Article published Sunday, February 27, 2005

Some veterans feel they are forgotten in budget process

Critics of President Bush's proposed budget for veteran services say the administration's plan would force some veterans to pay more, while not preparing the agency for future veterans.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS )

By ANN McFEATTERS
BLADE WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

WASHINGTON - Alfred J. Casey, 82, of White Oak, Pa., is a news junkie. Every day he reads newspapers, watches TV, and devours magazines. And ever since he read about the President's proposed budget earlier this month, he's been stewing.

"I think this administration is cutting money from the veterans, and that will hurt a lot of people," said the World War II veteran who served in the Ardennes in Belgium. "A lot of veterans are in bad shape healthwise. A lot of people in this country forget that besides those who don't come back, many come back needing help for the rest of their lives."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Ohio), who has served on the House Veterans Affairs Committee for much of her more than two decades in Congress and who sponsored a bill that led to the building of the World War II Memorial in Washington, said her reading of the President's budget for veterans' services shows it would fall $15 billion below what is needed over the next five years.

"So how are we going to care for all those new veterans with serious injuries coming home?" she asked. "For nursing homes, they cut $351 million. They [the administration] would eliminate state grants and would serve 24,000 fewer patients. Only those who are highly disabled will be served. The construction budget would provide only half the funds that are needed.

"We should care for our veterans as a condition of service. They earned it. But we're not keeping our promise, not under this budget."

Jim Nicholson, a Western rancher, former head of the Republican National Committee, former envoy to the Vatican, and President Bush's new secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, says the government has not forgotten the nation's 25 million veterans: "This budget proposal guarantees that the department will be able to care for those veterans who count on VA the most."

Mr. Nicholson said in an austerity budget, President Bush is proposing an increase in spending for veterans.

But what he did not say was that Mr. Bush's budget also proposes that veterans pay more for their health care and seeks less for health care for veterans than every major veterans' group says is essential.

The Bush budget would impose a new $250 health-care fee on what it calls well-to-do veterans and double prescription-drug co-payments to $15.

Thomas Cadmus, head of the 2.7-million-member American Legion, said of the proposal: "This is not acceptable. It's nothing more than a health-care tax designed to increase revenue at the expense of veterans who served their country."

He added: "Veterans' health care is an ongoing expense of war. You don't thank veterans for serving their country and then tell them, 'By the way, better not get wounded or you'll have to pay extra for your health care.' This is offensive to every veteran in America."

The administration's proposal would boost spending on veterans' health care by $111 million. But veterans' groups say that is only a quarter of 1 percent more than the fiscal year 2005 budget and that government experts have said the VA needs a 14 percent increases to keep abreast of the need.

Veterans' groups, including the Paralyzed Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and AMVETS, say a realistic budget next year for veterans' health care should be $31.2 billion, not $28.1 billion as the President's budget proposes.

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs this past week, Richard Fuller, legislative director of Paralyzed Veterans of America, said the administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 will not improve health care for the nation's' veterans. "It relies on optimistic third-party collections, accounting gimmicks, and punitive and totally unrealistic management efficiencies."

Mr. Fuller said that with the government also proposing cuts in Medicaid, if Mr. Bush's budget passes, "many veterans would have nowhere else to turn."

Rep. Lane Evans (D., Ill.), a Vietnam veteran and the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs who helped beat back user fees on veterans in the past, is concerned that the fight against imposing fees on veterans is getting more difficult. He argues that not only are current veterans not getting sufficient help, but the department is not ready for a wave of new problems faced by veterans who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also notes that veterans used to get GI benefits for free but now must pay $100 a month for a year even if they decide not to go to school.

Anthony Principi, secretary of veterans affairs during Bush's first term, agrees there are problems. He told reporters recently that the nation is simply not spending enough on its veterans. He noted that nearly 20 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer mental-health problems because of the stress of warfare. He said the nation has not dealt with that or the fact that because of better battlefield medical care, many soldiers who once would have died are returning home maimed for life, having lost limbs, sight and hearing, or having difficulty returning to normal life.

A report last year by the Government Accountability Office said the government is not prepared to deal with the scope of mental stress among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan or the 33,000 veterans, including reservists and National Guardsmen, who already have sought help from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Another problem that concerns many is the increase in battlefield chemicals that may be contributing to an apparent increase in non-Hodgkins lymphoma and Lou Gehrig's disease.

Mr. Principi has had to rationed care in favor of less-well-off, disabled veterans. Thousands of veterans wait an average of 38 days - and 25 percent of them wait for two months - for appointments for health care from the department's hospitals and out-patient clinics. Even Mr. Principi's deputy, Gordon Mansfield, who was injured in Vietnam, was turned away from six overbooked VA centers.

Mr. Fuller, of the Paralyzed Veterans Association, and other lobbyists for veterans say the whole budget process is broken and needs to be revamped. Veterans lobbyists are pushing to make VA hospital funding a mandatory item in the federal budget, not a discretionary one that can be eliminated or reduced at will.

When Mr. Nicholson was being questioned by senators before he was confirmed, he pledged, "Veterans should have access to the best available health care in the most appropriate clinical settings, delivered in a timely manner by caring, compassionate clinicians. And veterans, their eligible dependents and survivors are entitled to prompt, accurate, equitable, and understandable decisions on their claims for benefits. And veterans should be appropriately honored in death for their service and sacrifices on behalf of a grateful nation."

The administration notes that annual spending for veterans' services has gone up more than 300 percent since 1980 to $65 billion this year and in an age of deficits such growth is not sustainable.

But some Republicans as well as Democrats were dismayed by the President's budget request. Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho), chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, said the amount requested would not even keep pace with the current level of services, let alone improve them, keep up with inflation, or help returning soldiers.

Mr. Casey, who knows a lot of veterans, says most of them think they have lost benefits in recent years. He said he is convinced America as a nation is less and less grateful to veterans and less and less determined to keep its promise to make certain veterans get good care. "It's par for the course. After the war is over, our government forgets about the veterans."

Contact Ann McFeatters at: amcfeatters@nationalpress.com or 202-662-7071.