COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
Veterans’ Waits for First Appointment Spike
Rick Maze, Army Times
April 20, 2006
The
number of veterans waiting for their first medical appointment in the
veterans’ health care system has doubled in the last year,
according to information released Thursday by House Democrats.
Cited statistic provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the
Democratic staff of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee says
30,475 veterans are waiting for their first appointment at a VA
facilities, compared with 15,211 at the same time last year.
Since 2004, the number of newly eligible people waiting for
appointments has increased by 400 percent, according to the Democratic
staff.
Rep. Michael Michaud of Maine, ranking Democrat on the veterans’
affairs committee’s health panel, said the situation is
“simply unacceptable,” especially because the Bush
administration has opposed efforts in Congress to increase the
VA’s health care budget.
“The VA must ask for the budgetary resources it needs to provide
health care to our veterans and not pretend everything is all right as
this administration rations health care by making veterans wait and
wait and wait,” Michaud said.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed increasing the VA
health care budget as part of the wartime supplemental appropriations
bill because of concerns that the VA doesn’t have enough money.
The Bush administration did not ask for any emergency funding for the
VA, claiming that the 2006 budget — boosted by Congress last year
after the VA admitted to funding shortfalls— is sufficient.
In January, the administration asked for $38.5 billion for
veterans’ health care programs for 2007, an amount Democrats have
said is $3.6 billion less than needed. Part of that extra money —
about $800 million — is needed to offset a Bush administration
assumption that higher enrollment fees and co-payments for prescription
drugs would reduce health care costs.
There has been bipartisan opposition in Congress to the fee increases, leaving lawmakers to seek money to cover the extra costs.
VA officials did not return phone calls asking for comment on the report about the increased number of veterans awaiting care.
The 31,000 veterans waiting for their first appointment are those with
service-connected injuries or who have little or no income. That is
because since 2003, the Bush administration has barred new enrollments
in the VA health care system of veterans who have modest incomes and no
service-connected disabilities or medical problems.
Michaud said the enrollment ban should be lifted. “On top of
asking for the dollars to get the job done today, the administration
must ask for the dollars to end this intolerable enrollment ban,”
he said. “This is even more important today than it was in 2003
because more and more families are losing their health care.”
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