The Follies of Congress and the Department of Veteran Affairs Budget

NewsMax.com ^ | 2/7/05 | Lonnie T. Shoultz

[Vetvoice]

A rapidly rising flashpoint in American society is the seemingly "free healthcare" being given to veterans coupled with no understanding by the general populace that we paid much more for our healthcare than they did. We paid in blood.

One news organization reporting on President Bush's new budget said, "He asks high-income veterans who do not have service-connected illnesses or injuries to pay a $250 annual VA health care fee. Bush also wants to increase prescription drug co-payments for such veterans from $7 to $15 for a 30-day drug supply. More than 2 million veterans could be affected." What the President is asking for amounts to nothing more than a very small annual payment to the giant HMO that is the VA Healthcare System.

That provision was in the veterans budget bill last year and pushed heavily by all veterans who use the VA for healthcare – until a Senator who was running for re-election and had never been in the military, Kit Bond, killed it saying that, "it was a tax on our veterans." He is so wrong I'm ashamed he is a Republican. The veterans who NEED the VA Healthcare as a result of their service do not pay a nickel, Senator!

For the last several years the Department of Veteran Affairs has been categorizing all veterans into categories from 1-8.

At the lowest end of the scale, category #8, are veterans who have ZERO service-connected illnesses or sickness and a wife but still earn over $31,000 in 2005. Those in category seven, the next highest category, are in the same heath category with ZERO service-connected illnesses or injuries but with a wife and they earn less than $31,000 in 2005.

From these low ratings right up through category #1 at the top, the category assigned to the veteran is based on the percentage of service connected disability of the veteran that measures severity. The VA supposedly works off the categories in prioritizing patients for doctor visits but it has never done so.

If you are registered with the system, those veterans who are 100% service-connected like me have to wait behind a banker who earns over $31,000 per year for a doctor's appointment.

I get all of my out-patient VA healthcare care at the VA community clinic in Pensacola. The last time I was over there I sat next to an admitted bookie who was there to have his heart medication renewed. I asked him how long it would take and he said the doctor always did a full work-up on him but that he appreciated it. I guess he did and he could not beat the price – it is free!

I asked him more and learned he was in the Air Force in 1958-62 and never left Craig Field in Selma, AL. He had his heart surgery at Sacred Heart in Pensacola (he wouldn't trust the VA doctors with something that important) and only came to the VA because his monthly cost for his heart medication is $700. At the VA he gets it for a co-payment of $3 or $4. As we finished talking they called him in and I waited another 40 minutes to see the doctor – behind the bookie with no service-connected injuries or illnesses.

This is the sort of thing that Senator Kit Bond has no idea about because he was never in the military, never waited for service at a Veteran Administration medical facility and doesn't know his fanny from a bass fiddle about the VA Healthcare delivery system.

The bookie makes over $300,000 per year and can choose where he is to be treated. I can't! I MUST use the VA because I am uninsurable with ANY insurance company.

Less than $10,000 a year for medication is a drop in the bucket to a big-time bookie but prescriptions from the VA is my only source of medication.

Lastly, I had to wait 40 minutes on the day of appointment (and probably many days to get an appointment) just to see a doctor. The bookie could see who he chooses on any day he chooses but he needs the VA doctor to write the prescription for his free drugs. On the other hand ... I am so badly disabled (100% service-connection) that I can ONLY go to the VA doctors because I have no alternative. Yet, I am forced to wait in line behind a gold plated bookie so he can get his free prescriptions.

It is the combat wounded who suffer under the present policy, Senator Bond. When you write on your insurance application that you have a gunshot wound, you are almost denied immediately but they will give you a physical – then they deny you hospitalization insurance coverage. On the other hand, the bookie with a repaired heart can get private insurance coverage with a waiver or extra fee for his heart condition.

This policy of allowing the peacetime service personnel with ZERO service-connected injuries or sickness to have the same basis or even better precedence over me and all other service-connected veterans in waiting for a doctor visit and medication is lunacy.

When the bookie can get free medicine, it allows him more leeway to live under the radar and live "off the economy" and not pay ANY taxes – or even file a tax return. Although my VA disability compensation is non-taxable, I don't make $300,000 per year – far from it.

Do-gooders like Senator Kit Bond need to keep their mouths shut on subjects they know nothing about.

*****

The author is a multiple Purple Heart veteran of an 18 month combat tour in Vietnam as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division and a Green Beret with the 5th Special Forces Group. When he returned home, he entered police work and rose through the ranks from uniformed patrol officer with the City of Birmingham to finally serve as a Special Agent with the U.S. Treasury Department. He holds a BS in Accounting and Finance, an MA in Military History, and has completed his postgraduate academic work toward his doctorate at the University of Alabama and The George Washington University in Washington, DC. He now resides on the Alabama Gulf Coast in Foley, AL, and can be reached at: lshoultz@gulftel.com.

[Vetvoice]

Congressmen and Senators who have no knowledge of a subject - any subject - should stay out of the debate.

[mcgiver38]

They (media) are already spinning this as if we were throwing disabled veterans out on the street, they refuse to mention the VA budget has almost doubled under this administration. Another death toll for the dems, its to close to the election for all this grandstanding on the budget, prior to the election all they could talk about was the deficit, now that some common sense things are attempted their hipocricy is obvious to all.

