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-------------------------
A Veterans Day Message
November 7, 2008
From VA Secretary Dr. James B. Peake
WASHINGTON -- Ninety years ago today, the guns fell silent in Europe.
World War I – the “war to end all wars” – was over. Almost five million
Americans served during that first modern, mechanized war. Our last living
link with them, 107-year-old Army veteran Frank Buckles, observes this
Veterans Day at his farm in West Virginia.
It is important, on Veterans Day, for all Americans to reflect on the
service and sacrifice of our veterans, from Mr. Buckles to the men and
women who recently fought for us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their bravery,
their resourcefulness, and their patriotism mark them as our nation’s
finest citizens.
Since 2001, the President and Congress have provided the Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA) with a 98 percent increase in funding, and with the
guidance and support to enable VA to honor America’s debt to the men and
women whose patriotic service and sacrifice have kept our nation free and
prosperous; to provide them
 with
medical and financial help when they need it most; and to build and
maintain beautiful national cemeteries to perpetuate their memory and
their accomplishments.
During this Administration, VA has met the challenge of a new generation
of veterans: those tempered by war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who
have defended America’s interests elsewhere while their comrades served in
combat.
The Benefits Delivery at Discharge program serves these separating service
members at 154 locations, assisting them to file for VA disability
benefits. To further help these men and women, a new insurance benefit is
in place to assist them with the costs of living with traumatic injury;
life insurance coverage has increased by $100,000; and the time it takes
to process requests for education benefits has been reduced from 50 days
to less than 20.
One hundred Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been hired to reach out to
their fellow veterans throughout the nation and tell them about the
benefits and services VA offers. Federal Recovery Coordinators are on
board, actively engaged in helping severely injured veterans and their
families navigate our system for health care and financial benefits. Our
Vet Centers now provide bereavement counseling to families of those who
have given their lives in the war against terror, and we’ve provided
health care to nearly 350,000 new veterans—about 40 percent of all
separated war veterans.
Our program to screen all veterans coming to us who served in Iraq and
Afghanistan for possible traumatic brain injury is giving us great insight
into how best to serve these men and women. Those who screen positive are
referred for a comprehensive medical evaluation to confirm the diagnosis,
and are quickly and appropriately treated. For those with very severe
injuries like brain injury, amputations, visual impairment and burns,
we’ve established Polytrauma Rehabilitation Centers in Richmond, Va,
Tampa, Fla., Minneapolis and Palo Alto, Calif., to provide the very
finest, state-of-the-art care. They are examples of great cooperation
across the continuum of care with the Department of Defense.
While caring for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has been among VA’s most
important priorities, we continue to provide the full spectrum of care and
benefits to our veterans of other eras. Since 2001, we’ve reduced our
average number of days required to completely process a claim from a high
of 233 days in 2002 to 162 days today and have reduced the number of
disability claims pending from 432,000 in 2002 to 384,500 through a
combination of process improvements, increased staffing and improved
training. We’ve placed particular emphasis on adjudicating claims for
veterans aged 70 or older. Our home loan guaranty limit has increased from
$203,000 to as much as $729,750, providing a better opportunity for
veterans who want to own a home. The programs to deal with the issue of
veteran homelessness have measurably paid off, reducing the number of
homeless veterans by nearly 40 percent from 2001 to 2007.
The number of veterans enrolled in VA health care has increased from 4.8
million to 7.8 million in the past eight years. Their care is provided by
the Veterans Health Administration, an organization that excels in the
provision of high quality health care, that has set benchmarks in patient
satisfaction in the American Customer Satisfaction Index for seven
consecutive years; that has substantially cut waiting times and improved
access to care throughout the nation; and that has set, and met, a
standard of 24 hours for initial assessment and a 14-day standard for
comprehensive assessment of new mental health patients, thanks to more
than 4,100 mental health professionals hired in the last five years.
VA leads the nation in the development and use of electronic health
records, receiving the coveted “Innovations Award” from Harvard
University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2006. We’ve laid the
groundwork for sharing electronic records with the Department of Defense,
launched a web-based application to allow patients and their families to
interact with VA physicians over the Internet, and worked hard to set the
“gold standard” for health information security to protect the vital
personal information veterans entrust to us.
Addressing readjustment needs and rural access, we have announced plans to
place at least one Vet Center in every county in which there are 50,000 or
more veterans. We are also purchasing fifty “mobile Vet Centers”—vans
which will travel to rural areas throughout the nation to bring Vet Center
services to veterans in rural and highly rural areas; we’re also in the
process of expanding our community-based outpatient clinics to a total of
782, an increase of 100 in five years.
Our National Shrine Program has uplifted the beauty of our cemeteries, and
by the end of 2009 six new national cemeteries will have opened for
burials, adding to the six cemeteries we have already opened since 2001.
I am proud of this great record of accomplishment, prouder still of the
approximately 270,000 men and women of VA who daily fulfill President
Lincoln’s promise to care for veterans and their families; and proudest to
have had the opportunity to serve men and women like Frank Buckles, whose
dedicated service to our nation in all its wars has enabled generations of
Americans to live their lives in freedom.
-------------------------
posted by Larry
Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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