From the New Jersey Star Ledger:
Vets up in arms over proposed cuts im medical benefits
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
BY MARYANN SPOTO
Star-Ledger Staff
When World War II veteran Stan Kloby went to a veterans clinic eight years ago, the Dover Township resident said he was told no doctor could see him because of the patient backlog.
The 80-year-old former Navy gunners mate made a stink and was allowed to register. He has been receiving care at the Brick Township facility ever since.
But veterans groups and a New Jersey congressman said yesterday that Kloby and all veterans could suffer under the Bush administration's proposed budget for Veterans Affairs, which.
Kloby's solution: "If they don't want to pay veterans benefits, then quit making veterans."
Kloby was among a group of veterans outside the James J. Howard Community VA Clinic in Brick Township yesterday with U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-6th Dist.). Pallone called on the Bush administration to restore full funding for veterans' benefits.
Although the proposed 2006 federal budget calls for a 1 percent increase in the overall veterans affairs allotment -- from $67.5 billion to $68.2 billion -- some programs are recommended for cuts, in part to compensate for rising disability and pension costs.
"At a time when the number of veterans from the Iraq War continues to grow, it's unconscionable that President Bush is not thanking them for their sacrifice by fully funding veterans programs," Pallone said.
The president's budget recommendations would translate to $351 million in cuts nationwide from veterans' nursing homes, resulting in 28,000 fewer patients being served, he said. That would mean a loss of about $11 million annually for New Jersey, which could force the state to shut one of its three nursing homes for veterans, said Pallone aide Matt Montekio.
The Congressional Budget Office also has said the budget plan falls $762 million short of what is needed to maintain current veterans programs, Pallone said. To close that gap, the Bush administration has proposed a $250 annual enrollment fee for medical care and hiking prescription drug co-payments from $7 to $15. The enrollment fee would generate $1.75 million and the co-pay would raise more than $5 million from New Jersey veterans, Montekio said.
The House is scheduled to vote this week on a version of the proposed budget that does not include the co-pay increase and enrollment provisions, but Pallone said it would only be a matter of time before those recommendations, highly unpopular among veterans organizations, would be adopted.
New Jersey has eight veterans clinics and 583,000 veterans, Pallone said. Another 4,000 military personnel are currently serving in Iraq, he added.
John Muntone, a 77-year-old Jersey City man who served in the Korean War, said the co-pays and enrollment fee would drive 213,000 veterans out of the health care system.
James Manning Sr., chief of staff for the Department of New Jersey Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the cuts will "wreak havoc on all veterans."
"Veterans' health care should be a cost of war," he said. "Apparently it is not."
Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Preston M. Taylor Jr., former assistant adjutant general of New Jersey under Gov. Jim Florio, said the federal Office of Management and Budget tried to cut veterans benefits while he was assistant secretary of Veterans Employment and Training under the Clinton administration.
However, he said, officials were able to persuade Clinton to restore the funding. He noted that happened when the nation was not at war.
"Here we have soldiers that are dying and being wounded and the budget's being cut," Taylor said. "This is insane."
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I'm sure this will all be chalked up to some "tough decision-making" and trying to keep the balance between what we'd like and what we can afford, but come on! You create a stop-gap situation so that soldiers can't leave the military and then make it difficult for them to get health care benefits when they finally come out of the war in god knows what kind of shape. What kind of a society are we? How is this compassionate conservatism?