1.8 Million Veterans Said to Be Uninsured
Stephanie Woolhandler, a Harvard Medical School professor, testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs yesterday. She presented the results from a study she recently conducted that found 1.8 million Veterans are uninsured.
That number is up 290,000 from 2000.
Republicans on the committee were hesitant to fully trust her findings. Woolhander, in the past, has been a strong advocate for a universal health care system which they feel might bias the results of her study.
Representative Cliff Stearns (R-Fla) expressed his concerns, “The difficulty would be that because of your desire for universal health care, that could influence how you felt about veterans.” Woolhandler defended the results ensuring the accuracy of the data.
About half of the 1.8 million uninsured are classified as Priority 8, veterans who don’t have a service-connected disability and earnings above 80% of median income in their area.
The hearing was focused on whether VA Hospitals should open their doors to these veterans. Doing so would dramatically increase the VA’s costs, although estimates range widely from $366 million to $3.3 billion annually.
There are also concerns that adding the Priority 8 veterans would make it more difficult for the veterans with service-related injuries and health problems to get the care they need.
The two sides of debate are exemplified by the quotes from Representatives Steve Buyer (R-Ind) and Bob Filner (D-Calif). Buyer feels the VA should focus on its core constituency: “Some say the government is obliged to provide essentially free health care for life to anyone who served a year or two, I intend to protect the core constituency first.”
Filner holds the opposing opinion: “All veterans should have access to their health care system. This is a rationing health care to veterans, those who have served our nation. And I think it’s unacceptable for a nation of our wealth and our ability.”
chetthevet
December 16th, 2007 at 2:23 amThis is not good. I think there needs to be some major reform in VA benefits. I think that the gov. seriously needs to look at extending health benefits for non-service connected disabled vets. For heaven sakes I just saw a video on http://www.vareficenter.com about a vet that is 104 years old! one of the fastest growing portions of the veteran population is the retired age portion. Take my dad for instance. he is a WW2 vet. he is 80 years old and does not have any health insurance. like my dad many of thse individuals do not have health insurance. We have to do something about this. What can be done?
Nicole Neroulias
February 21st, 2008 at 1:18 pmRep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) talked about the problem of uninsured Priority 8 veterans at a press conference today. I blogged about it at http://veterans.lohudblogs.com.