Debt to America's troops isn't being paid

[Doondoo]

The Bush administration is failing to give many of the 50,000 soldiers hurt in combat, injured in accidents or ill from service in Iraq and Afghanistan the care they need and deserve. It began as a failure of foresight that, but because it has been inadequately remedied, it has become a moral failure.

.......

Congress has begun paying attention to the plight of returning soldiers, and it's moving to prop up the VA's budget. Over the long haul, a cane might not do the trick. Earlier this year, a Harvard University public finance professor estimated that the lifetime health care costs of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone could be between $300 billion and $600 billion.

The Bush administration, however, is taking the wrong approach to defraying that cost. The president's budget, for example, calls for charging veterans $250 per year to access government health care. It doubles their co-payment for prescription drugs and reduces the number of beds in veterans' nursing homes. It allots too little for adequate health care now, let alone enough to meet the needs of veterans of past wars and those who will return from their deployments in coming years.

On the stump, presidents and politicians are happy to sing the praises of soldiers and thank them for their sacrifices. But the real test of how a nation treats those who defend it lies in the care veterans receive when they are in need.




http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070221/REPOSITORY/702210314

[peacetalksforall]

1. If the solid core of the right wing is 27-37 % of us - I hope the

rest of us never stop caring for and acting on behalf of these young people.