The Veteran Affair: Transitioning Veterans

Veterans face many challenges when transitioning from the service. Those that have served shift from a fairly structured and ridged way of life to the less structured and more chaotic civilian life. Many veterans, especially those that have been in combat or have had to personally deal with catastrophic situations, have a very hard time adjusting and often require significant levels of assistance. Sadly many veterans fail to get help, either because they do not wish to appear weak or they are simply turned away.

PROBLEM: Veterans being let go from service without appropriate long tern help. Leaves unthinkable large numbers of Veterans helpless without knowledge on how to fit back in to the world they left behind, so they become homeless. This problem is out of control.

State and federal legislators both need to make it a priority to be involved in the welfare of veterans. The issues will never get better unless the individuals in charge of the laws, regulations, funding and departments step up to the challenges. That alone will not even be enough. These issues need to be addressed on a state level as well. Housing projects and professional training need to be made more widely available. Understanding the importance of both changes made at a state and federal level for the living conditions and health status of American veterans is the first step. The next step is that it must be acted on and improved. The United States of America owes that much to its

A struggle for veterans was finding employment after completing the service so many veterans had problems with conforming to civilian from transitioning out the military. The unemployment rate for all U.S. veterans was 6.9 percent←;→ however, for those who had served since September 11 it rest at 10 percent. 13 percent of the veterans in the U.S. population were homeless, another 1.4 million veterans were at the endangered of homelessness. The source for vets that unfortunately discovery themselves in this position of being homeless lack of employment, poverty, housing shortages, low wages with adding drug abuse, alcohol, physical mental illness these problems can leave a veteran out in the streets (Hoffer, Elizabeth. F., Dekle, Judith. Ward., & Sheets, Carol., 2014).

In today's society where opinion matters, people have been extremely vocal about the lack of support the government has provided to our veterans. Many feel as if the government should do more, while others feel as if they are doing enough. Everyone will have a difference of opinion no matter if they have severed in the military or not. No matter how one may feel, is extremely important to take care of our veterans. As they have sacrificed their lives, time, and family to protect our country. Contrary to one's belief, the government provides a substantial amount of programs, which support the veterans. Honestly more could be done. On any given day you could see women and men standing on the corner holding signs implying they are homeless veterans and will work for food. A few programs the government offers our veterans are funding for mental health services, The Wounded Warrior Project and Vocational Rehabilitation and Education, which will be discussed throughout this essay. When you research the programs, they make it sound as if all proceeds are going towards the best treatment and care money could buy.

When I first started to research about how the American society helps discharged soldiers, I first wanted to know what type of help society offer to them. The article “10 Organizations that Help Veterans Transition to Civilian Life” published by Vista College helped me view a plethora of organizations that offer help to veterans. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) organization helps “connect veterans to one another and educate them on,” issues and benefits they could get when transitioning

The issue of veterans’ health care has dominated public discourse for many years, with various statistics

The main research questions in this study are: 1) is veteran healthcare equal to private healthcare; 2) do veterans have to wait longer for treatment options; and 3) do veterans have limited treatment options? It is hypothesized that veterans receive inferior healthcare services compared to private healthcare and the community is unaware of the disparities.

The Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) has been tasked with providing support and benefits to Veterans after they have completed their service. However, many Veterans are reporting difficulty accessing care due to systematic barriers within the VA’s Veterans Health Administration (Oliver, 2007). Complex eligibility requirements, long wait lists and lack of providers are a few of the issues Veterans are faced with when trying to access health and mental health care. Additionally, studies indicate that veterans, predominantly those from the recent wars in Iran and Iraq, have disproportionately high amounts of mental illness (Shim & Rust, 2013). These same veterans are experiencing difficulty accessing mental health care due to issues around a backlog of healthcare eligibility applications and a shortage of mental health providers through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which operates the Nation’s largest, integrated health care delivery system (APA, 2014). In 2014, at the request of the Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) evaluated the merit of the allegations of mismanagement at the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) and the Health Eligibility Center (HEC).

Over the past 15 years, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has seen a dramatic increase in the average degree of disability, growth in the number of compensation recipients, a rise in the number of medical issues claimed and an increased level of complexity of claimed issues. To illustrate this point, prior to the September 2011 terrorist attacks, 333,700 Veterans received compensation at the 70-100 percent level; however, these figures rose to over 1.1 million by the end of 2013. Additionally, since 2009, VA’s disability compensation workload rose 132 percent. This is in large part due to an unprecedented demand resulting from over a decade of war, military downsizing, economic issues, increased outreach, the addition of presumptive conditions and an aging Veteran population.

Current funding for veteran healthcare care is low and insufficient because of the large number of veterans, who are being discharged from the military as the country transitions to a democratic President. According to Dr. Rachel Nardin in her article about veteran healthcare, “Soldiers get excellent acute care when injured on active duty, but as revelations of poor conditions for soldiers receiving ongoing outpatient care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center highlighted, service members often have trouble getting the care they need once active duty ends” (Nardin 1)

No more veterans should be compelled to agonize or perish while the government fails to perform its obligations. [...] There comes a time when the political branches have so completely and chronically failed to respect the peoples constitutional rights that the courts must be willing to enforce them. We have reached that unfortunate point with respect to veterans who are suffering from the hidden, or not hidden, wounds of war. (Williams 1)

Some problems I discovered while doing my research are that many Veterans don't receive proper medical care and it is often hard for them to find. They are not automatically enrolled in Va benefits when they return home and have to apply for them. Those that have access to benefits often find themselves on waiting lists to receive benefits.

Contrary to the perception that our nation’s veterans are well supported in fact many go without the services they require of which they are

In the book “Military Mental Health Care” it mainly talks about how the government is helping veterans who are struggling with multiple different problems such as from stress to homelessness. In the book, it talks about the number of homeless veterans in America and discussing on why a veteran might become homeless. For example, there are more than half million veterans that are spending a lot of money towards living expensive and cannot afford anything else. Therefore the V.A (Veteran Affairs) decided in 2011 that they are going to try to end this issue of veterans becoming homeless by spending millions of dollars on programs to help these veterans from job training to financial assistance. Therefore veterans don’t end up on the streets.