VA Hospital in Texas Fights to Stay Open

"This is the best PTSD facility in the union, and these [guys] are trying to close it down," said Bill Mahon, a Vietnam War veteran and the McLennan County veterans service officer. In the past two years, Mahon has organized several motorcycle rides to the gate of Bush's nearby ranch to protest the proposed closing. "This is not their hospital; it's our hospital."

Nationwide this fiscal year, 250,000 new patients -- 40 percent of them veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq and 60 percent of them veterans from other eras -- have entered the VA health care system, Nicholson said.

As Congress works to eliminate an emergency funding shortfall this year of at least $1 billion and a projected shortage in the VA health care budget of more than $1 billion in the coming fiscal year, VA hospitals have felt the impact nationwide.

According to documents released at recent meetings of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees, the VA hospital in White River Junction, Vt., was forced to shut its operating rooms temporarily because of a lack of maintenance funds to repair a broken heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. Hospitals in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and eastern Texas stopped scheduling appointments for many veterans. The VA medical center in San Diego, with a waiting list of 750 veterans, diverted $3.5 million in maintenance funds to partially cover operating expenses and delayed filling 131 vacancies for three months to cover operating expenses. The Portland, Ore., hospital delayed non-emergency surgery for at least six months, and 7,000 veterans who use the VA facility in Bay Pines, Fla., are waiting longer than 30 days for a primary care appointment.

"I'm going to go to a civilian doctor rather than wait 70 to 90 days," Douglas McKee, 63, of Chilton, Tex., said as he left the Waco facility on Thursday afternoon. McKee, who said he was disabled by a mine explosion in Vietnam while serving with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, had just learned that his regular doctor was on duty in Iraq and that he could not get an appointment with a new physician until mid-October. He would also have to wait for some of his prescription refills, he said.

"We laid our life on the line and then got blowed up and then you come here and you get turned away. That ain't fair," said McKee, who suffers from a variety of ailments and uses a walker to get around. "And then they got all the kids coming back from Iraq."

Nicholson assured hospital employees and veterans gathered for his visit that no decision had been made about the facility's fate and that he had "no predispositions about this at all."

Nicholson, who visited the facility at the request of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), said he was concerned about the 300,000 square feet of vacant space at the Waco VA. A local advisory group suggested filling the space with nonprofit organizations such as the Salvation Army, which could tailor their services to veterans' needs.

Nicholson will make his decision about the Waco VA early next year, including a proposal to transfer its psychiatric and post-traumatic stress disorder services to Austin and Temple. He warned those gathered that his visit should not be interpreted as "an interception of the process." And he complimented the hospital for its track record. "This is the way the American people want veterans to be taken care of," he said.

As for the hospital's fate, Nicholson said, "the binding question is what's going to be the best for our vets? . . . They did what was best for us and for our country."