Using Vets

[Annie]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005707

A Veteran Ploy
The truth about those health-care "cuts" Kerry complains about.

Sunday, October 3, 2004 12:01 a.m.

From the outset of his campaign, John Kerry has been aiming for the veteran vote. With 25 million military veterans in the country, it would be a nice trick for him to pull off. But for all the ink spilled over the candidate's three Purple Hearts, there has been remarkably little reporting on what the Kerry campaign has been telling vets: that under President Bush, the Department of Veterans Affairs is cutting health services.
No Kerry surrogate has been more outspoken on this than former Senator and Vietnam vet Max Cleland: "I think it is crazy that Bush's VA is cutting veterans out of the system and closing hospitals during a shooting war." During the GOP Convention, Mr. Kerry told the American Legion: "When I am President, you will have a fellow veteran in the White House who understands that those who fought for our country abroad should never have to fight for what they were promised back here at home."

The problem is that these attacks have little basis in fact. When Mr. Bush took office the VA was operating like the Canadian health care system. Swamped with more patients than it could handle, the VA let vets languish on long waiting lists. Of the 3.8 million veterans then relying on Uncle Sam for health care, 300,000 waited six months or more for an initial doctor's visit or a referral to a specialist. Now there are more than five million vets being cared for each year and the waiting list is down to 3,000--a 99% improvement. The VA budget will top $70 billion next year, up from $48 billion four years ago. VA medical spending alone will reach $26.9 billion this year, up from $20.2 billion in 2001.





But these numbers tell only half the story. To find out why the VA is closing some hospitals, the Kerry campaign might put in a call to Bill Clinton. In the mid-1990s it became clear that the VA's model of large hospitals focusing on inpatient care was outmoded, wasteful and did not meet the needs of an increasingly dispersed veteran population. One estimate found that the VA was wasting $1 million a day keeping open psychiatric, tuberculosis and other empty wards. So like the rest of the health care community, the VA began offering more outpatient care by opening hundreds of clinics around the country. In 1996 the VA operated 200 clinics. Today it runs 700 and is planning additional ones in Cleveland, Las Vegas, Tampa and 150 other places.
However, even government doctors cannot offer free services and then reasonably expect to treat everyone who might walk in the door. In 1996 Congress created a new system that gives greater priority to veterans who are poor or who suffer from military-related disabilities. VA Secretary Anthony Principi told us that he used these rules to determine that it is not possible right now to provide care for vets not yet in the system and who have only a few years of service, incomes above $35,000 or so and no service-related disabilities.

This is where Mr. Kerry comes in with a promise to "lead the fight" for "mandatory funding" for health care for all veterans. That sounds nice on the stump, but in practice it would make veteran benefits look a lot more like Medicare and a lot less responsive to changing veteran needs. It could also cost as much as $165 billion through 2008, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. More federal money is almost always the answer in Washington, but it's rarely the cure.


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[NATO AIR]

more raising of the fear factor to get voters on your side... doubt this will work for kerry