WALLA WALLA – When Gale Long had an apparent heart attack in February 2004, he assumed his health care expenses would be covered by the government.
The 81-year-old had served in the Army for four years during World War II, and said the Army recruiter who encouraged him to enlist had promised free health care for life. Long, the oldest of 10 children in an Iowa farm family, was enthralled by the opportunity to see the world and believed the health care promise just sweetened the deal.
But he got a bill for the $1,000 in expenses that weren’t covered by Medicare after his health scare last year and worries about the same for soldiers after him.
“They told us we could go to the Veterans Hospital. It was supposed to be for life,” he said.
Historically, military recruiters had wide leeway in what they could offer recruits to entice them to sign up, said John Waterbrook, veterans contract service officer at Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Walla Walla.
For some, it meant the promise of higher education. For others, it was the free housing and health care, Waterbrook said.
Today’s recruiters have very specific criteria regarding what they can promise, Waterbrook said.
But for many veterans, that doesn’t change what they were promised many years ago, and it’s an issue of particular importance in a region where the only VA hospital has been the target of closure proposals.
Established in 1858 on an 84-acre campus at Fort Walla Walla, the VA hospital here provides medical care for nearly 13,000 veterans a year. According to the VA, about 69,000 veterans live in the hospital’s 42,000-square-mile service area spanning southeastern Washington, northeastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho.
A federal commission had recommended closing inpatient portions of the center, but then-Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi instead ordered a comprehensive study of the Walla Walla campus to determine how to improve care while maximizing use of federal resources.
Many veterans now are worried that promises made years ago won’t be kept.
When Jerry Cummins joined the U.S. Navy, he said he was told he could go to Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane for free medical care as long as he needed it.
Cummins, a former Walla Walla mayor and City Council member, went into the military in 1960 and completed a four-year tour of active duty. The same month he got out, Cummins joined the Naval Reserve and retired as a chief petty officer in 1983.
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