More Than 260,000 Can't Get VA Health Care
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON - More than a quarter-million veterans considered to have higher incomes could not sign up for health care with the Veterans Affairs Department during the last fiscal year because of a cost-cutting move.

Those locked out — totaling 263,257 in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 — have no illnesses or injuries attributable to their service in the military and earn more than the average wage in their community.

The VA suspended enrollment of such veterans beginning in January 2003 after then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi said the agency was struggling to provide adequate health care to the rapidly rising number of veterans seeking it.

That year the VA population was about 6.8 million. About 7.5 million are enrolled today, with more than 5 million treated.

"There is no reason for the VA to give the cold shoulder to veterans who have served our country honorably," said Rep. Lane Evans (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois, ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

VA spokesman Matt Burns said VA provides world-class health care to veterans, "particularly our newly returning veterans, those with low incomes and those who have sustained service-related injuries or illnesses."

Iraq veterans are guaranteed health care if they enroll within two years of leaving the military.

Under the Bush administration, there has been debate about providing veterans health care. President Bush's budgets have included proposals to require some veterans to pay a portion of their care with co-payments, but Congress has repeatedly rejected that idea.

Although Congress has increased VA's budget in recent years, the agency found itself with a gaping budget hole last year and had to ask Congress for emergency funding. Veterans groups and some lawmakers say the agency's increases have been inadequate, but others say the agency has to set priorities on who gets care.

"Our first priority is to care for veterans who were hurt or disabled in service and who need our help. We are doing that," said Jeff Phillips, communications director for Rep. Steve Buyer (news, bio, voting record), R-Ind., and House VA Committee chairman.

When it suspended enrollments, VA estimated that about 522,000 veterans would not enroll for health care because of the suspension through September 2005, saving the agency about $780 million. Numbers for fiscal year 2004 were not immediately available.

In 1996 Congress ordered the agency to open health care to nearly all veterans. However, lawmakers also gave authority to the VA secretary to suspend enrollments as needed.

VA calculated the fiscal year 2005 total by counting veterans whose applications to enroll were rejected because they fell into the so-called "Priority 8" category. The number includes veterans in all states as well as Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and 793 veterans listed as other or unknown territory.

Evans' office said the number of such veterans who have not been able to sign up for health care could be higher because some may not bother to apply knowing they do not qualify.

Congress provided about $23.3 billion for VA medical services for this fiscal year, above Bush's request, with about $1.2 billion set aside for when VA declares the money is needed for an emergency.

According to the numbers provided by Evans, Florida had the highest number of veterans rejected, 27,465, followed by Texas with 19,204, California with 17,378 and Pennsylvania with 13,262.

Part 2. Yes, both of these stories surfaced the exact same day, mere hours apart. Apparently, Cons think the best (only?) way to Support Our Troops is to put a ribbon-shaped sticker on their SUV and go on their merry way.


Study: Army Stretched to Breaking Point
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer


WASHINGTON - Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.

Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump — missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 — and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.

"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview. He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 136-page report represents a more sobering picture of the Army's condition than military officials offer in public. While not released publicly, a copy of the report was provided in response to an Associated Press inquiry.

Illustrating his level of concern about strain on the Army, Krepinevich titled one of his report's chapters, "The Thin Green Line."

He wrote that the Army is "in a race against time" to adjust to the demands of war "or risk `breaking' the force in the form of a catastrophic decline" in recruitment and re-enlistment.

Col. Lewis Boone, spokesman for Army Forces Command, which is responsible for providing troops to war commanders, said it would be "a very extreme characterization" to call the Army broken. He said his organization has been able to fulfill every request for troops that it has received from field commanders.

The Krepinevich assessment is the latest in the debate over whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have worn out the Army, how the strains can be eased and whether the U.S. military is too burdened to defeat other threats.

Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam veteran, created a political storm last fall when he called for an early exit from Iraq, arguing that the Army was "broken, worn out" and fueling the insurgency by its mere presence. Administration officials have hotly contested that view.

George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, agrees the Army is stretched thin.

"Whether they're broken or not, I think I would say if we don't change the way we're doing business, they're in danger of being fractured and broken, and I would agree with that," Joulwan told CNN last month.

Krepinevich did not conclude that U.S. forces should quit Iraq now, but said it may be possible to reduce troop levels below 100,000 by the end of the year. There now are about 136,000, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

For an Army of about 500,000 soldiers — not counting the thousands of National Guard and Reserve soldiers now on active duty — the commitment of 100,000 or so to Iraq might not seem an excessive burden. But because the war has lasted longer than expected, the Army has had to regularly rotate fresh units in while maintaining its normal training efforts and reorganizing the force from top to bottom.

Krepinevich's analysis, while consistent with the conclusions of some outside the Bush administration, is in stark contrast with the public statements of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior Army officials.

Army Secretary Francis Harvey, for example, opened a Pentagon news conference last week by denying the Army was in trouble. "Today's Army is the most capable, best-trained, best-equipped and most experienced force our nation has fielded in well over a decade," he said, adding that recruiting has picked up.

Rumsfeld has argued that the experience of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has made the Army stronger, not weaker.

"The Army is probably as strong and capable as it ever has been in the history of this country," he said in an appearance at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Dec. 5. "They are more experienced, more capable, better equipped than ever before."

Krepinevich said in the interview that he understands why Pentagon officials do not state publicly that they are being forced to reduce troop levels in Iraq because of stress on the Army. "That gives too much encouragement to the enemy," he said, even if a number of signs, such as a recruiting slump, point in that direction.

Krepinevich is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit policy research institute.

He said he concluded that even Army leaders are not sure how much longer they can keep up the unusually high pace of combat tours in Iraq before they trigger an institutional crisis. Some major Army divisions are serving their second yearlong tours in Iraq, and some smaller units have served three times.

Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the private Brookings Institution, said in a recent interview that "it's a judgment call" whether the risk of breaking the Army is great enough to warrant expanding its size.

"I say yes. But it's a judgment call, because so far the Army isn't broken," O'Hanlon said.