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Obama can help vets

President Barack Obama and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki met in early August with Military Times and other military journalists in a bid to restore confidence in the administration’s commitment to delivering quality care to America’s veterans.

They said all the right things:

• VA should reach out to vets in need and bring them into the system.

• VA must install a comprehensive, up-to-date electronic medical records system.

• More resources must be dedicated to helping veterans with mental health problems.

• Veterans’ health benefits will not be reduced or affected in any way as part of the national health care reform initiative.

• And it is a disservice to veterans to deny links between health problems and war-zone burn pits before all the evidence is in — just as it was premature to reject claims arising from exposure to 1950s atomic bomb tests, Agent Orange in Vietnam and toxins in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Thus far, the Obama administration has made a good-faith effort to fulfill its campaign promises by boosting VA funding and building on efforts to improve VA services.

But with new claims expected for years to come from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, VA will need still more resources in the future. The administration is going to have to demonstrate stiff political will to continue to fully fund VA.

At the same time, Obama will have to demand efficiencies and accountability that are all but countercultural within VA.

This is an opportunity to break with a sad tradition of short-changing VA and the people it serves. There can be no greater priority than truly taking care of those who have sacrificed so much for their country.