President Bush calls for change in the Military Disablility System

President Bush's Reform on the Military Disability System Nytimes.com


President Bush spoke about the changes that should be made on the Military Disability System on Tuesday, October 16. The President said that the system is old (it is an outdated system) and needs to change to meet the demand of the new world. He said that the military disability system had “fallen behind the times and had left too many disabled soldiers falling through the cracks”. The President said this because “Medical advances have enabled battlefield medics and hospitals to provide our wounded warriors with care that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago”.

This issue occurred to President Bush because the former Senator Bob Dole and former secretary of health and human services Donna Shalala recommended it. In addition to that the “commission that included disabled veterans and the wife of a disabled veteran, was appointed after articles in the Washington post exposed veterans living in shoddy conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center”.

Despite all of that, the proposal that the President sent to Congress was very reasonable. The proposal said that the Department of Veterans Affairs and Defense Department would have the authority to determine the levels of benefits and care that the injured soldiers received. President Bush also said that in his document that the agencies’ authorities would be separated and that “soldiers determined to be permanently disabled would move into the V.A. system, and receive care and compensation based on their loss of earnings and the impact of their injuries on their quality of life”. The President’s proposal also stated that “In an effort to remove the stigma from soldiers who might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, the president’s plan would allow all soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to seek evaluations for the disorder, without having to first prove they have cause for feeling stress”.

Furthermore, President Bush says that this issue is very urgent and needs to put into law. However, few weeks ago, some members of the Democrats and Republicans said that the President’s administration was “not fast enough to address the problems identified by the commission”. Paul Rieckhoff (executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) even said “we were frustrated that it took so long, but it’s good to see the President stand up and address it publicly and start to drive the train forward”.

Although, some people are saying that this proposal is taking so long to go into effect, but the President can’t do it all. Congress also has some saying in the matter.