The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is holding town hall meetings as part of a nationwide effort to hear from the public. It comes after months of bad press about some VA systems hiding the actual amount of time veterans are waiting for care.
The VA in Connecticut scheduled its town hall in Newington on a Friday night. Not many people turned up for the meeting.
Rose Lyons of Newington stood up to comment on the poor attendance. Lyons has two brothers who are veterans and who receive health care and benefits from the VA. She said they didn’t even know about it.
"This is not the first time I’ve been to a meeting that there’s more [VA] staff than participants," Lyons said. It’s not the first time I’ve called around asking the local VFW or local American Legion if they had any knowledge of the meeting that was going on. Living in Newington, being right next to the VA, I find it kind of strange there’s not a better way to get the word out. My brother doesn’t have a computer."
Gerald Culliton, Director of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, told the audience there’s no budget for publicity, and they rely on the media and Facebook to spread the word. Both Culliton and William Streitberger, the Director of the Hartford office for veterans’ benefits, stressed that the VA in Connecticut is doing a much better job of serving veterans than other parts of the country.
Streitberger told the audience local veterans are receiving their disability claims faster. "Our backlog peaked in February 2014 at 2,758 claims, or claims pending in our inventory greater than 125 days. Today we’ve improved that by 53 percent," he said.
Only one member of Connecticut’s congressional delegation attended the town hall meeting. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who sits on the Veterans Affairs committee, stressed there’s money in the congressional bill to renovate the VA hospital in West Haven and expand the Errera Center, which serves chronically homeless. He said that finding ways to improve the VA system nationwide needs constant attention.
"There’s a group in Congress that are saying, let’s just eliminate the VA health care system," Blumenthal said. "Why not just rely on the private doctors, the private hospitals, the private clinics. We don't need the VA anymore." Blumenthal said he supports providing resources to improve, not eliminate the VA health care system.
Other concerns that were raised that night included some veterans asking the VA to allow for emergency care at the VA Newington campus which currently just provides outpatient care. The VA emergency room is located at the West Haven campus, and can be hard to travel to for some veterans, depending on where they live, and whether they have access to transportation.
