"Evict them"
The Bush administration was unprepared to meet the needs of military veterans returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One scheme they've come up with to make up the cost of health care and other services for this new cadre of U.S. veterans is to shortchange some of this country's most vulnerable older veterans.
Sweeping new eligibility standards proposed by the Department of Veterans Affairs would cut federal funding to thousands of old soldiers now living in state veterans homes.
A roughly 50-50 state-federal match now funds housing and care in these homes, which are essentially long-term nursing care facilities. The Bush administration proposes paying its share of the support only for veterans injured or disabled while on active duty, those with severe disabilities, those in need of care after a hospital stay and those requiring hospice or respite care.
Those standards would render 85 percent -- 85 percent! -- of the veterans in Washington's three veterans homes ineligible to stay there, according to Alfie Alvarado, assistant director of the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs. At that rate, she says, the state's veterans homes would "not be able to operate."
The federal government proposes that these old, predominantly medically indigent vets move to non-veterans facilities or obtain home care -- as if they had homes -- unless the states will pick up all the costs of caring for them.
From the Seattle PI. Go visit. They have a poll up. "Does the federal government have an obligation to care for aged American military veterans?"