June 15, 2014
Veteran Administration Health Care Services
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that." - Donald Rumsfeld
That comment by the former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is indicative of the short-sightedness that existed during the Bush Administration and which now plagues the nation. It demonstrates that those with the authority to make war without the experience of having fought in one are often subject to grave errors.
Aside from the lies that took us into war - the lies that principals of the Bush Administration continue to repeat, revise or modify - their minimization of the impact of these wars on the country should be determined to be criminal. Those that fought the Bush Wars and the thousands of servicemen and servicewomen injured in other wars and engagements continue to fall victim to their service to this country.
Today, we’re rightly engaged in a reassessment of the healthcare provided veterans whose health is at risk. Allegations of a healthcare bureaucracy mired in antiquated processes and procedures, overwhelmed by the number of patients needing care, and floundering under the apathy of treatment providers desensitized to the needs of ever-increasing waves of veterans are proved more the rule than exception. Today the VA Hospital system is guilty of mission failure.
Although there is no excuse for the failures of the VA hospital system, it was the height of folly to believe that our forces would be able to leave the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq quickly and unscathed. For the astute observer, it should have been clear that improvements in our ability to manage combat trauma would increase the number of wounded returning from the combat theater and, consequently, increase the number of service members requiring extended or lifetime treatment.
It was foolish for those in the Bush Administration to believe that an already over-burdened VA Health System could readily accommodate thousands of additional patients without a corresponding increase in budget and the hiring of qualified medical professionals.
It is the height of hypocrisy and ignorance for Republican law-makers to condemn deficiencies that have festered under their noses for twenty years or more while they label the healthcare needs of service-injured veterans as "entitlements." Their refusal to fully-fund the VA and address and pay for the medical needs of our service members while giving major tax-breaks to the wealthy is not only hypocritical, it is criminal. While Verizon has an effective tax rate lower than zero dollars, multi-billion dollar industries frequently have tax liabilities that are less than the average citizen, and Republicans fight to subsidize or allow the wealthy to shelter income from the IRS, the mantra of the Republican Congress demands budget cuts to fund any increased spending on veterans programs.
Now those self-serving Republican critics of the VA, specifically, and anything that has to do with government, generally, are once again emerging into the public discourse with the hue and cry to privatize VA Healthcare functions. Although I see no long-term benefit in the privatization of VA functions, a delay in delivery of requisite medical services to our veterans is unacceptable. Far too many Republican legislators have forgotten or choose to ignore the role of the Federal government as providing services to the nation that the individual citizen, municipality or state government is ill-equipped or incapable of providing.
Until the VA system is fixed, I propose that Congress immediately appropriate emergency funding for veterans’ healthcare delivery outside the VA system and that veterans, especially those from whom treatment was withheld or delayed, be given first priority of treatment. These men and women deserve nothing less in repayment for their service to this nation.
(Dr. E. Faye Williams is National Chair of the National Congress of Black Women, Inc.-- www.nationalcongressbw.org.-- 202/678-6788.)