Let's see what just ONE Veterans Service Organization says about "your boys" VA Budget!
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WASHINGTON, /U.S. Newswire/ -- Thomas H. Corey, President of Vietnam Veterans of America, has called the whitewash of the decision by the House of Representatives and the President to cut $1.3 billion from the budget for veterans' health care "a slap in the face."
In a letter to Rep. Deborah Pryce, chair of the House Republican Conference, Corey wrote: "I read with a sense of dismay your report on all the good things the House and this President has done on behalf of veterans. Much of it stretches the truth.
"Yes, veterans' health care has received funding increases over the past few years," Corey wrote. "However, these increases have not kept pace with the increased demand at the VA medical centers, not to mention medical inflation. Because the budget for the VA's medical operations was flat-lined for the past three successive fiscal years, the amount being appropriated is woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the users of the VA health-care system.
What would $1.344 billion mean to veterans health care?
Congress would have to seriously consider the new copayments and enrollment fees proposed by the Bush Administration in order to keep the system operating in the next fiscal year.
This means:
New priority 8 veterans would remain ineligible for VA services indefinitely
Priority 7 and 8 veterans would have an annual enrollment fee in addition to increased copayments for pharmaceutical drugs and primary care
Only veterans with highly rated service connected disabilities (greater than 70%) would be eligible for placement in VA nursing homes. This would eliminate the need for 5000 nursing home beds from the system.
In year one VA may have to disenroll at least 168,000 veterans.
There would be no additional funds available to implement the Homeless Veterans Comprehensive Assistance Act to work toward the goal of eliminating chronic homelessness in a decade.
The current Capital Assets Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) exercise that VA is undertaking to assess the best use of its physical infrastructure will become a "de facto" closure commission with no ability to respond to veterans' needs for primary care, long-term care, and mental health projected by its own models.
$1.344 billion =
about 9,000 doctors or 19,000 nurses
about 6.6 million outpatient visits
870,000 hospital bed days of care
2 million psychiatric bed days of care
9 million nursing home bed days of care
all of VA's top-twenty priorities major construction projects (totaling about $600 million) which include desperately needed seismic and modernization projects and projects to ensure patient and employee safety
What would $463 million cuts in mandatory spending mean to veterans benefits?
Congress would have to seriously cut the benefits paid to men and women who are disabled as a result of military service. Cash benefits paid to veterans who have disabilities incurred or aggravated during military service comprise the vast majority of VA?s budget for mandatory programs. Ninety percent of the mandatory spending the Budget Committee proposes to cut is from cash payments to service disabled veterans, low-income wartime veterans and their survivors.
Other programs funded with mandatory spending are the Montgomery G.I. Bill education benefits, vocational rehabilitation and independent living programs for service-disabled veterans, subsidies for VA home loans and insurance for service-disabled veterans and funds to provide headstones, markers and flags for deceased veterans.
Even if all burial benefits, including flags and markers were eliminated to meet the Budget Committee resolution, funding for benefits for living veterans would need to be dramatically cut.
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And, this is just the proverbial "tip of the iceberg".....................because with the "war" in Iraq still raging, more and more of this nations young men and women in the military will be in dire need of the Veterans Administration health care system and benefits! Not to mention the current veterans and their dependents who continue to suffer at the hands of an overburdened and underfunded system!
So you see SirSuperSilly, your proclamations of glory and praise for your "compassionate conservative" leader...GEE-W will continue to be just so much bombastic rhetoriic and distorted, deceptive denials of the
TRUTH So says the Viertnam Veterans of America, DAV, VFW, American Legion, etc., etc............AND ME!!!!
How can you honestly look at yourself in the mirror each morning knowing that you support a president who has forsaken the very folks who help elect him, the military veteran community??? You should hang your head in shame!
:cd: :cd:
