BEDFORD – This morning, District 9 Indiana Representative and Congresswoman Erin Houchin met with an assortment of veterans and officials at Golden Corral, courtesy of owner Robbie Nubbie.
As Trey Hollingsworth before her, Erin, who took her place as the first female representative, plans to hold these meetings yearly as a way to get directly in touch with the needs of local veterans.
The issue local military veterans face today is a lack of access to medical care, or needlessly extended wait times.
“I would like to see veterans have better access to whatever healthcare they see fit,” said Indiana Representative Erin Houchin, “and maybe not necessarily be tied to the VA.”
According to Brad Bough, City Councilman and organizer of the event, “There’s a distinct lack of healthcare in southern Indiana.”
As attested by several attending veterans, such as Barry Majors, there is a noted lack of accessible care for vets. Some surgeries can be performed in Bloomington, but anything less, requires a trip to Indianapolis. The distance, as well as the more recent absence of provided transportation, proves an obstacle to veterans accessing important health support.
The question was asked, “Why can’t VA cards be used like Medicaid cards?” What is preventing the ability to have veterans treated wherever they can, and the VA covering the costs? Erin Houchin was interested in looking into these options.
The area between Indianapolis and Louisville is a veteran healthcare desert, with those in need having to travel large distances to find care for medical issues if they are given those resources to begin with.
The only Veteran’s center in Southern Indiana is in Evansville, and while the rest of the state has a more even population vs. VA hospital ratio, Brad Bough explained that for Southern Indiana, like Jasper, and the Lawrence County area, “there’s really nothing.”
“Use Northern Indiana as an example, We’ve got Indianapolis with a VA hospital, Fort Wayne with a VA hospital, and about halfway between is Marion, and that’s not a full service VA hospital, but it’s still a VA hospital,” he said. “And between Indianapolis and Louisville, we have absolutely nothing, so a VA hospital in Lawrence County would be perfect – or just somewhere in between.”
According to Representative Erin Houchin, the VA side of things has been suffering for years, especially through the Obama administration, when they tried to close down access to critical care hospitals, saying there were too many.
The idea was to change the radius in which you couldn’t have another hospital, and if there were two in that area, they would close one. That move was successfully shut down.
In the same vein, issues also present themselves when it comes to wait times and communication with the VA centers.
Erin explained her own concerns with the state of Veteran’s Affairs, “The thing that frustrates me the most is when we contact Veteran’s Affairs, they’re not that responsive. And that’s not uncommon with other federal agencies currently, but of all the places that we want to function and function well, the Department of Veterans Affairs is one of them.”
She encouraged veterans who have had problems getting care to reach out and send her their stories and experiences.
“It’s one thing to say ‘we have a lack of access”, but then the practical implications of what that looks like would be very useful for us to advocate for these changes to take place,” says Erin, “like these are the real examples of issues – it’s not just on a map and there’s nothing there, the practical implications of what that means for veterans in our area in our district would be really helpful.”
Erin pointed to Salem Indiana’s bypass as an example of what real evidence can do as opposed to generalities. The bypass intersection was known to be dangerous, with many fatalities and accidents. The only way she was able to get INDOT to address the problem was by sending them copies of police reports from the incidents that happened at the bypass. After sending six of those, they finally did something about it. Now, the bypass intersection has a much safer roundabout.
Specificity and context does wonders for a cause.
“We will keep pushing for it,” said Amanda Lowry, part of Erin’s team, about the issues presented at the meeting. Erin Houchin announced that they just passed the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs (MilConVA) Budget, and that they appropriated $317 billion plus for Mil Con VA, $138 billion of that for healthcare benefits of veterans.
With these funds, and government looking to support our former military members, perhaps some progress can finally be made to improve the area, effectiveness, and efficiency of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, and provide more reliable health care for those who have done so much for their country.
“People say I’m like a dog with a bone,” Erin said about the causes she fights for, “Once I get it, I don’t let it go.”
