Editorial: Health care road trips unfair burden on veterans
Web Posted: 07/15/2007 12:01 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
First of two parts
Raymundo Chase sits in the back of a van, his hands trembling as he tries to grip the cane in his lap.
Chase is not traveling for pleasure. He does not make a 600-mile round trip, usually shaking the whole way, because he wants to. He does it because he has to.
Like thousands of other veterans in deep South Texas, Chase cannot get the medical care he needs in his community, Brownsville. They served their country, and their country, in return, promised them medical benefits. But, for veterans in the Rio Grande Valley, that care is not reasonably accessible.
So Chase hops into the van twice a year, heading to the Audie Murphy VA Hospital in San Antonio. The testing lasts two days. He suffers from Parkinson's disease.
"I used to have a walker," he said. "But I've been getting better, so I'm trying to stick to the cane. This is a long trip, and I get very stiff."
Chase is not alone. Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, the Cameron County Veterans Service Office provides a van for veterans who have medical appointments in San Antonio. The van, which picks up veterans in Brownsville, Harlingen and San Benito, seats 15 passengers, a number that often includes spouses who accompany their disabled wives or husbands.
"It doesn't feel right," Chase, 62, who served in Vietnam, said. "It just doesn't feel right... It's wrong."
The Department of Veterans Affairs commissioned a study to determine if the veterans need a hospital of their own. The veterans already know the answer. They do.
If they are bitter, however, they do not show it. They seem more sad than angry. And they have a right to feel hurt: If the federal government has enough money to send our young men and women to war, it should have enough money to treat them humanely and respectfully once they return.
"You have to fix what's broken, and at this point the VA is broken," Salvador Salinas, director of the veterans office in Cameron County, said. "The system itself seems to be getting better, but as more soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan, the burden is increasing."
Officials say 115,000 veterans reside in the 60-county region south of San Antonio, which includes the Rio Grande Valley. The number is larger when you consider veterans who reside across the border; Salinas said about 10,000 veterans live in Mexico, while other officials place the number at approximately 30,000. Then there are the veterans from northern states who stay here during the winter, estimated to be in the hundreds.
Whatever the correct total, the number is straining the health system in the Rio Grande Valley, veterans say. The VA operates two clinics in the Valley, one in McAllen, the other in Harlingen, but the facilities provide only routine, outpatient care. And the patient load in the clinics, officials say, has increased about 30 percent in the last six years.
For X-rays, CAT scans and surgical procedures, the veterans must go to Audie Murphy, the nearest VA hospital. Some provide their own transportation. Others need the "vet van," a service provided in other counties throughout the area.
While the Veterans Affairs department does not keep statistics on South Texas veterans who require medical service in San Antonio, Salinas estimates the figure to be in the thousands. It would be higher, but the system is so strained that some veterans, including Salinas, opt for private insurance. They say the veterans system is not worth the hassle.
"It's a burden for the veterans to go all the way to San Antonio," Robert Garza, 59, who volunteers as the van driver, said. "I'm not a veteran, so I drive them out, because it's the only thing I can do to show them I appreciate what they did for our country."
Because the van holds only 15 passengers, some veterans show up at the pick-up points on a stand-by basis, hoping a comrade will fail to show up. But even if they make the ride, they are not assured a productive trip. Sometimes, they make it to San Antonio, only to find their appointments have been canceled.
"It's a burden for all the veterans, but especially for the ones who are disabled, the ones who are wheelchair-bound," Placido Salazar, an official with the American G.I. Forum in San Antonio, said.
And it is not a question of mere inconvenience.
"A few months ago, an individual had a heart attack on the way up," Emilio De Los Santos, the head of the Hidalgo County Veterans Service Office, said. "He survived, but it was scary."
The veterans have supporters in Congress, including Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. And, as a result, some feel optimistic about getting a hospital in their backyard. Others, pointing to decades of neglect, feel less hopeful.
