All forms of health care for vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan lie somewhere between horrid and non-existent. VA health care is now based on artificial budget constraints rather than need and obligation. The White House, while urging all citizens to patriotically support their troops and labeling all who object to the war as traitors, demands that VA health care need forecasts and resulting budgets be cut, that vitally needed medical services be denied because of cost and that all health care for veterans of World War II and Korea be terminated.
As a result of Bush's demands for lowered funding levels, the number of vets seeking treatment in the first three months of 2005 year was about 25 percent more than the total number budgeted for during the entire year. Effective, timely treatment was simply not available, because of budget restrictions.
Similar or even worse variances exist today. Budget limitations imposed for purely partisan political reasons have forced America's war veterans to literally become beggars for the health care they were promised and are legally and morally entitled to.
Health care for wounded or disabled veterans is now being derided as a form of parasitic welfare to be stamped out. To protect the budget for corporate predators and the rich, the White House has required that vets pay "insurance premiums" for VA health care. Now, a vet with a wife, two children and a monthly income of $2,500 is classified as "affluent" and therefore not eligible for non-war related VA medical services. But affluent is not an appropriate term to use when family health insurance premiums are over $1,000 per month and preexisting health problems are automatically excluded from coverage. Under this dictate, about 2 million vets are being denied the VA services they earned, were promised and morally deserve.
Worse, Justice Administration lawyers recently argued in a court case that vets of Iraq and Afghanistan are not "entitled" to VA health care mandated by Congress. Because of budget limitations. Billions of peace-seeking people worldwide can only wish America's ability to wage war was based upon similar budget limitations.
About 35 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have sought medical help from VA. In 2003, almost 250,000 Iraq war vets waited six months or more for a first appointment or initial follow-up. The government's response has been to close VA hospitals and clinics, cut back or terminate VA health care programs, dishonestly and unethically refuse to diagnose injuries and require vets to wait months and sometimes years for treatment. This year, about 600,000 vets will be denied treatment or placed on intolerably long waiting lists to receive needed medical care.
The most shameful method used is false diagnosis of preexisting conditions as an excuse to discharge soldiers with injuries and disabilities while denying them medical and disability benefits. In the last six years, this has been done to about 22,500 soldiers. Many were wounded in Iraq, including Jon Town of Findlay, Ohio. In October 2004 a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet over Jon's head as he stood in a doorway in Ramadi, Iraq. His ears were leaking blood from a concussion. Shrapnel was removed from his neck. Jon now suffers significant hearing loss and memory failure. He was diagnosed with prior personality disorder, ordered to repay his $15,000 re-enlistment bonus and discharged.
This from a government that orders unquestioning support of the troops while cutting funds for mental health of vets by 30 percent.
This from a government that's eager to pay $108 billion for "Future Combat Systems", over $40 billion for a fleet of 21 sub-sonic B-2 bombers that dropped 583 bombs on Iraq, for a total cost of $68 million per bomb dropped, $200 billion for a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work, $150 billion for modernized nuclear weapons, $65 billion for the F-22 fighter plane and $277 billion to build and $347 billion to fly the "low cost" F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will rely upon unproven technology to get off and hopefully stay off the ground.
F-35 test flights are scheduled to begin 4 years after production begins. By 2013 when operational testing is complete, 424 planes will have been built, at about $90 million each. Those planes will protect America's freedom and democracy from aerial attack by fghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, the Taliban Air Force and assorted terrorists armed with box-cutters that can be purchased in any local Ace Hardware store nationwide for $2.99, no questions asked.
Disability
Similarly unfair approaches are taken as to claims for disability. The VA currently has a backlog of almost a half-million disability claims filed by veterans. Denials are almost automatic and the appeal process often takes years. Almost half of America's 2.7-million disabled vets who persevere through the years-long application and appeals process will receive $337 or less per month in benefits.
Education
Currently, the GI Bill pays just over 50 percent of the average cost of a college education at state universities. Costs of books and housing are excluded, in effect making college impossible for many. Many vets can only afford to attend local community colleges.
