Bush budget cuts veterans health care

[Tock]

I didn't want to bump the other thread, since it devolved into a shouting match, but I posted this article when it first came out, and since then there's been some interesting developments in veteran's care. Ya, since then, some of the Veteran's hospitals have been shown to be literal rats nests, grossly underfunded, poor medical services, etc etc etc.

Goes to show what George W. Bush thinks about the veterans who are out there fighting this needless war of his. Something tells me that if he had served some time in the military (instead of going AWOL in the National Guard), he'd have a bit more empathy for the military guys, especially the wounded guys . . .

Bush is a lousy Commander-In-Chief, IMHO . . . only a couple more years to go, and then the next President can try to untangle the mess he's made . . .

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http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS....ap/index.html


Bush budget cuts veterans health care in 2009
POSTED: 1308 GMT (2108 HKT), February 13, 2007
Story Highlights• Bush budget assumes cuts in veterans' health care in 2009, 2010
• VA medical care costs have risen yearly for 20 years
• Number of veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan expected to increase 26 percent


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration's budget assumes cuts to veterans' health care two years from now -- even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012. But even administration allies say the numbers are not real and are being used to make the overall budget picture look better.

After an increase sought for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly -- by more than 10 percent in many years -- White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

The proposed cuts are unrealistic in light of recent VA budget trends -- its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office -- sowing suspicion that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.

"Either the administration is willingly proposing massive cuts in VA health care," said Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, chairman of the panel overseeing the VA's budget. "Or its promise of a balanced budget by 2012 is based on completely unrealistic assumptions."

A spokesman for Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, called the White House moves another step in a longtime "budgeting game."

"No one who is knowledgeable about VA budgeting issues anticipates any cuts to VA funding. None. Zero. Zip," Craig spokesman Jeff Schrade said.

Edwards said that a more realistic estimate of veterans costs is $16 billion higher than the Bush estimate for 2012.

In fact, even the White House doesn't seem serious about the numbers. It says the long-term budget numbers don't represent actual administration policies. Similar cuts assumed in earlier budgets have been reversed.

The veterans cuts, said White House budget office spokesman Sean Kevelighan, "don't reflect any policy decisions. We'll revisit them when we do the (future) budgets."

The number of veterans coming into the VA health care system has been rising by about 5 percent a year as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keep rising. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans represent almost 5 percent of the VA's patient caseload, and many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care, such as traumatic brain injuries.

All told, the VA expects to treat about 5.8 million patients next year, including 263,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The VA has been known to get short-term budget estimates wrong as well. Two years ago, Congress had to pass an emergency $1.5 billion infusion for veterans health programs for 2005 and added $2.7 billion to Bush's request for 2006. The VA underestimated the number of veterans, including those from Iraq and Afghanistan, who were seeking care, as well as the cost of treatment and long-term care.

The budget for hospital and medical care for veterans is at $35.6 billion for the current year, and would rise to $39.6 billion in 2008 under Bush's budget. That's about 9 percent. But the budget faces a cut to $38.8 billion in 2009 and would hover around that level through 2012.

The cuts come even as the number of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is expected to increase 26 percent next year.

In Bush's proposal to balance the budget by 2012, he's assuming that spending on domestic agency operating budgets will increase by about 1 percent each year.

[Tock]

Some of what's been going on, lately . . .


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/wa...syahoo&emc=rss


Soldiers Testify Over Poor Care at Walter Reed Hospital

WASHINGTON, March 5 — Members of Congress heard wrenching testimony on Monday from wounded soldiers treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and contrite promises from top Army officials to correct the conditions there.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

The general who most recently commanded Walter Reed, a premier military hospital in Washington, and the Army’s surgeon general accepted responsibility for the situation faced by some wounded troops, including poor housing, neglect and a hopelessly complicated bureaucratic maze.

The Army officials said they were working to address the problems at Walter Reed and were examining the situation at other medical centers.

“We have let some soldiers down,” said Pete Geren, the acting secretary of the Army, addressing the panel before the hearing began.

The hearing was held by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose members convened in an auditorium at Walter Reed, in deference to the soldiers who were to testify. The unusual venue also provided a vivid backdrop for the hearing, the first of several that Congressional committees intended to hold.

The subcommittee members heard first from two soldiers badly wounded in Iraq and from the spouse of another soldier injured in Iraq about their experiences at Walter Reed. Together, the three’s stories set the emotional tenor for the testimony from military officials that followed.

Wearing a black eye patch, Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon described how he was struck in the head by a round from an AK-47 in November 2004 during a firefight near Ramadi, causing a traumatic brain injury and the loss of an eye.

Within a week of the injury, he was released to outpatient treatment, Sergeant Shannon recounted.

Despite being extremely disoriented, he said, he was given a map and told to find his own way to his new residence on the hospital’s sprawling grounds. He wandered into a building and received directions.

He then waited several weeks wondering whether anyone would contact him about additional treatment, eventually calling people himself until he reached his case worker.

