Kurt Staudter's weekly column, "While We Were Sleeping":
Members of Congress and other political leaders often say that the men and women who have served in our military since 9/11 are the ‘new greatest generation.’ Well, here’s a thought from two infantry combat veterans of the Vietnam era’s ‘wounded generation’: if you truly believe that our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are like those who fought in World War II, let us provide them with the same G.I. Bill that was given to the veterans of that war.” Sens. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) in a New York Times Op Ed.
There is no doubt in my mind that much of the prosperity that we’ve enjoyed in this country was as a direct result of the G.I. Bill after World War II. I believe that a whole generation of veterans went to college on the government nickel that would have never attended otherwise. This led to unprecedented innovations, technological advances, and the Nobel prizes in the sciences are still rolling in. Our investment in these returning war veterans is what made them the “greatest generation.” Not because of what they did in the war, but what they did afterwards. In a way, by thanking these vets for their sacrifice, by helping them buy homes and go to college, we set off a wave of prosperity that has only now begun to crest.
On this Veteran’s Day, I’m ashamed at the way we are treating vets now. No matter how you feel about this war, or war in general, those citizens that answer the call to serve deserve our gratitude. At the very least they’ve earned the right to be treated with dignity.
But somehow I don’t see the dignity in the fact that “wounded veterans are getting the runaround” according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office which chastised the Pentagon and Veterans Administration. The reports about conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the case backlogs at VA hospitals around the country are an outrage. The irony here is that before the war the VA was held up as a model of efficiency and effective care, and many looked at it as a way to proceed towards a single-payer system for all of us. It seems like it was almost a deliberate effort on the part of Bush to trash the VA system in order to just discredit government-run healthcare. It makes me sick.
What sort of dignity is there in the taking of your own life? Since this war started over 283 combat veterans have committed suicide. In a culture where mental illness is dismissed by your superiors as a sign of weakness, still over 100,000 combat veterans have requested care – Many suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The Bush administration has finally acknowledged the problem and has directed the VA to create programs that identify and help suicidal veterans. In that one dark moment of hopelessness, no veteran should feel alone. They need to know that a nation stands behind them ready to help.
Coming of age in the 1970s in and around New York City, you couldn’t help but notice that many of the homeless on the streets wore military fatigues. Even back then, the government did little to help these veterans suffering from mental illness, but by now it should be expected that we’d have gotten a handle on the homelessness of vets. Sadly, today veterans make up about one in four of the homeless. Some estimates put the number of Afghanistan/Iraq vets that are homeless at around 1,500, and shelters are reporting that many of the new arrivals include wounded veterans of the current war.
What about the myth that veterans have health insurance for life? In a new report from Harvard places the number of veterans and their families without health insurance at around 6 million, and the number of uninsured veterans at 1.8 million in 2004. This is up roughly more than a quarter of a million people since 2000. Preliminary numbers for more recent years are showing that the problem is becoming bigger. It seems that like the population as a whole, veterans are no longer getting their insurance through their employer, and almost 2/3 of the uninsured vets were employed.
Here are some other findings of the Harvard study to be released in December in the American Journal of Public Health: 56.5% of the uninsured veterans are over 44 years old; 645,628 are uninsured Vietnam-era vets and 1.1 million are vets from wars that include the current conflict; 26.5% reported they failed to get care because of costs; 31.2% delayed care because of costs; 49.1% has failed to see a doctor in the last year; and finally, 66% failed to receive preventative care. This is just shameful.
The Bush administration in 2003 made many middle income veterans ineligible for VA care, set co-pays for specialized care at unaffordable levels, and set the stage for overwhelming the VA system.
As I sit here on this Veteran’s Day I wonder what a difference this next generation of warriors might make in this country if we sent all of them to college for free, helped them buy homes and gave them the medical care that they deserve. You can’t help but believe that this next generation would shine in our history books. However, we all know that this will never happen. So if we aren’t going to have a meaningful G.I. Bill for these folks, the very least we can do is to treat them with the dignity they earned.
