Lexington Herald-Leader Lexington, KY
Editorial, November 11, 2004
Care for veterans
Honor them by providing health services
When a group of Harvard Medical School researchers reported last month that almost 1.7 million military veterans have no health coverage, a spokeswoman for the Bush administration disputed the study.
She said fewer than 900,000 veterans lack health coverage or care. Either way, there’s no way to feel good about so many veterans going without health care, especially on this Veterans Day when war casualties are mounting in Iraq.
The physicians who produced the study are proponents of a single-payer national health care system and were accused by a Department of Veterans Affairs spokeswoman of using veterans to advance their agenda. Whatever their motives, they drew their findings from two government studies– the Current Population Survey and the National Health Interview Survey — that interview large random samples of the U.S. population.
For analysis purposes, they counted a veteran who had no health insurance but had been seen at a VA hospital or clinic as insured. Among the study’s
findings:
Uninsured veterans have increased by 235,259 since 2000 to 1,694,312. The typical uninsured veteran was an employed man in his late 40s with one or two family members.More than two-thirds were employed, and 7 percent worked more than one job.
Many uninsured vets had major health problems, and a disturbingly high number reported problems in obtaining health care. Two-thirds reported receiving no preventive care the previous year.
Almost all World War II and Korean War vets are old enough to have medicare coverage. But 1 in 11 of the 7.85 million Vietnam-era vets have no health coverage. Among the 8.7 million veterans who served in other eras, including the Persian Gulf War, 1 in 8 are uninsured.
3.9 million members of veterans households lack health coverage. About half of uninsured veterans have incomes that disqualify them from VA health care under means-tests issued by the Bush administration last year for veterans with no service-related injuries.
The authors say the VA lacks resources to care for an influx of 1.7 million uninsured vets. They also said that in terms of access to care, uninsured vets are indistinguishable from the 45 million Americans with no insurance. Five million Americans lost health insurance over the last four years.
Nov. 11 is the day we set aside each year to honor those who gave part of their lives to defending our nation in the armed services. A good many of them, it seems, are on their own the other 364 days.