Thursday, April 24, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Neglected warriors

Support for troops doesn't extend to VA health care

By Larry Wills

While planeloads of wounded GIs head home from Iraq, Congress has done its part in the war effort: It cut the Veterans Administration's budget.

After much late-night wrangling, a conference committee has slashed $7 billion for veterans' programs over the next 10 years.

That doesn't sit well with Dave Autry, deputy director of communications at the Disabled American Veterans' headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"We hear people in the administration saying nothing is too good for the men and women in uniform," Autry says. "But once they're out of uniform, it seems the government thinks they're not worthy of care. There are a couple of hundred Iraq veterans being treated in military hospitals who will most certainly end up in the VA, too disabled to continue on active duty. They don't seem to understand that caring for the injured is part of the cost of war."

Autry charges the budget cuts will make an ailing health-care system worse. "The resources are not there for the VA to do its job adequately," he says. "Nobody should have to wait eight months for an appointment. Nobody should have to wait eight hours."

For years, Nevada veterans have complained about months-long waits to see a doctor and having to travel to California for tests. This month, the situation is expected to deteriorate as the local VA clinic closes and services are scattered all over the valley.

The effect of the cuts is uncertain at the local VA, which had 300,000 visits last year from its 35,500 enrolled veterans. Clinic spokesman Dave Martinez says the patient load is growing by 500 new cases a month.

But at least the budget cuts are smaller than the House originally proposed. Its resolution called for $25 billion to $28.3 billion in spending reductions over 10 years for the VA and related programs.

Just how much that will affect health care for present and future veterans depends on whom you talk to. "Members of Congress are absolutely outraged," says Mike O'Donovan, press secretary for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "In the actual budget are steep cuts in veterans' health care. Veterans' issues always occupy the forefront of the national agenda, but never more so than today."

But Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., has a different take. His press secretary insists that no mainline VA programs have been cut and the system has simply been made more efficient. "Our goal was not to cut spending at the VA," Amy Spanbauer says. "Veterans who need benefits should receive the benefits they deserve. We did instruct the Veterans Affairs Committee to slow the rate of growth in mandatory spending over the next 10 years."

Some of the programs, she says, were wasteful and inefficient. "For example, some veterans who had already died were still receiving benefits. We cut one penny on a dollar to reduce waste, fraud and abuse."

She also insists Gibbons and other Republicans have consistently supported programs for veterans. "We have increased veterans funding for the past nine years. This budget does fund veterans' priorities to ensure the more efficient programs continue."

And Spanbauer says effective programs will actually get an increase in funding. "This budget has $61.6 billion for veterans programs, a 6.9 percent increase over the budget for 2003," she says. "Since 1995, the spending has grown 49 percent."

Berkley vehemently disagrees. In a letter she mailed to Southern Nevada veterans, she says, "America's veterans, and all those who care about America's veterans, should be appalled about what is happening in Congress to the budgets for important veterans' services. Amazing as it may seem, at the very time that this country is at war in Iraq, we have a Congress that is voting to cut vital veterans' programs. "

She charges that under the original GOP budget, compensation for service-connected disabilities and education benefits would have been slashed by $14.6 billion, while health-care funding would have taken a $14.2 billion hit.

That proposal drew a parade of objections from the DAV, the American Legion and the Paralyzed Veterans of America. The DAV even offered to set up town meetings across the nation where veterans could meet their congressmen face to face on the issue.

Autry sees the cuts as the result of longtime animosity toward the VA by some conservative groups, such as the Heritage Foundation. "There are a number of rumblings by people in Congress to put a moratorium on any new facilities. And there are a number of people who for years seem more inclined to shut down the VA. They do not feel the VA health-care system should be kept operating."

Autry warns that if a shutdown does occur, it would put more pressure on other federal health-care systems that are already overburdened. "We fear they would not have any care if they are foisted on state Medicaid rolls. Medicaid is already cutting services. "

He says the solution is to guarantee funding based on the number of patients. "The system has been underfunded for decades. Now we're worried that any savings from consolidation [of services] may not go to the VA, but to the Treasury. That's what they're trying to do."

The good news in all this is that Nevada's congressional delegation is united in support of a new VA clinic in Las Vegas. The current clinic on Martin Luther King Boulevard is being abandoned over worries that the building is unsafe.

"The VA is committed to Congressman Gibbons to replace the clinic," Spanbauer says. "It's something we want to do. The clinic is our first goal and we're working with the VA to ensure the services continue."

She says $225 million was added to the budget to construct new clinics and that a separate VA hospital could be on the horizon. Veterans now receive surgical care at the Mike O'Callaghan Hospital at Nellis Air Force Base.

Berkley strongly supports the clinic, but prefers the second site to be a long-term care facility, similar to the state veterans home in Boulder City. "We will get the money for the clinic," O'Donovan says. "And we're going to find the money for a long-term care facility as well."

He envisions a "super clinic" of up to 350,000 square feet, nearly double the size of the current facility. And he says the VA is moving more money to meet the expanding needs in Nevada, a sore issue among local veterans for years. While VA facilities in other states have relatively few patients, Las Vegas' facilities are hopelessly overloaded. "There's a realigning of resources toward our region," O'Donovan says. "We feel the demographics will support that."

But that's little compensation to veterans who, numbed by month-long waits, now have to be shuttled across town from one clinic to another for the next three years.

Francisco Gabon, a 71-year-old Korean War veteran, says he's resigned to the long shuttles among the clinics. "It can't be helped," he says. But as to the future of VA health care, he says, "I worry about it. What are our national priorities when we're saying the nation can't afford to take care of the men and woman who served the country?"