Veterans

VETERAN'S ISSUES AND CARE IN ILLINOIS

• Dramatic improvement in Veteran care in Illinois begins with financial transparency. Once we are able to see how much of every dollar goes to caring for a veteran and how much goes to administration and overhead, we'll be able to determine where there may be wasteful spending and refocus those dollars on the veteran.
• Our first obligation is to provide world-class medical care for our veterans. As Governor, Adam Andrzejewski would support reforming the system to attach dollars to veterans to use for care at a VA hospital, or any private practitioner. This will create proper incentives for physicians to deliver the same quality of care to veterans that civilians using private health insurance and private practitioners are receiving.
• Our second obligation to returning veterans is to provide them with one of the most important steps of successfully returning home: access to robust counseling and therapy for veterans who are transitioning from active duty combat to civilian life. By posting every dime, online, in real time, citizens of Illinois can demand that money currently spent on administration or unnecessary facilities can be redeployed to improve already good programs and assist in outreach to inform veterans of the benefits available to them.
• Our third obligation to our veterans is to provide world-class educational and job training benefits to complete the transition to civilian life. As Governor, Adam Andrzejewski realizes that there are debts we owe to our veterans, and addressing these three areas is the first real step to honoring the service of our veterans.
• Bad policies have consequences, and our Veterans bear the brunt of this. As Governor, Adam will work to combat bad policies that put our Veterans at a disadvantage.
  
  

• The Illinois budget is opaque, and as it relates to Veterans Affairs is no exception. Lack of transparency on how state and federal dollars allocated to veteran care are actually spent permits agencies to give voice to caring for our returning soldiers yet remain ultimately unaccountable to the taxpayers and the people they are supposed to serve. Posting every dime, online and in real time, will allow for thorough review of state spending by good government groups, veteran associations, and Illinois citizens. Increased funding for veterans is well-intentioned, but if it only goes to creating more bureaucracy, then it is doubly wasted: by creating unresponsiveness that veterans have to contend with and removing that dollar from providing benefits or care. As Governor, Adam will not seek to reduce funding for Veterans, but will fight to ensure that every dollar spent is used to deliver services to Veterans, not to prop up a bloated bureaucracy.
• Top-down, administration-heavy medical care promises veterans that they'll have insurance for when they need medical care, but like any centrally-planned endeavor, ends up failing to deliver on quality or timeliness. In effect, this is an example of socialized medicine, and veterans will tell you that it's not working. Furthermore, the scandal at Walter Reed Medical Center (see coverage from the Washington Post here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/walter-reed/index.html) was a wake-up call for all Americans to be aware of how we treat "America's finest" when they come home from service. We owe it to our veterans to reform the system such that veterans receive market-oriented medical care like any other resident in Illinois who has private medical insurance and a private medical practitioner. As Governor, Adam Andrzejewski would insist that benefit dollars be attached to the veteran, allowing him or her to obtain medical care from their family doctor or any private practitioner, or, if they choose, VA doctors. As the system currently works, if a veteran doesn't like the doctor they are assigned to, they can petition the Inspector General to reassign them to a better doctor, which the IG may do. However, the best doctors end up having an extraordinary number of patients. This creates more paperwork for the best doctors and reduces time to spend directly caring for the patient. Worst of all, the best doctor and the worst doctor in the current system both make the same amount of money, providing no incentive for good doctors and no remedy for getting rid of poor doctors. By making benefit and care dollars portable and completely attached to the patient, veterans can seek out the best providers and choose where to spend their money. Adam Andrzejewski is strongly opposed to Barack Obama's plan to charge wounded veterans for their medical care and would do everything in his power as Governor to make Veteran care something that President Obama couldn't tamper with for veterans in Illinois.
• In Illinois, good organizations like The Vet Centers are providing the necessary therapy and counseling that veterans sometimes need when making a transition from active-duty service. However, this organization in particular is funded solely by the federal government. Illinois can help organizations like these by funding organizations that focus on improved and increased outreach efforts to inform veterans of the benefits available to them. When the dollars that Illinois allocates to veterans are fully transparent, it will be easier to determine how much of each dollar actually goes to helping veterans. As Governor, Adam Andrzejewski pledges that he'll work to make sure that the highest percentage of every dollar goes to the veterans and not multiple layers of bureaucracy. Where waste and bureaucracy can be eliminated, Adam recognizes that there are definite and tangible areas where those dollars could be used to deliver greater benefits and care, as opposed to being cut entirely.
• Once veterans get the immediate health care they need and any counseling to get re-adjusted to civilian life, our next obligation to our veterans is to provide world-class educational and job training benefits to complete the transition. As Governor, Adam Andrzejewski realizes that there are debts we owe to our veterans, and addressing these three areas is the first real step to honoring the service of our veterans. Failing to provide proper training and support when sending our soldiers to fight is unacceptable; so, too, is failing to provide the training they need to make a smooth transition to civilian life. Failing to provide adequate educational and job-training assistance also may lead to unemployment and homelessness, the costs of which are both greater than providing excellent benefits in the first place. A complete review of all programs will be made, and Adam vows that as Governor he'll work to maximize public/private partnerships using the best organizations to deliver the training our veterans need to go from being leaders in the field of battle to leaders in Illinois' economy.
• Veteran homelessness is a result of lack of adequate transition assistance, which results in limited job opportunities, and a lack of advantageous programs. Currently in Illinois, illegal immigrants are entitled to better mortgage terms than the men and women who have served our country in uniform through the Blagojevich-enacted Opportunity I-Loan Program. As Governor, Adam Andrzejewski will work to correct these problems by ensuring that we're honoring the serviceman or woman from Illinois by our actions and not just our words. As Governor, Adam would seek to launch an initiative that would provide home-ownership assistance to our veterans that exceeds the benefits given to illegal immigrants. Wherever Veterans are encountering bad policies, as Governor Adam will work to root out the problems and do right by our Veterans.