Newsweek Cover: Failing Our Wounded

NEW YORK, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week's revelations about the decay and mismanagement at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., were especially shocking because it is one of the country's most prestigious military hospitals. But a Newsweek investigation-which focused not on one facility but on the services of the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sprawling 235,000-person bureaucracy-found that the VA system is unprepared for the scope of the task at hand and ahead.

Around 50,000 service members so far have been banged up or burned, lost limbs or sacrificed something less tangible inside them in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And a new study projects that at least 700,000 more veterans from the global war on terror will flood the system in the coming years. In the March 5 cover story, "Failing Our Wounded" (on newsstands Monday, February 26), National Security Correspondent Dan Ephron and Assistant Editor Sarah Childress paint a grim portrait of an overloaded bureaucracy cluttered with red tape; veterans having to wait weeks or months for mental-health care and other appointments; families sliding into debt as VA case managers study disability claims over many months, and the seriously wounded requiring help from outside experts just to understand the VA's arcane system of rights and benefits.

Tonia Sargent, whose husband, Kenneth-a Marine master sergeant who had been in the Corps for nearly 18 years-nearly died in a sniper attack in Najaf in 2004, says no one ever sat her down and explained the benefits and how to access them. Her husband's brain injury made him often incapable of understanding his own care. Key decisions fell to her alone. It's a "don't ask, don't tell system," she says. The Sargent's story, and the stories of many other veterans, is raising concerns that our country is failing to meet its most basic obligations to those who fight our wars.

"In no way do I diminish the fact that there are veterans out there who are coming in who require treatment and maybe are not getting the treatment they need," White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto tells Newsweek. "It's real and it exists." Dr. Michael Kussman, the VA's acting under- secretary for health tells Newsweek that the department is trying to reach veterans earlier, as they approach their date of discharge, and that he does not believe Iraq and Afghanistan are straining resources severely. "The impact on the VA so far has been relatively small," Kussman says. "It has not kicked the system over in our budget and in our ability to absorb it."

But the number of veterans has to grow and critics worry the VA is in a state of denial. In a broad sense, Newsweek reports, the situation at the VA seems to mirror the overall lack of planning for the war. "We know the VA doesn't have the capacity to process a large number of disability claims at the same time," says Linda Bilmes, a Harvard public-finance professor who last month released a 34-page study on the long-term cost of caring for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Veterans' support groups and even some former and current VA insiders believe there's a reluctance in the Bush administration to deal openly with the long-term costs of the war. (All told, Bilmes projects it could cost as much as $600 billion to care for veterans of the global war on terror over the course of their lifetimes). That reluctance, they say, trickles down to the VA, where top managers are politically appointed. Secretary Jim Nicholson, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who was chosen by Bush in 2005, tends to be the focus of this criticism. A senior VA manager who did not want to be named criticizing superiors told Newsweek: "He's a political appointee and he needs to respond to the White House's direction." Steve Robinson of Veterans for America levels the accusation more directly. "Why doesn't the VA have a projection of casualties for the wars? Because it would be a political bombshell for Nicholson to estimate so many casualties." The VA denies political considerations are involved in its budgeting or planning. Nicholson declined to be interviewed. Matt Burns, a spokesman for the VA, called Robinson's comments "nonsensical and inflammatory," adding: "The VA, in its budgeting process, carefully prepares for future costs so that we can continue to deliver the quality health care and myriad benefits veterans have earned."

A jump in disability claims in recent years has created a bottleneck. Daniel Cooper, the VA's under secretary for benefits, confirmed his department was coping with a backlog of 400,000 applications and appeals; 75 percent of them were still within a "reasonable" reviewing time frame, he says. As more servicemen and women return from Iraq, the backlog is likely to increase. Cooper says the average waiting time for a benefits claim is about six months. But Newsweek turned up a number of veterans who'd waited longer. Patrick Feges, an Eagle Scout from Sugar Land, Texas, who was injured in Ramadi in October 2004, finally got approval last month, 17 months after filing his claim: after Newsweek and the advocacy group Veterans for America began looking into his case, he got a call from a VA official in Waco, Texas, with the news that his claim had been approved. Last week he received back pay to the date of his application.

As is often the case in America when government institutions falter, however, community groups are already stepping in to the void, Newsweek reports. Veterans of Foreign Wars has advocates helping vets negotiate the VA bureaucracy, much the way health facilitators in the private sector help consumers get the most from their health insurance. Robinson, of Veterans for America, has pulled together teams of volunteers-physicians, psychologists, lawyers -- who give vets free services when the local VA branch falls down.

Also in the cover package, Baghdad Correspondent Babak Dehghanpisheh reports on prospects for long-term care for wounded Iraqi soldiers, who are injured at twice the rate of Americans. The American-run Combat Support Hospital, known as the Cash, in the Green Zone, is often the first stop for critically wounded soldiers. At the Cash, Iraqi and American soldiers receive the same state-of-the-art care until they're stabilized. But for the Iraqis, it's downhill from there. "The problem is what happens afterward," says an American doctor at Cash. "The safety net is very low."

(Read entire cover story at http://www.newsweek.com/)

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