"We've heard every excuse in the book," Salinas said. "They've told us we don't need a hospital here. They've told us there's no money for a hospital here. But we have to keep trying."
************************************************************************************************************************************************************
************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Monday: The road to a veterans hospital in South Texas.
San Antonio Express-News (TX)
Editorial Page 04B
Our Turn; VA hospital in Rio Grande Valley is long overdue
Publication Date : July 16, 2007
Second of two parts
The road to Gravina Island is paved with absurdity.
You remember Gravina Island. It is the strip of land that Americans now refer to as "nowhere." About two years ago, Congress approved almost $300 million to connect the island, population around 50, with Ketchikan, Alaska, population around 14,000.
The appropriation was outrageous, but the outrage intensifies when you consider what Congress deems worth funding and what it deems not worth funding.
A "bridge to nowhere": worth funding. A Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in South Texas: not worth funding.
"The veterans (in South Texas) have had it consistently awful for decades, with just pre-9-11 veterans," Cathy Travis, the communications director and senior advisor to Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, said.
While VA officials have no statistics on the number of veterans who must seek medical care at San Antonio's Audie Murphy VA Hospital, officials know one thing: The war on terror is exacerbating the problem. Travis called it a "simple math equation." The veterans health care system, already burdened, becomes more strained as soldiers return from the Middle East.
"After the war in Afghanistan, the numbers (of veterans needing care) started creeping up, then they exploded when we invaded Iraq," Travis said. "So, given that, the burden of not having a hospital means the VA services -- insufficient to begin with -- must now cover many more people."
The situation is frustrating to the veterans and their advocates.
"It's akin to having a chicken to feed a hungry family of five, then the whole neighborhood comes over for lunch," she said. "There just ain't enough, period."
Pressured by a group of lawmakers, including Ortiz and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the Department of Veterans Affairs commissioned a study to determine if South Texas needs a veterans hospital or a partnership with private hospitals in the area.
"I support trying to make veterans' health care service as convenient and accessible as possible," U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Nicholson told the Express-News last summer. "The question of a (new) hospital, that's a big issue, and that's why we do these big studies. We are concerned (for Valley veterans)."
Hutchison requested that the study, conducted by the Virginia firm Booz Allen Hamilton, be completed by the end of this month.
"We don't know what will be in the study, but it should be presented to the VA secretary by the end of July," Diana Struski, public affairs officer for the South Texas Veterans Health Care System, said. "He will review the study and its recommendations, and he will make the announcements."
If the study calls for the construction of a VA hospital in South Texas, congressional action to provide funding still would be needed.
"This study has taken an awfully long time, and I am anxious to learn the results," Hutchison, the ranking member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee, said in a statement following a hearing in April. "Our veterans in the Valley deserve accessible, quality care."
Ortiz has been pushing for a hospital for more than 20 years, but the bills have never gotten out of committee. The country seems more sensitive to the plight of veterans now, thanks in part to reports about the problems at Walter Reed Medical Center and other VA facilities throughout the country. But some officials remain pessimistic.
"I'm not optimistic," Placido Salazar, 67, a veterans affairs officer with the American GI Forum in San Antonio, said. "For years, the government has turned a deaf ear on our veterans. It's just unconscionable."
Jose Sanchez, 78, who served in the Army during the Korean War, is among the hundreds of veterans who must take a van from the Valley to Audie Murphy VA Hospital in San Antonio.
"I have a bad back, and the ride is rough," he said. "Oh, hell, yes, it hurts."
In 2005, hundreds of veterans marched from their communities to San Antonio, dramatizing the need for a veterans hospital in the Valley.
"These are soldiers who love their country," State Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, said. "They love it so much that it is in every fiber, in every sinew, in every vessel, in every corpuscle. They bleed love for their country, and to think the government has forgotten about them just tears at them. They have given so much."
When the results of the study are released at the end of this month, they will find out if the country is ready to give back.
It is time to put the "vet vans" in storage. The veterans need and deserve a hospital in the Rio Grande Valley.