Veterans' health care concerns at issue in Bedford hearing

BEDFORD — Lynn Tucker calmly testified before members of Congress on Monday that her son, Benjamin, is a disabled Marine struggling to receive the health care he deserves from the federal government.

But the lifelong Pittsylvania County resident didn’t have to travel to Washington, D.C. to reveal her thoughts — she steered to Bedford County instead.

At the request of Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, the health subcommittee of the U.S. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee held a congressional “field hearing” at the county’s administration building in downtown Bedford.

Perriello, who serves on the subcommittee, said he and subcommittee chairman Michael Michaud, D-Maine, both serve rural areas with “high degrees of patriotism through our armed forces.”

He said he wanted to bring the hearing to Bedford because “no community has given more” in military sacrifice, as portrayed in the city’s National D-Day Memorial.

The subcommittee also wanted feedback from several panels of speakers on assessing health needs of veterans in rural areas.

Perriello said he advocates getting “more health care to the veteran instead of just the veteran to the health care.”

Monday’s hearing, he said, is an extension of that.

“We want to get out in the field to make sure that we’re making it as easy as possible to bring the committee’s processing to veterans,” rather than them coming to Washington, Perriello said.

“The bottom line for me, as a member of Congress,” Michaud said during Monday’s hearing, “is to make sure veterans get the health care they need when they need it.”

Tucker, of Museville, said her son, Ben, served 22 months before a dirt bike accident left him 100 percent disabled with a brain injury.

Tucker said lack of access to primary and specialty care and issues in communication and payment processes in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are “limiting medical choices, causing travel hardships and contributing to an overall breakdown in the quality of care and life.”

She said she has spent “countless hours” dealing with issues through the VA that she would have rather dedicated to her son. They live more than an hour from the Salem VA facility and three hours from the Richmond VA, where he goes for care.

“As a taxpayer and citizen,” Tucker testified, “it is striking how we take for granted the lives of those who voluntarily put theirs on the line.”

Tucker, who serves on an advisory committee to Perriello, said after the meeting that she was testifying on behalf of all rural veterans like her son.

“Their problems are my problems — getting good care,” she said. “Anything I can do on behalf of veterans, I’m willing to do it.”

Daniel Bowyer, a past state commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, testified it could be frustrating for military men and women in rural areas to travel so far for appointments.

“There is clearly a need for the VA to open more clinics in rural areas,” Bowyer said in a statement to the subcommittee.

Bowyer also said suicide among veterans is a national priority, especially in rural communities that often have limited health care access.

Carroll Thackston, mayor of South Boston, said the town is seeking a designation under a VA pilot program that provides health care through contractual arrangements with outside providers. There were 1,127 veterans in Halifax County enrolled in the VA system at the end of 2008-09 fiscal year, Thackston testified.

“We want to ensure that our growing population of veterans that are returning from current tours of active duty are assimilated back into their home communities with the assurance that convenient, quality VA medical care is there for them,” Thackston said.

The pilot program has not yet started operating, according to a statement given by Patricia Vandenberg, assistant deputy undersecretary for health in the VA.

Perriello said he, Michaud and two members of the committee’s legal counsel traveled together to Afghanistan to observe the security situation and to look at how to create a “more seamless transition” for the injured troops, from bases to holding hospitals to the VA system.

“Far too many are lost within those seams,” he said.

The committee is seeing “a complexity of physical and emotional issues” once soldiers come home, he said.

“The unemployment level for our returning veterans, right now, is astronomical,” Perriello said, adding some have put it at or above 20 percent. “We know the strain these extended deployments can put on our military families … we’re seeing various hurdles to veterans getting employment when they should be first in line.”

There is an “unbelievable unity” among veterans to make sure the government is doing all it can to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Perriello said.

“I’m not at all hesitant to use the power I have on the committee to make sure veterans are being take care of,” he said. “That’s my job.”