An injured vet’s worth
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Now we're onto something. A special panel probing the problems with health care and benefits for injured veterans has recommended an immediate 25 percent boost in disability payments to compensate them for their lost "quality of life."Hallelujah. It's time to admit that the wounds physical and mental veterans incur as they protect us and defend our freedoms cause irreparable harm to them and their families. They live on, but with scars they can never fully discard.
A 544-page report from this congressional committee finally recognizes that lifelong loss. Panel members call on Congress to immediately start rectifying the inadequate disability pay, urging a 25 percent interim boost. That would become the baseline compensation as the government develops new benefit measures that "take into account the quality of life and other non-work related effects of severe disabilities on veterans and family members."
The Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission found what has become painfully obvious. The Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department have failed miserably in providing adequate mental health care as well as timely and fair disability payments. The Observer has documented the problems in the Carolinas over the last year.
Yet it took the military man who led the panel to broach the shameful politics that many believe causes some of the problems. In an interview with The Associated Press, retired Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott, the commission chairman, said the problem is political penny-pinching. He believes the Army tries to lowball veterans' disability ratings to avoid paying more benefits.
Pentagon policy, he said, calls for consideration of only one disability when determining benefits. The VA considers all the disabilities a military person has in determining benefits. That's as it should be. The commission recommends shifting responsibility for assigning benefits from the Pentagon to the VA, for that reason.
The commission made 113 recommendations in a report released Wednesday. Among them: More coordination between agencies to provide needed services and treatment of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder; mandatory reexaminations for post-traumatic stress disorder to gauge treatment and other issues every two to three years; benefits for veterans for any service-related injury, regardless of whether it was combat-related; better use of technology to reduce backlogs and delays of disability benefits.
Of the recommendations, Lt. Gen. Scott said some are "cheap, some are easy, and some are extremely hard and complex. But what we're hoping is that the Congress carefully looks at all 113."
They must do more than look. They must act, starting with the immediate boost to disability pay. Our wounded warriors deserve no less.