VFW OPED: Quit Rationing Veteran's Health Care
On behalf of the 2.6 million members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and its Ladies Auxiliary, I would like to make you and your readers aware of a crisis in the veterans' health-care system.
Unfortunately, access to VA health care is controlled by available dollars, not our veteran's health-care needs. As a result there are currently more than 150,000 veterans waiting six months or more for a first-time or specialty-care appointment. Further, this de facto rationing of health care has led the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to even deny care to certain veterans by suspending their ability to enroll in the VA health care system altogether.
How have members of Congress, whom I am sure do not have to wait six months to see a doctor, responded to this crisis created by a lack of funding? On July 25, 2003, the United States House of Representatives passed the VA-HUD Appropriations bill for FY 2004 that they will tell you contains a $1.4 billion increase for veterans' health care. What they will not tell you is that this amount represents a $2 billion cut from the congressionally approved FY 2004 budget resolution and a clear betrayal of the assurances made to America's veterans earlier this year.
Without this needed funding, over 1 million veterans will be turned away or pushed out of the VA health care system. Is this what our returning heroes, from Afghanistan and Iraq, can expect from their elected officials as they seek health care for their painful injuries sustained in the line of duty? Over 200 years ago, George Washington stated: "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." Those words still ring true today!
I encourage you to ask your member of Congress how he or she voted on the FY 2004 VA-HUD Appropriations bill. Those who voted for the bill cast a vote against veterans by approving a wholly inadequate budget. Please have them explain how they plan to provide adequate health care to our nation's veterans. Those who voted against the bill deserve our gratitude for holding out for the needed additional funding. Please ask them to continue to stand with us so that no veteran is ever left behind.
We call on Congress to do the right thing and restore the $2 billion cut when the conference committee on VA-HUD funding convenes this fall.
Thank you for your consideration of this important issue.
Ray Sisk
Comander-in-Chief
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