[carumba]

bump!

[BlackbirdSST]

Congressmen and Senators who have no knowledge of a subject - any subject - should stay out of the debate.

Then, that begs the question, why do they exist? Blackbird.

[fastattacksailor]

bttt

[velund]

The $250 annual fee and increase in the co-payment from $7 to $15 doesn't sound unreasonable for those Vets who are not service connected and can afford it.

But, what am I missing in this article? Mr. Shoultz says he is "100 service connected", yet returned home from Viet Nam and entered a law enforcement career. How can that be?

Looks to me like he can wait in line like everybody else.

[roaddog727]

Bump

[Wristpin]

"The $250 annual fee and increase in the co-payment from $7 to $15 doesn't sound unreasonable for those Vets who are not service connected and can afford it."

The $250 annual fee is less than a retiree pays for TRICARE!

Personally, I'm glad President Bush is putting a stop to accessing more group 7&8's into the VA system. They knew when they seperated from the service with a clean bill of health that medical coverage stopped. Fewer of them means improved care for those with bona fide service connected health problems.

This policy has already shortened the wait for deserving veterans to get started in VA treatment by nearly 50 percent since it started.

[velund]

Thanks for your service, Wristpin.

I'm not familiar with Tricare, but I think retirees are just as deserving as any combat Veteran. If a Vet is not disabled and has a decent income, he should be willing to assume a part of the cost of his health care. Unfortunately, there are still those who exaggerate their need, as well as their degree of disability, and cases of outright fraud, which drives up the cost to the VA.

President Bush's budget proposal (see www.va.gov and look under "Hot Topics")is a record $70.8 billion for the VA in 2006. That's a 47% increase in health care funding since FY '01. This budget proposal includes funding for 28 new outpatient clinics, two new facilities in Biloxi, Miss., and Fayetteville, Ark., as well as additional construction projects at Las Vegas, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Gainesville (FL) and Anchorage. It also includes increases in specific health care benefits.

In general, I'm opposed to increased government spending. But I also think Veterans who have given so much for their country should get first class health care. We earned it. But for those of us who can help themselves, the co-payment and annual fee is money well spent.

By the way, in spite of what you've heard many times, some of us Marines really appreciated you Navy boys. I used to look forward to escorting prisoners down to the lockup at Da Nang so I could eat at that magnificent Navy chow hall.

[Peach]

Is this article worth sending to our soldiers so they understand the real facts of how the president's budget will pertain to their future medical care?

[jeterisagod]

The $250 annual fee and increase in the co-payment from $7 to $15 doesn't sound unreasonable for those Vets who are not service connected and can afford it.

Well, it also affects some who can't afford it. Every veteran in groups 7 or 8 would have to pay those fees. Yes, it includes some people who are making a lot of money, but it also goes to people who are making as little as $9,000 too. And the fees would probably drive some people from the health care system, even if they don't have other forms of insurance.

The key to remember is that this isn't a bunch of free-loaders. These are people who've actually given lots to this country, including those currently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Vetvoice]

You are obviously not, nor never have, been gunshot. A gunshot wound heals over on the outside and wounds from assault weapons used by military combatants tear up the area surrounding the wound and over time that tissue breaks down and deteriorates. Bone injuries sour on you and chipped bone becomes bone spurs and then splinters. What I was able to accomplish at 25, 28 and 35 I was physically incapable of accomplishing at 40.

I passed all of the police physicals and psychological examinations when I returned home as a 21 year old man. Unfortunately, that good to excellent physical condition did not last.

I do wait in line like everyone else but they do not have episodes of boils and coruption in wound sites. Would you then have me wait four months for an appointment while the bookies, golfers and bankers take up the physician visit slots at the VA? Get real!

[Vetvoice]

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly Proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their Nation" - George Washington

[Wristpin]

Vetvoice,

I agree with you. Clinton should have never opened up the VA to veterans without service connected problems. Doing so was a "CUT" to those without bona fide service caused health problems. I read where 30 percent of the VA patient load is group 7&8's.

Personally, I'm glad the President is taking steps to fix this.

[Vetvoice]

I don't believe those people with no service connections should be tossed out but $250 per year - about $21 bucks a month - is the cheapest medical insurance any of them could ever find. So, the choice is theirs. They can pay the $21 bucks to a month keep the VA Medical Centers and other VA medical facilities open or go down the street and pay Blue Cross $200 per month and the VA will close its facilities to all but those with service connections. I really don't understand why they are reticent.

[Wristpin]

I believe that with the paucity of resources and scandalously long waits for treatment, the MEDICAID Program is the appropriate program for those with no service connected problems.

That's the way it was for decades until Clinton changed it.

[Vetvoice]

I agree but you are just shifting the burden. It may be a good shift because wives and children could be treated on Medicare and they cannot be treated at the VA.

[Wristpin]

It took 6 and a half months for me finally get in and see a VA doc about a service connected problem from my 23 years of service. Nuff said!

[Wristpin]

You could argue that Clinton shifted the burden by schuffling those normally serviced by MEDICAID over to the VA, which effectively CUT VA medical service to deserving veterans.

[Vetvoice]

That's outrageous...