Health Care for Our Vets Is the Least We Can Do

Statement

When Michael Hill first walked into my office about three years ago, he was a desperate man, living in squalor, enduring the daily torment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. For more than 20 years, Michael had been at war with his own country --- a country he had proudly and honorably served in the United States Air Force. Fighting just to get the benefits and the care he so desperately needed.

Helping Michael finally get that care, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars in veterans' benefits he was entitled to, was one of the most rewarding experiences in my time as a congressman.

I wish I could say cases like his are rare.

In gathering this past Fourth of July weekend to enjoy the company of family and friends and to commemorate the founding of the United States of America as a nation based on principles of liberty and freedom, I couldn't help but feel outrage and great sadness that many of the men and women who protect that freedom are literally dying while waiting for government health care.

And hundreds of thousands of veterans like Michael Hill are falling through bureaucratic cracks, suffering from the physical and mental wounds of war, with no help on the horizon.

A recent U.S. Senate report found that more than 1,000 veterans may have died in the last decade because of negligence from Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. A scathing internal review of the VA by the White House goes even further, concluding that a "corrosive culture has led to personnel problems across the Department that are seriously impacting morale and by extension, the timeliness of health care," and found the agency has "a lack of accountability across all grade levels."

As headline after headline have revealed, hundreds of thousands of aging and recently returned veterans have been waiting months to see a doctor, all while government bureaucrats shamefully hid the truth and threatened those who tried to speak out with retaliation. We now know that over 120,000 veterans nationwide have yet to receive any medical help at all and tens of thousands of sick and suffering veterans have waited over a month for an appointment, while senior VA officials patted themselves on the backs and dished out plum bonuses.

If you ever need proof that the size of our bloated government has gotten dangerously out of hand, look no further than the VA's disturbing mismanagement. I was proud to join Democrats and Republicans in the House and pass two bipartisan bills aimed at reforming this broken agency and getting our veterans the care they need.

And, yet, I also cannot help but see the terrible irony in contrasting the paltry care our veterans have received with the extraordinary amount of resources this administration has utilized to provide government services to those who are not even citizens of this country. Just last week, President Obama even vowed to bypass Congress so he could provide even more taxpayer dollars to help people who cross our borders illegally.

Each year, in fact, our government spends about $100 billion taxpayer dollars to benefit immigrants who are here illegally, according to a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). That amount includes billions in Medicaid uncompensated health care, housing, food, education and legal counsel.

Veteran Michael Hill could not even get the country he served to pay for a doctor's visit. But here in New York City, our Mayor and City Council will spend millions to provide illegal immigrants with municipal identification cards so they can access government services and discounts from private businesses.

Like many others, I sympathize with the plight of immigrants who are seeking a better life in this country, especially the innocent children who obviously do not come here by choice.

But what about those who put their lives on the line to protect the very way of life these migrants are seeking? Don't we have a national interest --- if not a moral obligation --- to provide for them first?

With national pride fresh in our hearts from last weekend's Independence Day celebrations, it would be appropriate to listen to the wisdom of perhaps the greatest of our Founding Fathers, George Washington, who said, "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation."

To put it plainly --- the way we treat our veterans not only reflects our core values as a country, it is absolutely critical to our welfare and our national security. How many young men and women have been watching the VA scandal unfold and are deciding not to enlist in the armed forces? How can we recruit the best and the brightest to protect this great nation when it has become evident that we can't even guarantee our returning soldiers basic medical care?

As the Staten Island Advance rightfully pointed out in a May 20 editorial on the VA scandal, "Like their counterparts across the nation, veterans on Staten Island deserve better."

As one of those Staten Island veterans, I could not agree more.

I just hope our President sees it that way.

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