Veterans Swell Ranks Of U.S. Uninsured

The number of U.S. veterans without health insurance has soared to almost 1.8 million—nearly one quarter of all veterans in the Veterans Affairs (VA) system—since the year President Bush was elected, according to a new Harvard Medical School study.

A team of researchers from the Medical School said in a statement Tuesday that the number of veterans without access to health care has increased by 290,000 since 2000, reflecting cutbacks in employer-provided health insurance and Bush administration policies that restrict eligibility for Veteran Affairs (VA) services.

The data could pressure the government to allocate significantly more money to the Department of Veterans Affairs, experts said. Nearly 8 million veterans were enrolled in the VA health system in 2006.

“Until I started seeing uninsured veterans, I thought that veterans could always get care at the VA,” Steffie J. Woolhandler, a professor at the Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study, said yesterday.

But policies implemented in 2002 now limit access to veterans with service-related injuries or those who make less than $30,000 a year, according to the study.

And since veterans are largely working class, they have been particularly affected by recent reductions in employer-sponsored programs, Woolhandler said.

“Most veterans are too poor to afford private insurance, but according to the VA, too affluent for their coverage,” she added.

The study comes at a time when both the treatment of veterans and the plight of uninsured Americans are at the center of national political debates.

“It is absolutely outrageous that there are veterans in America who don’t have health insurance,” said Ashish Jha, a professor at the School of Public Health. “Frankly, I have been very surprised at how little political traction the issue of uninsured veterans has gotten, but maybe in a presidential election year, this study will have a larger effect.”

Woolhandler, who is also the co-founder of the advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program, said she sees the studies’ findings as bolstering the case for a universal health care program.

“Part of the government’s role is to protect and provide health care to its veterans and all its citizens,” she said. “And our government is failing in that regard.”

But Robert J. Blendon, another professor at the School of Public Health, said he thought that the issue of uninsured veterans was unlikely to spill over into the debate on universal health care.

“We’re not an hour from universal coverage,” he said. “But the study should be very powerful in directing pressure and funding to the VA to increase coverage.”