He told of languishing in the hospital’s bureaucratic system that evaluates soldiers for continuing in active duty or becoming medically retired, and what benefits they should receive. His paperwork, he said, was lost repeatedly, forcing him to start over several times.

Specialist Jeremy Duncan, one ear shredded by a makeshift bomb, told of the moldy living conditions in Building 18.

“It wasn’t fit for anybody to live in a room like that,” Specialist Duncan said.

Annette L. McLeod, whose husband, Wendell, returned from Iraq with a head injury, spoke emotionally of her distress during his treatment.

“My life was ripped apart the day my husband was injured, and having to live through the mess we’ve had to live through at Walter Reed has been worse than anything I’ve had to sacrifice in my life,” Mrs. McLeod said through tears.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said he was “extraordinarily angry and embarrassed” by the living conditions at the hospital, reported prominently last month by The Washington Post. His brother, Maj. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, a senior medical officer, has now been named to command Walter Reed. The Army officials said extensive repairs were being made to deal with the deplorable conditions at one of the facilities on the hospital campus, Building 18, in which soldiers getting outpatient treatment at the hospital were found to be living in crumbling rooms soiled by mice, cockroaches and mold. Most of the soldiers living there, they said, have now been moved.

Accusations about shoddy treatment received by wounded soldiers at the prominent hospital, which is the centerpiece of the military’s medical system, have touched a public nerve and deeply embarrassed the military in the past few weeks. The Bush administration has been thrown on the defensive, and members of Congress have been quick to express outrage.


"This is absolutely the wrong way to treat our troops, and serious reforms need to happen immediately,” said Representative John F. Tierney, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs.

Mr. Tierney declared the problems at Walter Reed to be part of broader dysfunction at military health care facilities across the country and wondered whether it was “another horrific consequence of the terrible planning that went into our invasion of Iraq.” He warned of a coming crunch with Mr. Bush’s new plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

“As we send more and more troops into Iraq and Afghanistan,” Mr. Tierney said, “these problems are only going to get worse, not better.”

Last week, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey was ousted over his handling of the revelations at Walter Reed, and officials changed the hospital’s commanding officer twice in as many days.

Speaking at a meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vice President Dick Cheney restated on Monday the White House’s promise fix the problems at Walter Reed.

“There will be no excuses, only action,” Mr. Cheney said.

“As we work to improve conditions at Walter Reed, we want to find out whether similar problems have occurred at other military” and veterans’ hospitals, he said. “These brave men and women deserve the heartfelt thanks of our country, and they deserve the very best medical care that our government can possibly provide.”

Members of the committee from both parties were sharply critical during the hearing, some arguing that government audits and news articles have hinted at similar problems for years. Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the committee, said the military’s entire system for handling wounded veterans was in need of a “top-down overhaul.”

“You’re not going to be able to Scotch tape over it,” Mr. Davis said.

Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the surgeon general of the Army, who also headed Walter Reed several years ago, apologized to soldiers and said the bureaucratic process they faced demanded “urgent simplification.”

“We really need to reinvent this process,” General Kiley said.

General Kiley was initially appointed to replace Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman as commander of the hospital last week, but the appointment came under fire because he had previously appeared to play down problems at the hospital when he was in command in 2004.

He was pressed on Monday to explain how he had not known about the conditions at Building 18, even though he lived across the street from it. He explained that inspections of barracks were not part of his normal job duties. But the subcommittee members continued to hammer him, asking why he had not taken action earlier to deal with the challenges faced by wounded soldiers and wondered whether recent efforts to contract out services to civilians had left the hospital depleted.

“I want you to know that I think this is a massive failure of competency and management and command,” said Representative Paul W. Hodes, Democrat of New Hampshire.

Beyond specific steps to streamline the bureaucratic process that is faced by wounded troops and to improve living conditions, military officials said it might be time to re-evaluate whether Walter Reed should be closed in several years, as had been previously planned as part of a national base reorganization process.

Several patients at Walter Reed attended the hearing Monday and echoed some of the problems described. But Staff Sgt. Brian Beem, who lost his right leg to a makeshift bomb in Baghdad in October, said he had had no idea conditions were so bad for some of his counterparts, even though he had heard grumbling.

“At my level,” Sergeant Beem said, “I’m ignorant of it.”

[DTBusta]

Hey but wait, Bush loves his soldiers, he wouldn't do either of those two things...Damit, how many examples to do we need that this president doesn't give two shi*ts about his citizens, and now his soldiers, hes only building this country up for a major let down...I mean war with Iran. Can't be impeached for anything because of the "2006 Military Commisions Act"..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8BqvJO5t4k

[dhriscerr]

I thought he loved me

[Tock]

Oh ya, this is the budget where he gives more tax cuts to rich folks . . . sorta works out where wounded Iraqi veterans get lousy medical care, and rich folks get a tax cut.

Not the way I'd do things . . .