I was out and about today and I got some very disturbing information on the condition of our veterans community. This came in the context of conversations about overall problems with electric bills, heating bills, and fuel & food costs for our fixed income and lower income residents in the area.
If I had to summarize it in one paragraph it would be this: Sixty to eighty veteran households in just one county will have their power cut on April 1 when the over winter ban on shutting off utilities ends. Thirty to sixty of those households are skipping meals, cutting back, or completely cutting out medications in order to pay heating bills. And this is after the county assistance available to them has been applied to its fullest.
I'm not going to name the county because some people here are political appointees, so we'll just say its somewhere in northwest Iowa.
The area has about four thousand households total and spans about four hundred square miles. There are three to four hundred households on some sort of energy assistance and among them are sixty to eighty veterans.
The nearest veteran's clinic is half an hour away and the nearest hospital is two hours. There are funds to reimburse volunteer drivers, at least in the county in question, so access isn't a problem ... but veteran's wives are not covered. There are many men here who served this country sitting home alone at night missing a spouse of forty or more years who would not have died had she had the same access to health care her husband did.
The energy prices this year have meant that instead of a $200 delinquency that a fixed income person can somehow work around they're facing $800 to $1,200 bills. The underpaid workers here game the system - renting a while in Iowa, then skipping across the line to Minnesota so they have a different power company, then returning a year later, all the while holding the same job. Elderly folks can't do this and it's just flat offensive that men who fought for us in Europe, the Pacific, and Korea would find themselves facing a choice like this.
The rural renters have it the worst. Old, leaky houses, no incentive for the landlord to fix them up, propane has gone sky high, and if you order less than a full tank there is a $40 surcharge from the propane dealer. That isn't at all unfair when they're facing a drive of up to thirty miles in a big diesel truck to make the delivery.
The ones from the Korean conflict and before have an attitude about "going on relief". They'll starve themselves and skip medication before they admit they need help, which often leads to manageable conditions getting completely out of control due to malnutrition and lack of a stable medication regimen. Things are so bad now they're coming in to sign up ... but the funds are exhausted due to the sky high prices this year.
Things can get even more grim for those who don't have the free health care. I am told one veteran's wife with a chronic condition requiring regular monitoring recently skipped an appointment at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. The visit was covered, but they had not the money for gas to get there and back, and the volunteer drivers only cover the veterans' transport needs.
This is outside my area of expertise but I was just amazed to hear 10% of houses near me could be without power in ten days and that two platoons worth of veterans will end up shivering in the dark if something isn't done. We've got thirty billion to bail out the Bear Stearns gamblers but the cupboard is bare when a man with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star needs sixty dollars so he can drive his wife to see her heart specialist.