Snowe, Collins urge better funding for veterans’ hospital

WASHINGTON – New England lawmakers, including both Maine senators, met with Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi on Tuesday to seek additional funding for veterans’ health facilities throughout the region.

Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins said they were especially concerned with the Veterans Affairs Medical and Regional Office Center at Togus, which has been buckling under new demands from growing numbers of veterans who are signing up for health care.

“The fact is, the VA is not funding VA hospitals and clinics in New England at a level sufficient to sustain operations,” Snowe said.

She said VA hospitals in New England face a $40 million budgeting shortfall and a backlog of more than 1,000 veterans seeking medical appointments.

The surge in requested services has resulted in long delays for many seeking nonemergency services at Togus, according to Jim Simpson, spokesman for the center.

“We are seeing more growth than we have ever seen,” he said. Simpson added that 500 to 700 more veterans visit the center each month than two years ago and that this year’s total number of patients could top 30,000 at the 67-bed hospital and 100-bed nursing home.

“I don’t have any final numbers this year, but Togus is challenged,” he concluded.

Togus is not alone, however. The same is true for the 163 VA hospitals and 859 community outpatient clinics around the country, according to VA spokeswoman Kerri Childress in Washington. “Our enrollment has doubled since 1995 from 2.9 million enrolled vets to 6.1 million last year,” she said.

The veteran population is older as well and that adds further to the cost of health care. While only 18 percent of the general U.S. population is over age 65, more than one-third of all vets are 65 or older. One of the most popular services at VA centers, including Togus, is the low-cost program for prescription drugs.

Throughout the New England region the number of patients grew from 180,000 in 1999 to 279,000 by 2001. “There’s been a huge influx,” Childress said.

Credit for much of that growth goes to the numbers of higher-income vets with illnesses unrelated to their time of service. Classified as “Category 7” Veterans, the number of these patients in New England grew from 35,000 in 1999 to almost 90,000 last year.

After discussing the situation with the New England senators, Principi agreed that the region is home to a disproportionate number of older veterans with more serious medical conditions and a higher-than-normal number of non-service connected, “Category 7” veterans, according to Snowe spokesman Dave Lackey.

Snowe and Collins also complained that VA funding formulas overlook New England’s special circumstances, something that leaves them to push annually for increased funding for Maine’s VA hospital operations.

“Ongoing budget problems at Togus and at veterans’ facilities throughout New England are affecting the care available to our veterans,” Collins said. “Problems such as staffing shortages and unreasonable waiting times for appointments need to be addressed and fixed. It’s not fair for Maine veterans who were promised a certain level of care to continually have that care threatened due to problems with the VA’s funding allocation method.”

All veterans’ health centers in the country are divided into 22 regional networks known as Veterans Integrated Service Networks. Funding distributions are made to each network.

Togus officials find themselves routinely asking for more money than budgeted by the network and have had to seek supplemental budget requests for the last three years.

Last year, 16 VISNs faced operating deficits, suggesting that the distribution system has problems that are not restricted to Maine or to New England.

In his proposed budget for next year, President Bush called for an 8.2 percent hike in spending on VA healthcare programs. The proposed $2.7 billion hike over this year would boost spending to $25.5 billion.