Veterans

Nov. 6, 2015

We started producing veterans and trying to find a way to care for them, before we were even a country. In 1636, Plymouth Colony agreed to provide assistance to those wounded during their skirmishes with the Pequot Indians. It was the first known benefit for veterans in the New World.

In 1776, the Continental Congress authorized benefits, including a pension, as inducement for involvement in the Revolutionary War. Additional benefits were provided in 1783 at the insistence of George Washington.

By 1811, the first veterans’ hospital opened. We have ever since made efforts to take care of our veterans. At least we've always claimed we did.

We’ve always been behind the curve. The promises made have never quite been matched by the promises kept. didn't even have their own cabinet department until 1989, when the Veteran's Administration was elevated and became the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA).

To be fair, it’s not as if we do nothing.

The doctors, nurses and social workers at the VA do some remarkable work, including breakthroughs treating the signature injuries of our perpetual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, traumatic brain injury and amputation.

The numbers are not in their favor, though.

The VA has become a lumbering bureaucratic giant with a $168.8 billion budget proposed for fiscal year 2016. They have more than 340,000 employees, 144 hospitals and more than 1,200 outpatient clinics around the country. Plus programs that provide home mortgages, loans, educational opportunities, insurance and a host of other benefits.

There were 5.8 million patient visits to VA facilities last year and that number isn’t likely to decrease any time soon. There are now nearly 22 million veterans in the U.S. and those from the Korean and Vietnam era conflicts are part of our aging population with increased medical needs.

At the same time, our two longest wars in history, Iraq and Afghanistan, keep producing more wounded vets. More than 970,000 disability claims have been filed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We know at least 50,000 have suffered serious physical injuries and hundreds of thousands are coping with the often perplexing symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

That was a lot of numbers just to say our veterans need more than just our respect and thanks. And they aren’t always getting it.

We know at least some VA hospitals and clinics were operating in a way that created a second battlefront for our vets once they came home. Some waited months for appointments that were never kept. The administrators lied about it and still accepted bonuses for “outstanding” work. Shamefully, some veterans with treatable conditions died while their appointment paperwork was intentionally buried.

We're told those situations have improved, the worst of the bad apples have been removed, and things are much better. But too many veterans are still waiting. Months have been reduced to weeks but how can we claim that's good enough?

Our newest group of veterans has been fighting in the longest wars in our history, often serving tours long after they believed their service was over. The rest of us have sacrificed nothing. Our taxes haven’t been raised to pay the $1 trillion or so in costs. There is no draft to trouble middle class families with teenagers at home. Nobody is selling war bonds or asking us to conserve anything.

Those now serving, their families and their friends are pretty much on their own. The VA is about the only connection between them and the rest of us. But our promise has been suffocated under the layers of an expanding bureaucratic monolith and an ever-increasing need for more services and treatment.

As the 2016 elections draw near, candidates' love for veterans will blossom anew. Politicians love veterans more than just about any group except children. Some actually help.

Congressman Dan Benishek, the District 1 Republican retiring after this term, helped generate approval for an expansion of the VA Clinic in Traverse City, a good thing. It will provide more convenient access and expanding services to northern Michigan vets.

We ask a great deal of our men and women in the military. They’re the first line of defense and, too often lately, the first line of offense for politicians sending them to the Middle East. The sacrifices we demand of them have costs that go beyond the obvious physical risk; they leave families and careers behind and when they return they have higher rates of alcoholism, unemployment and homelessness than non-veterans.

Politicians like to tell us freedom isn't free just before telling us how much they love veterans (and children). They have more trouble explaining why our veterans keep paying such a high price for the rest of us. And they have no explanation at all for why they don't do something about it.