Tale of red tape familiar, shameful
Published June 20, 2014
Editorial by Jacksonville Daily News, June 19, 2014.
Despite what you may have heard, the term “red tape” did not originate with Civil War veterans.
Historians point out that red tape was used to bind official documents in England and other parts of Europe for centuries. However, the story of veterans who fought to preserve the union being unable to access their war records and finding them bound in red tape still resonates for veterans and their families who are, to this country’s great shame, mistreated after their service has ended.
In the wake of the latest Veteran’s Affairs scandal, CNN put together a timeline of all the scandals that have rocked the agency and presidents on both sides of the aisle since the federal government created the Veterans Bureau in 1921. It lists about 30, surely just the highlights, and includes World War I veterans who never received their war bonuses, the shoddy care veterans received at VA hospitals in 1945, the VA’s failure to appropriately deal with the sicknesses caused by the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, and the backlog of vets waiting for care in 1991, 2003 and this year.
This year’s scandal erupted when it was reported that 19 veterans died in 2010 and 2011 because of delays in treatment and that officials were falsifying records to make it seem like VA clinics had shorter wait times. Officials are currently investigating 69 medical facilities across the nation for wrongdoing.
The study also reported that 57,000 veterans have waited more than 90 days for their first VA appointment and 64,000 never got an appointment after enrolling. Outrage and scandal seem like small words to describe the magnitude of this disaster.
If there is any bright spot to this it’s that the mess seems to have galvanized a usually gridlocked Congress to act. Both the House and the Senate have passed bills that authorize veterans to seek outside care if their local VA is backlogged or if they don’t live near a VA clinic. Both bills provide temporary solutions to the issue.
Will sending veterans to other doctors actually solve the issue or just put more strain on systems that are already overloaded?
Hopefully, everyone involved is doing their research and working towards an answer that does more than put a band-aid on a festering wound.
Our veterans deserve much more than a new and temporary law that may or may not work. They deserve a permanent solution to a problem that goes back decades.
And they deserve an apology.
