“The economic recession is forcing more veterans who have lost their jobs and medical care into VA,” Sullivan said. The VA “faces a tsunami of up to one million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans flooding into VA. And...VA faces a surge of hundreds of thousands of additional Vietnam War veterans seeking care for mental health conditions as well as medical conditions linked to Agent Orange poisoning.
“Our vision is that whenever a veteran comes to any VA facility, his or her medical and benefit needs should be quickly and completely addressed, without red tape, delay, stigma, or discrimination. For too many veterans this vision is a fantasy, however, because recent VA leadership has failed to put our veterans first and has inadequately funded vital services and programs.”
On his transition website, change.gov, Obama said he intends to “Fix the Benefits Bureaucracy: Hire additional claims workers, and improve training and accountability so that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently. Transform the paper benefit claims process to an electronic one to reduce errors and improve timeliness.”
Sullivan places much, if not all, of the blame for such fasquarely on President George W. Bush’s shoulders.
“Additional funding and new laws pushed through by Congress in 2007 should have some impact next year,” Sullivan said in an interview. “But “until VA's failed leadership is removed, until VA's policies are streamlined, and until VA's budget is significantly increased and stabilized, then the legacy of President Bush's failures may last for generations.”
Filner agreed with Sullivan’s assessment and said the VA is now at a “critical juncture.”
The VA “is on the verge of completely losing the trust and confidence of the people that it is supposed to represent…the very same people it has been entrusted to care for,” he said. These [benefits claims] are matters of life and death for some of these veterans.”
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