It wasn't a problem right up until it was.
I'm not the first to say this because I'm not the first to hear about it from veterans, but Americans wouldn't have to be getting a crash course on governmental care for service members and veterans, particularly for those with disabilities, if that care had been provided all along.
I started writing about problems in the system six months ago, which makes me a rank newcomer on this subject. The problems go back years. We're just one newspaper, not based in the media capitals of New York and Washington. Although our Web site reaches a lot of nonlocal people, the VA has been content to ignore our questions up 'til now. So it took a series by The Washington Post to get people, including other journalists, off their feet. At least the problem is now the flavor of the week for journalists, and perhaps that will lead to real oversight by Congress and, in turn, the true care for service members and veterans that their country has promised them since Lincoln, if not since Washington.
I've got another story up today, focusing on some of the most recent information about problems with the VA's benefits system. I'm trying to follow up for Friday's paper with an article about possible solutions (some coming from the same people who testified about problems.)
Here's the thing about the suggestions so far: Not one of them is new. All of them have been suggested, in more or less the same form, by the Government Accountability Office, veterans service organizations and other advocates, including unaffiliated veterans themselves. Moreover, the VA, according to some of these same reports, has given some of these suggestions only lip service or, in the case of seeking more money from Congress, actually has been rebuffed for political reasons.
But now we get a chance to see what happens when ignorance is no longer an excuse.