterans, because it was “necessary to prevent further erosion of VA’s capacity to provide needed health care services to veterans in a timely and medically appropriate manner.”
“First of all, I am a big fan of the VA,” post-Vietnam veteran and founder of vawatchdog.org, Larry Scott, said. “I feel that the VA offers premium healthcare, the best in the country. The problem is, and there’s a big qualifier on that, is when you can get it, if you can get it.”
“Once I got in and set-up with a primary care physician, I haven’t had any problems with seeing them or them taking care of any problems I’ve had,” said Larrie Geddie, an office manager in Houston for the Disabled American Veterans . The DAV was formed after World War I to help disabled veterans through one-on-one assistance.
The VA Medical Center in Washington is a 400-bed hospital and they are currently running 120 beds,” said Scott. “That’s 30 percent capacity, and believe me, there are veterans to fill that other 70 percent. They don’t have the money from Congress, so they can’t hire the doctors. They can’t hire the nurses and they can’t hire the technicians.”
Scott, a patient at the VA Medical center in Washington, said a patient needs to negotiate through three levels of care--primary, specialist, and surgeon and to obtain authorization from three doctors in order to receive orthopedic surgery. For example, Scott says a veteran can expect an average wait time of 24 to 36 months.
Scott said between 20 and 35 percent of soldiers returning from the recent wars are receiving mental health care from the VA, and about half of these veterans are in the beginning stages of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Scott said, due to under-funding, the VA in Washington isn’t hiring more staff to care for veterans with psychological issues.
“In terms of the VA [in Houston], I finished a large study about a year ago, using my depression intervention program for veterans who met both PTSD and major depression criteria,” said Lynn Rehm, a psychologist based at the University of Houston who does research on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. “We were not terribly successful. We produced some mild effects on depression, but it wasn’t very long-lasting.”
Rehm developed the Self-Management Therapy Program to help people deal with depression through positive activities and group sessions. He says, at times the weekly VA group sessions would have to wait for enough veterans to show up in order to have a meeting. Despite the need, Rehm says the meeting rooms had plenty of space for more patients to join.
According to Rehm the quality of healthcare within the VA is top-notch.
However, Scott says the problem is the difficulty of getting placed into the system and the wait times to see specialists is the problem. The problem, he says is under-funding.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
Top of Page
|
|
|
Social Movements & Civil Participation
|
|
