A new medical clinic serving veterans and active duty military
personnel will be built at Fort Ord in the near future, said Rep.
Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who visited veterans’ services facilities at
the former Army post Tuesday with the head of the Department of
Veterans Affairs.
Kevin Howe
A new medical clinic serving veterans and active duty military personnel will be built at Fort Ord in the near future, said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who visited veterans’ services facilities at the former Army post Tuesday with the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The $100 million structure, Farr said, would be built to specification by a private contractor near the intersection of Gigling Road and Gen. Jim Moore Boulevard, and leased by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs for about $6 million per year.
Funding for the clinic, he said, has been approved.
Gen. Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs and a former Army chief of staff, was at Fort Ord to inspect the site of the new clinic and state veterans cemetery. He also was there to tour the VA Clinic and Veterans Outreach Center, and to get a look at the mobile Vet Center that travels to outlying areas.
Shinseki said the clinic is “fantastic, with a highly professional staff, and a good indication of what the future requires.”
The VA this year has received a 16 percent increase in funding – “the largest increase in the last 30 years,” Shinseki said – and is due for another 7.6 percent increase next year.
The nation has ongoing obligations dating back to the Civil War, he said, noting that two children of Civil War veterans continue to receive benefits, as do 151 children of Spanish-American War vets.
“We have obligations centuries after the decisions were made,” Farr said.
More people are turning to the VA for health care because of the economic downturn, Shinseki said.
There are about 23 million veterans in the United States eligible for care, he said, of whom 8 million are enrolled in the system. Five million of them use a VA medical service at least once a year.
The department has a five-year goal of eliminating homelessness among veterans – “not just getting them off the street,” Shinseki said, but providing education, job training, counseling and employment.
Nationally, the VA found 131,000 homeless veterans in 2009, including young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The number is down to 107,000 this year, he said.
Vietnam veterans continue to be the largest population of homeless vets, he said, “due to how they returned and the difficulties they had. We want to make sure not to make the same mistakes with this generation.”
Farr said the Central Cost Veterans Cemetery project is moving ahead gradually.
Its success, he said, hinges on the ability to raise funds locally for operation and maintenance. Land has been donated, and the federal government will reimburse the state for the cost of building it, but not operating it.
