VA Rejects Proposal For Southeastern Ohio Facility
After Rep. Zack Space and Senator Sherrod Brown held their joint House-Senate VA field hearing earlier this year they reccomended that the VA look into building a Veteran’s Hospital here in Southeastern Ohio. The VA recently rejected this proposal.
“This study is an injustice, and it misses the point. The VA in Washington should send representatives to our region to hear what I hear time and time again from veterans as I travel my district. Veterans are fed up with the distances they must travel to receive care. Many of our nation’s heroes elect to go without services simply because they cannot afford the price or time it takes to travel to a VA facility. That’s unacceptable.
“There is simply too much evidence to the contrary for me to accept the VA findings. I will continue to fight to ensure that our veterans receive the services their sacrifice deserves.”
– Rep. Zack Space
I agree with Space, this is completely unacceptable. Veterans living in my county have to travel all the way to Pittsburgh for treatment. That’s around a two hour drive (one way) from where I am. I know the county actually runs a bus to the VA hospital a couple time a month but those who ride it are forced to wait for every person on the bus to be cared for, a process that takes several more hours in addition to the four hours of travel time. It’s obviously a full day.
Hopefully the VA will reconsider this poorly thought out decision and grant Southeastern Ohio vets the healthcare they were promised, because right now they aren’t getting it.
December 29th, 2007 at 11:27 am
David;
Why not look beyond the emotion and the politics. Does the cost of building a hospital really justify the small number of former military in the area? No it doesn’t and that’s the nature of bureaucracy.
I ‘m a veteran of 20 years and I sure would like something a little closer than Chillicothe or Charleston, but that way it works.
But why not look outside the box? Why not look for another solution other than the typical bureaucratic solution? How about an account like the TRICARE program retirees have? There are alternatives to building, staffing, and resourcing a brand new hospital, which is going to take the government over 7 to 10 years to build just to demonstrate how patriotic or concerned we are for the “troops.”
We have to start looking beyond the failing track republicans and democrats have been following for years. We have to have fresh ideas that meet the unwritten obligations we have for our military yet reducing the mounting tax and bureaucratic burden our political class is placing on our backs and the backs of at least two future generations. We have to stop feeding the leviathan.
December 31st, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I agree that the VA healthcare system is seriously flawed right now (you’d know more about that than I would). I even agree that building a new hospital might not be the best solution, but I also think it was the solution that was most likely to happen. Now that it’s been rejected I think looking at alternative solutions would be a logical next step in the process.