Veterans File Suit Over Health Care  Cuts

By ROBERT  BURNS
.c The Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) - Residents of a historic retirement  home for war veterans
filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday against Defense  Secretary Donald H. Rums
feld, asserting that the Pentagon chief has imposed  excessive and illegal
cutbacks in on-site medical and dental  services.

The suit was filed in federal court on behalf of the nearly  1,000 residents
at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, one of two  such
institutions managed by the Defense Department.

In their complaint,  the home's residents said Rumsfeld has a ready remedy
for the financial problems  that led to the cutbacks in services and staffing,
but he has chosen not to  act.

They said Congress gave the Pentagon authority in 1994 to increase  one
source of the home's operating funds - a 50-cent-per-month payroll deduction  paid
by every enlisted member and warrant officer in the military. Raising it to 
$1 per month would generate $7 million a year in new revenue, the suit  says.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The  retirement home's operating costs are borne mainly by a trust fund and
by  monthly fees paid by its residents. Another source of revenue are the fines
and  forfeitures levied upon members of the active-duty military in judicial 
proceedings.

The lawsuit also named as a defendant the Pentagon official  who manages the
home, Timothy Cox.

By law the Armed Forces Retirement  Homes, in Washington and in Gulfport,
Miss., must provide ``on-site primary  care, medical care and a continuum of
long-term care services.'' In an April 27,  2004 letter to the residents group
that was pushing for a reversal of cutbacks,  Cox asserted that the reduced level
of services was in compliance with the law,  according to the lawsuit.

A spokesman for the group, Homer C. Rutherford,  a retired Air Force senior
master sergeant who has lived at the home for three  years, said he had
personally appealed to staff members of the House and Senate  armed services
committees to address the problem, but to no avail.

``This  is why we're following through with this class-action suit,'' he said
in an  interview Monday. ``We feel we have nowhere else to go, and we feel
that it is  something that is vitally necessary for the health and welfare of
the American  veterans who are here at the home.''

Among the cutbacks cited by  Rutherford and other residents are the closing
in 2003 of the home's main clinic  and an on-site pharmacy, elimination of
on-site X-ray and electrocardiogram  services and reductions in annual physicals
as well as the number of on-site  dentists.

The retirement home, previously known as the Soldiers' and  Airmen's Home,
was opened in 1851 for wounded and disabled war veterans. Four of  the original
buildings are still standing and are registered as national  historic
landmarks.

Veterans can live there if their active duty service  in the military was at
least 50 percent enlisted or warrant officer. They must  have served on active
duty for at least 20 years and be at least 60 years old.  Also eligible are
veterans unable to earn a living due to a service-related  disability or whose
disability is not service related but who served in a war  zone.

All female veterans who served before 1948 are eligible.

On  the Net:

Armed Forces Retirement Home at  http://www.afrh.gov/DWP/afrh/afrhhome.htm



05/24/05 14:22  EDT