Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990 TAG: 9004060941
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In effect the promise was: In return for your service - which is likely to be dangerous and may result for some in permanent disability but in any case is not being asked of every American - you are assured of veterans' medical care for as long as you live.
It was a sweeping promise, though of a sort few young men can bring themselves, in their health and vigor, to believe they will ever need; but it was made and down the many decades since the war, and through two succeeding American wars, it was often renewed; and millions of veterans of the armed services came to trust that it would be kept. Injuries and illnesses incurred in line of duty would naturally take first priority, we were told, but all of us, no matter what the illness and no matter how it had happened, were assured of veterans' care at public expense.
Those were reassuring pledges and as time passed they came to assume an importance we could not have anticipated when young. But now, it appears, the promise is being broken.
A rally at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Salem last week brought a number of facts to public light. Members of the hospital's 600-member union, a local unit of the American Federation of Government Employees, maintain that:
By October the number of staffers at the hospital will drop to 1,360 from 1,576 four years ago.
A 44-bed building was closed this month and plans exist to close two more, for a loss of 80 to 100 more beds by October. (And in November 1988 some 70 beds were closed.)
The operating budget for the hospital this year, at $59.6 million, is only $600,000 higher than last year's - and "hasn't even kept us up with inflation," hospital spokesmen acknowledge.
Patient care, as a result, is being hurt.
And, maintain spokesmen for many veterans' organizations:
The promise of universal veterans' care is being undercut both by the diminution of facilities and by a means test exacted of veterans seeking hospitalization: Those with incomes of less than $17,200 a year have the highest likelihood of winning admission. They maintain, too, that the problem is not at Salem alone but nationwide.
VA spokesmen acknowledge the figures but argue that patient care is not being hurt but merely - through better use of existing facilities and construction of others - "consolidated."
An outsider and a layman cannot confidently judge the quality of patient care, to be sure; but that the VA - pleading "budgetary restraints" - is no longer available to all veterans is universally acknowledged.
The history of society's concern for its veterans is not reassuring. The maimed and often starving old soldiers of foreign wars were familiar figures throughout the Middle Ages and until well into the 19th century, thrown on the mercy of families and friends, if they had them, tossed aside to die in the poorhouse if not, and if they could get in.
More thoughtful care began to emerge a century ago, when wars got larger and more of the population were likely to be veterans; but it was still fitful, varying from one location to another and often minimal at best. But it has been only in this century, when war service became nearly universal for young men, that a rational system was developed in the United States.
Veterans' care is only one of the many services to the disadvantaged that American society is now neglecting, thanks to insane budget deficits and promiscuous political promises not to raise taxes. Education is disastrous. Infant care is poor. We have an epidemic of addiction and AIDS. Medical costs for most of the American people are at a point of crisis.
In the long run, however, a society's worth must rest not on its ability to win wars or manufacture computers but on its concern for its members in need - and perhaps for none more than those who risked their lives for it in the past. I am one of the fortunate ones; I have not needed the VA. But many of my generation are less fortunate and do. America needed us half a century ago. Now, when we need it, it appears to be failing us.
by CNB