Wednesday’s 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq fueled passions on both sides of the debate about the need for and the results of that war. But one aspect of this issue has already been answered. Our nation is falling far short of providing prompt and adequate health care to many of the approximately 2.3 million men and women who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s past time for the American public to increase the demand — directly on the Department of Veterans Affairs and indirectly on members of Congress who oversee the agency — that clearly quantifiable grievances are heard and resolved. For example, according to a recent article by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), in the past four years “the number of veterans waiting more than a year for service-connected health benefits had increased from 11,000 to 245,000, a jump of more than 2,000 percent.”
VA officials have said they’re working hard to fix the problem. That’s not good enough. They’ve been saying that for years, but as cironline.org reported last week, “internal documents show the agency believes the number of veterans waiting for benefits, currently at about 900,000, will hit a million this month and continue to rise throughout the year.”
This dreadful neglect of veterans is nationwide. The News Tribune in Tacoma reports that the average wait to begin receiving VA disability compensation is 337 days at the Seattle office, much worse than the 213-day wait in January 2012. In New York City, the average wait is 641 days.