Problems are made worse by sheer ineptitude. Some vets can only afford to attend one semester per year because colleges require up-front payment of tuition but VA checks arrive well after classes begin.
Senator Jim Webb, a former Marine Corps officer who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam, recently introduced legislation that would greatly expand education benefits for about 1.4 million veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001.
President Bush has responded with smirks and threats to establish yet another shameful landmark in American history. President Bush has vowed to veto the bill. That will be the first time in the history of America that a bill providing benefits for military veterans is vetoed.
The reason: The Pentagon feels the bill is too "generous", by providing benefits after only three years of service, overlooking the fact that soldiers would still be required to serve out their enlistment term in order to qualify.
The Pentagon demands the commitment be no less than six years. A modern-day government sponsored version of involuntary servitude, originating with lies told by recruiters to naively trusting high school students whose future is bleak because jobs were sent overseas in the name of corporate profits and who haven't yet gained the wisdom to view all government statements as cynical, self-serving lies.
Bush's designated heir, John McCain, also opposes Webb's education bill, and has introduced a competing bill that would limit educational benefits and be linked to the consumer price index, which notoriously understates inflationary trends. As a result, five years from now McCain's bill would be expected to provide only about 58 percent of education costs - meaning a return to the status quo
Voting
Perhaps in response to increased soldier dissatisfaction with the ongoing war in Iraq, the Bush administration, acting through VA Secretary James Peake, even refuses to assist veteran voter registration efforts, as required by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The clear implication: America's soldiers are entitled to be maimed or to die, sometimes because the Pentagon refuses to provide armor, again because of budget limitations. But they are not not entitled to vote. The most basic right of democracy they are supposedly fighting to bring to Iraq.
Financial Issues
Soldiers have only limited protection from financial predators. Today, because of a failure of White House leadership, soldiers in combat are having their homes foreclosed. And refinancing into VA-guaranteed loans is all but impossible, partially because the maximum VA-guaranteed loan available for refinancing is currently only $144,000.
Trash
America is the world's only major country that ignores and abandons its wounded and disabled veterans. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, literally throws its wounded and disabled war veterans away as if they were so many reeking bags of putrid trash. In the villages of the nations of Native Americans, often described with terms such as primitive, heartless, ruthless, cold-blooded, illiterate brutal blood-thirsty savages, a single hungry or homeless disabled war veteran would be an unthinkable tragedy, even if the vet was a total stranger of hostile nationality who somehow got lost and wandered into the village by mistake. Within 20 minutes the tragedy would be rectified by offers of food and shelter made without question or reservation by every last village family owning a tepee, wigwam, longhouse or oversized sleeping bag or blanket, regardless of size, condition or resulting hardship or inconvenience, without exception.
The idea of demanding, requiring, politely requesting or subtly hinting of any form of payment would never occur to either host or honored guest. Both offer and acceptance of payment would be viewed as unconscionably rude insults.
America, the rich and powerful nation that unceasingly sermonizes to the world of its inherent moral superiority, now has about 400,000 homeless veterans, including at least 8,000 women.
America, the moral nation whose government schemes to further deprive vets of the benefits promised them by Congress under the G. I. Bill of Rights in June 1944, based on artificially contrived arguments of undeserved welfare and affordability. Small but powerful sectors of the American public, the richest nation on earth, respond to disturbing sights of homeless veterans dumpster-diving for scraps of food by turning their heads before entering expensive restaurants. A far cry from the universal attitude of brutal, cold-blooded, savage Native Americans, expressed simply yet eloquently:
"No one starves unless we all starve."
Honor of Bush's Solemn Commitment As to Commander-in-Chief Bush's devastating personal sacrifice: On October 13, 2003, exactly two months after declaring a supreme personal sacrifice by giving up golf for the duration of the war in Iraq, Bush spent Columbus Day with three long-time buddies at Andrews Air Force Base. They played golf together.
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