Honoring our troops
Berkshire Eagle, Lenox, MA
Monday, November 15, 2004
Honoring our troops
By Suzanne L. King M.D.
Last Week we celebrated Veterans’ Day. Parades and services honored veterans from past wars, even as American troops pushed forward against the Fallujah insurgency. Soldiers continue to die, and many more have been wounded as they fight in the current war in Iraq.
Meanwhile, a quiet and less publicized battle is being fought at home: the fight for health care by veterans of both the Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars. A Harvard Medical School study recently reported that almost 1.7 million American veterans were uninsured in 2003. That means they did not have health insurance, and they were not able to receive care at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospitals or clinics.
The Bush administration halted VHA enrollment for middle income veterans last year if their yearly income was above $25,000. In addition, veterans who did qualify for VHA benefits often could not obtain VHA care because of waiting lists, unaffordable co-payments, or lack of access to VHA facilities. (Veterans of World War II and the Korean War are covered by Medicare because of their age, and therefore have access to America’s single payer health care system for the elderly).
Twelve percent of all veterans were uninsured in 2003. Younger veterans were least likely to have health insurance, with more than one-third of veterans under 25 years of age uninsured, and one in seven aged 25-44 years without insurance. Of course, their families did not have insurance coverage either. Many of these veterans have major health problems, often related to their war duty; less than a quarter indicated they were in excellent health.
On television last night, a grateful father talked of his son’s return home from Iraq, a son whose skull had been broken into 500 pieces, and who lay in a coma, hospitalized for five months. He is slowly recovering, and feels guilty that he is safe at home and his friends are still fighting and in danger. With courage and dedication, he has risked his life for his country; will his health care needs be forgotten 10 years from now?
The Berkshire Eagle recently published an article about the thousands of Gulf War veterans who have been ill with a mysterious syndrome that includes chronic fatigue, dizziness, loss of muscle control and balance, memory problems, and gastrointestinal symptoms. Originally attributed to “stress,” current VA studies are focussing on the possibility the symptoms are secondary to neurotoxins like pesticides or nerve gases used in the war. Thirteen years later, these veterans are still having symptoms related to their war experience. They have sacrificed their health; how can we not provide health care for all of them?
Uninsured veterans are not nursing their wounds; 86 percent of them worked
within the last year. They had as much trouble getting medical care as other uninsured people, most of whom are also employed. Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor at Harvard Medical School and an author of the study, commented, “This administration professes great concern for veterans, but it’s all talk and no action. Since President Bush took office the number of uninsured vets has skyrocketed, and he’s cut VA eligibility, barring hundreds of thousands of veterans from care. Our president has put troops in harm’s way overseas and abandons them and their families once they get home.”
What is the solution for these uninsured veterans? It’s the same solution that everyone in our country, including 45 million uninsured Americans, needs: a universal single payer national health insurance program, funded and administered by the government (i.e., Medicare for everyone). How can we ask our soldiers to risk their lives, lose limbs, develop chronic illnesses, suffer post-traumatic stress disorders, and then not care for them when they return home? And how can we not provide health care for every citizen of the United States, a country founded to provide “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for everyone? Other industrialized countries, all of whom have national health insurance, manage to provide universal health care at half the cost we pay for health care per person. The problems of rising health care costs and lack of
access to health care in America cannot be solved by incremental change and
continued reliance on market-based strategies. We need to change the system
itself. We need universal single payer health care. Then we can truly honor
our troops.