Veterans Protest Proposed Hospital Cuts
Associated Press
October 28, 2003


CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. - Once a week, Frank Woods meets up with a dozen fellow World War II veterans to exorcise the nightmares and other chilling aftereffects of battles they fought more than a half century ago.





"It really helps when you've got somebody to talk to," said Woods, 79, leaning on a cane in a courtyard at the Veterans Affairs hospital in this lake-shore town in western New York.

The 70-year-old hospital, which sits on 170 acres of tranquil parkland on the edge of open country, is one of seven around the country that could be closed as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs looks for ways to streamline its $26 billion health care network.

That threat drew more than 1,500 protesters, many in uniform, to a boisterous hearing last week before a federal commission charged with overseeing the biggest overhaul of the VA system since the end of World War II.

For Woods, a decorated Army infantryman badly wounded by a phosphorus grenade in France in 1945, closing the hospital just a 15-minute drive from his home south of Rochester might mean having to travel an hour away to Buffalo, Syracuse or Bath for periodic care.

"I don't really know what I would do," said Woods, who's been undergoing post-traumatic stress syndrome treatment for eight years and now relies on his wife to get around.

Over 20 years, the government wants to cut costs at outdated or underused medical centers and offer improved and more comprehensive care, notably in the South and West, where growing numbers of the nation's 6.9 million veterans live.

The proposed $4.6 billion restructuring would shutter hospitals in Canandaigua; Pittsburgh; Lexington, Ky.; Brecksville, Ohio; Gulfport, Miss.; Livermore, Calif.; and Waco, Texas. It would also downsize another dozen health centers around the country.

It would open 48 clinics - one locally - add new hospitals in Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., and centers for the blind in Biloxi, Miss., and Long Beach, Calif. It would place spinal cord injury hubs in Denver; Minneapolis; Little Rock, Ark.; and either Syracuse or Albany, N.Y.

The commission will likely make its recommendations by December. As with military base closings in the 1990s, Veterans Secretary Anthony Principi must accept or reject the plan as a whole. He has indicated, however, that he will weigh in on proposals he doesn't agree with.

The plan appears to have met its fiercest opposition here and in Waco, where in August hundreds of veterans and their supporters trailed a convoy of 100 motorcyclists to nearby Crawford, President Bush's home.

With vigorous backing from New York's congressional delegation and from an economically distressed region desperate to retain 700 hospital jobs, veterans are hoping to win a reprieve for the hospital fondly named "The Canandaigua," which has long been hailed for its psychiatric care.

Both New York's senators spoke forcefully against the proposed shutdown during a packed forum at the hospital last week attended by four of the 15 members of the federal commission.

"This is no ordinary hospital and closing it down would be a monumental mistake," said Sen. Charles Schumer, drawing a standing ovation.

After supporting Bush's $87 billion request for military and rebuilding aid in Iraq and Afghanistan, "I can't believe we can't find a little money to keep this place open," he said.

Fellow Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has co-sponsored legislation aimed at derailing what she labeled an "ill-considered and rushed" plan that "threatens to undermine our commitment to our nation's veterans."

The 163-hospital VA network spends almost $1 million a day on unneeded buildings, a 1999 federal study found. Three of the 23 buildings at the campus here, which boasts its own fire department, cafeteria, bowling alley, laundry and a 9-hole public golf course, are vacant.

It once housed up to 1,700 mentally ill veterans but, with the growth of day care programs and advances in anti-psychotic drugs, now serves 200 patients and 8,000 outpatients a year.

VA officials say closing the hospital would save up to $10 million a year. Nursing home or acute psychiatric patients would be moved to other hospitals and an outpatient clinic would be built here or nearby in the Finger Lakes region, they said.

Advocates think it illogical to tear down a beloved hospital that, despite being hit by years of budget cutbacks, still ranked No. 1 in a quality-of-care survey the VA carried out earlier this year.

"I come here every day. It's better than any other VA hospital I've been to," said Thomas Greene, 52, a disabled Army Ranger who suffered gunshot and shrapnel wounds during two tours in Vietnam.

"I went through a lot ... and the only thing I wanted to know was that they were going to care for me when I came home."