Gates: Improvements to VA care ‘uneven’

[unhappycamper]

Gates: Improvements to VA care ‘uneven’
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, April 16, 2008

ARLINGTON, Va. — Improvements to the veteran’s health care system aren’t always making it from policy writers’ pens to the clinics and hospitals where they’re needed, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

“My impression is, it’s still uneven, in terms of implementation at the local level,” Gates told Pentagon reporters after a lunch meeting with Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake and other military health care officials.

Gates said the Pentagon and the VA are working to adopt 400 recommendations collected from numerous task forces and study groups that will streamline and simplify the veteran’s health care system.

But “it’s one thing to get the procedures and the policies fixed here in Washington,” Gates said. “It’s another thing to get it implemented right down to the local level, so that the individual soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is seeing the impact of this on the ground.”

Todd Bowers, director of government affairs for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a group which champions better health-care coordination between the Pentagon and the VA, agrees with Gates.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54083

[leftofcool]

1. Uneven my ass!

We have never taken care of our soldiers properly, EVER! So don't give us your bullshit about task forces and recommendations!