THE VA AS A GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE MODEL

As the Obama administration goes full steam ahead to get a government health care package enacted during this congressional term, an irate citizen informs us about a government health care program that’s been around for years – the Veterans Administration.

J.T. Chapman is a civic activist in the Clear Lake area of Houston. While his observations relate specifically to Texas veterans, according to everything I’ve read, serious problems within the VA are widespread throughout the land.

And if the VA is a model for government health care, then Americans everywhere should be concerned about what the final version of the president’s health care reform package will be like and how it's going to be paid for.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE
By J.T. Chapman III

So far as most of us U.S. Taxpayers can tell, the Veterans Administration is the only government agency responsible for the health benefits of a large segment of our population – Our Veterans.

Today’s Houston Chronicle Editorial, "Dishonoring Our Troops – Houston leads nation in shameful backlog of veterans’ benefits claims," and recent news stories point out how abysmal this responsibility has been abdicated by our federal government. Not just in Houston, but everywhere.

Our Veterans deserve better. The current situation has come about by neglect, insufficient funding and by government bureaucracy. It should not be so.

I know this story first-hand. I applied for a veteran’s pension for my 88-year old Father, who is now in a nursing home, and who served in combat in WWII in the Philippines. It took over NINE months to get his claim approved.

It would NEVER have happened without the help of the Texas Veterans Commission, which is the advocate for Texas veterans, their families, and their survivors AGAINST the VA. How WRONG is it that we have to have a State funded agency to help our Veterans get what they deserve from the federal government?

As we go forward with "health care reform" in this Country, may we all ask hard questions of our elected representatives. Perhaps, before we go too far, we should demand that President Obama AND the Congress FIX the VA health care system and let us ALL see how that works out.

It could and should be done quickly before we embark on further social engineering health care experiments that don’t work any better than the VA. Otherwise, in the future we all might just require a "Texas Health Care Commission" to advocate for the average Texas Citizen against their federal health care system.

We ALL deserve better.