Togus hearing

Another hearing on problems at Togus and another promise of another review on the shortcomings of medical care for veterans. The congressional hearings last week on the subject were depressingly familiar, with no particular improvements in sight.

By now, most vets know the score: The Togus Veterans Hospital is part of Veterans Administration regional network that is flat-funded and so is falling behind in real terms even as more Maine veterans need more care and more expensive care. The result, according to testimony Friday before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, is a hospital of overworked doctors, unfilled positions, an inadequate referral system for care and patients who are not receiving the attention they need and deserve.

This is not a temporary situation. Not only have these shortcomings been around for years, but Togus will continue to be caught in the shifts toward managed care and outpatient services as the nation’s health-care system shakes itself out over the next decade. This isn’t to suggest that vets are merely undergoing what everyone else is experiencing: Veterans are older than the general population and they are sicker, many with illnesses sustained in service to their country. The average vet seeking care at Togus have five identifiable illnesses. Match that up with a VA trying to limit health-care costs and the result is obvious.

So it was no surprise to hear tragic testimony last week about a veteran who, because of bureaucratic foul-up, did not get a cancer diagnosis until it was too late to do anything about it. Or the veteran who suffered for months and months while waiting to get basic dental care. (The wait for dentures, for those vets who qualify for them, is 14 months.) Or the countless patients who never get answers to their health questions because, after a long wait for a checkup, they are rushed through the exam so the doctor can keep to a near-impossible schedule.

House committee members are expected to review the testimony submitted last week to help form some sort of recommendation. The VA inspector general is due to visit Togus next month. More review, perhaps another study and then hearings over whether anything has been done. It’s frustrating.

The VA could make a rough accounting this week of whether Togus receives its proper share of funding within its regional network. It could expand immediately the ability of veterans to receive services closer to home, paying for their care at local hospitals when appropriate. It could declare that veterans health services are always going to cost more than the national average and that Congress must fund them that way.

Sen. Olympia Snowe once referred to Togus as “the heart which provides the lifeblood for veterans throughout Maine.” For veterans who may have provided their own blood for their country, a fully staffed and operating medical center at Togus is the least the nation can do.