Help as well as honor vets . . .

Help as well as honor vets . . .
America’s treatment of those who serve should get some high-priority reforms

Updated: 11/11/08 7:04 AM

Veterans Day prompts not just gratitude for the service many men and women have provided to their country and to the cause of liberty throughout the world, but reflection on the way those veterans are treated when they return home.

Barack Obama, who takes office in January with America’s military still committed to long wars overseas, could probably get away with allowing the government to continue treating its veterans shabbily — at least for a while. It’s not the kind of thing he will be criticized for soon, and many other matters are high on the president-elect’s priority list.

He should resist any temptation to defer action. Even though it might not be politically urgent, it is morally essential for the country’s next president to promptly begin the task of restoring a sense of honor — and effectiveness — to the country’s treatment of its veterans. What has occurred since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is nothing less than a disgrace, overshadowed though it has been by the wars, the economy and the election.

The problems have been well documented, starting with the disclosure of shocking conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where wounded troops were sent for treatment. Older veterans, too, can be forced into intolerable delays for treatment of illnesses at Veterans Affairs hospitals.

We hope Obama will call for a searching evaluation of the entirety of veterans services, one that specifically includes a willingness to change the whole system, if necessary. If Obama and Congress are going to tackle the problem of the delivery of health care, in general, they should consider the possibility of creating a single system that serves veterans and non-veterans, alike.

If the nation’s elderly and poor are entitled to health care at civilian hospitals through Medicare and Medicaid, why not the soldiers, sailors and aviators who have served the country? It’s at least worth debating the possibility that “separate but equal” systems for delivering health care hasn’t worked out any better than the educational version the nation abandoned half a century ago.

The problem of veterans care came up during the first of this fall’s presidential debates, with John McCain promising that veterans would receive better care were he to be elected. Obama seconded the pledge. Now that he has won the election, he needs to make good on the promise, and in multiple ways. He needs to find a way to cut through the red tape that now hinders care while also exploring the kind of long-term changes that can provide a long-term fix for an intolerable problem.

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