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Many are forced out, congressman says

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Politics Editor

Surrounded by officials of veterans groups, U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Swissvale, yesterday criticized the funding for veterans' health care in the budget recently approved by Congress, contending that it would shortchange veterans across the Pittsburgh region.

While the spending plan does increase funding for the health- care system operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Doyle said that it does not come close to meeting the need created by the increasing numbers of veterans seeking care through the system.

The administration has defended its budget plans, arguing that restrictions on services for lower-priority veterans will allow the system to cut down on backlogs and better serve its highest-priority cases, those involving veterans with service-connected disabilities and those with lower incomes.

Doyle said an estimated 1,700 veterans in the Pittsburgh area who do not have service-connected disabilities would be affected by an enrollment freeze for veterans with relatively higher incomes called for in the new budget.

He said other veterans would face higher co-pays for prescriptions and other services and cited estimates that as many as 12,000 veterans from the Pittsburgh region would be forced to leave the system due to the higher costs.

Congress greatly expanded eligibility for full veterans health care benefits in 1998. That, coupled with rising health-care costs in the private market, has greatly increased the numbers seeking care in the veterans system. Coupled with what Doyle characterized as inadequate funding increases for the program, the result has been longer waiting lists for veterans seeking health care.

In structuring its services, the department has created eight tiers of eligibility, with higher priority accorded to those with service-connected health problems and those with the lowest incomes. The pending budget would freeze enrollments of new applicants for veterans health care for those with incomes of more than $30,300 annually, for an individual, provided that their health problems are not service-related. They are designated Priority 8 in the department's classification system. In addition, the budget would increase co-pays for prescription and other services for the next classification, priority 7 -- veterans with non-service-related health problems whose individual incomes exceed $24,644 a year.

"We owe our veterans a debt we can never repay," Doyle said at yesterday's news conference at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland. "I firmly believe that we can and should provide them with the medical care they need."

The session was one in a series of news conferences veterans supporters have been staging across the country seeking to boost funding for health care for veterans.

Administration officials have defended their budget priorities. In an appearance last week at the National Press Club, Anthony Principi, the secretary of veterans affairs, called the restrictions a difficult but necessary step to improve care for the sickest and neediest.

The current funding levels are specified in the overall budget legislation recently approved by the House and Senate. Doyle said he would support amendments expected to be offered to the department's pending appropriations bill that would increase the agency's funding.