Veterans' Health Care Needs Overhaul

Before I propose this, full disclosure requires that you know I am a veteran with over 7 years served with 3 tours in South East Asia during the Vietnam War. I am proposing a huge change to the Veterans' Administration's (VA) health care system. The proposal is designed to spend more money on Veterans' health care issues, but less overall than is done now.

How? Instead of funding VA hospitals and nursing homes across the country, fund the care. What does this mean? It means that the government does not need to have a large number of VA run hospitals or care centers to provide the care. It means that veterans will not have to travel hours to get the care they need and deserve. It means that they do not have to change their local doctor for one a great distance away who does not know the vet as a person, a member of the community, a loving husband wife, father, or mother. A doctor who only knows the vet as a summary of symptoms.

How can this be done? It is relatively simple, and much of the infrastructure is already in place. If the government can issue Medicare cards for seniors so they can seek medical help virtually anywhere in the country, the VA can do the same thing for the vet. Let every hospital, clinic, doctor, nursing home, pharmacy, home health, and medical equipment provider in the country who can provide the services to a Medicare recipient provide the same service to the vet. A card similar to a Medicare card could be issued to the vet, and that would be his key to the system.

For too long the veteran has been used by the politicians of this country to fund capital projects designed to benefit their chance of reelection rather than the vet. The expansion at the Veterans Home in LaSalle is a good case to review. The money the state of Illinois spent there was nothing more than a construction project to grease some government money into the local economy. If it had really been about the vet, the nursing positions and all the support positions would have been fully funded right away. Frank Mautino kept saying he was fighting for the dollars. Well, he must not have fought very well or very long. Come on, he is Speaker of the House Madigan's right hand guy. It was always about the money, not about the vet.

The VA asked for $582 million for major construction projects in FY 2008. The request for FY 2009 is $1.275 billion. This money is not about the vet. Follow the money. There are huge physical plants that have to be maintained all across this country to support this archaic VA health care system. Follow the money. The VA will only spend a paltry $100 million more on mental health for the vet. This at a time when the press is full of stories about the huge increase of post traumatic stress disorder and suicides among returning vets. If a hospital or 5 or 6 could be constructed to serve their mental health needs, they would be. Of course no one could get the services who didn't live within about an hour of such a hospital. It would not be about the vet. It is about greasing the wheels of reelection for the politicians. Follow the money.

Dick Durbin can get on the floor of the United States Senate and compare our G.I.s to war criminals and Nazis, and then have the unmitigated gall to use disabled veterans in his reelection campaign. Why can he do this? Because he greases the wheels of VA funding in the Chicago and downstate areas where the VA hospitals operate. The veterans of Illinois should have called him on his vitriol during the campaign, but we did not. Why not? Because it is not about the vet. Follow the money.

The tax money that is being wasted on this archaic Veterans' Health Care System would fund a modern health system designed to provide to our veterans care in their own local communities with their own local doctors. They could stay in their own local hospitals or nursing homes if necessary. They could receive home nursing and physical, occupational, and speech therapy in their own homes if necessary from local home health agencies. No travel! No faceless pharmacy tech grumbling as he hands you the next few months of medication! No more being treated as a summary of symptoms!

It is all within the reach of the government to do if a loud enough voice is raised. With all the trillions being spent on insurance companies, banks, and auto companies, I'd think there has to be about $1 billion dollars to change the system. That would mean saving money at the federal level. A concept they are not use to. The VA needs to be about the vet, not the next election.

Look for future postings to add more meat to the proposal. Meat like keeping regional wound and trauma centers for the retuning vet if large university hospitals can not do the job. But, if they get the money to do it, they will.