NARRATOR: Chances are, someone you know is a veteran.

VETERAN at VFW Post: My name's Tom Roeback. I'm a Vietnam veteran. I was in Vietnam in '65, '66.

NARRATOR: More than one American in ten is a veteran.

VETERAN at VFW Post: My name is William Hartman. I served in the military for -- 1919 to -- You mean the First World War? 1991 to '22. And I was with the 31st Infantry in Siberia.

NARRATOR: Over one million American women are veterans.

VETERAN at VVA Picnic: I'm Mary Stout and I'm the former national president of Vietnam Veterans of America, and I'm a member of Chapter 227 and on the board.

NARRATOR: Veterans. Men and women who answered the call to serve their country. For this, they have earned their country's gratitude. But how much gratitude can the country afford with so many "Veterans in America?"

["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]

Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

All of us who have served in the military have felt privileged to do so for this great country that we love. The American public have recognized the sacrifices that military veterans have made. In recognition of this sacrifice, the American public have generously provided a variety of benefits --housing, education, health care, insurance, pensions, and even burial grants to those who've served in the military. Our program is about that subject today and I think you'll find a lot of surprises.

VETERAN at VVA Picnic: I am Charles Klein. I served in Danang in '69.

VETERAN at VFW Post: I served in the military from 1943 until 1949, and back from 1950 until 1955. I had service in the Philippines, Okinawa, Japan, and then I came back. I went back and went to Korea and ended up in China.

VETERAN at VVA Picnic: My name is Leonard Ignatowski. I served with the 169th Engineer Battalion in '70 and '71 in Vietnam.

VETERAN: I served with the First Infantry Division up in -- near the Cambodian border. I was the platoon RTO.

NARRATOR: Nearly 27 million Americans are veterans, indivi-duals who served in the nation's armed services. What does it mean to be a veteran?

VETERAN at VFW Post: A veteran is a man that has gone at the call, do his service for his country, and he comes home. He can be proud when he walks down the street. Hey, I'm able to walk down that street because I went over there.

VETERAN at VVA Picnic: To me, it really doesn't mean a whole bunch. I did my job, basically. And it's part of the job of being a citizen to go when the country calls.

VETERAN at VFW Post: You served your country. You carry the pride with you and you'd go back and do it again.

VETERAN at VVA Picnic: To me, it's the ultimate potential sacrifice that you can make for wherever you live.

NARRATOR: Since the founding of the nation, people from many walks of life have served in America's armed forces. From your average "Joe" to celebrity GIs like Elvis, and the "Splendid Splinter," Ted Williams, who in exchanging one uniform for another, sacrificed the prime of his baseball career. Thirty of the nation's 42 presidents served. So did 287 members of the 103rd Congress.

Of America's 27 million living veterans, over 20 million -- nearly eight out of ten -- served during wartime. The last surviving veteran of the Spanish-American War died in 1992 at the age of 106. Only 32,000 who served during World War I are still alive today. 8.4 million of America's veterans served during World War II, 4.7 million during the Korean War, 8.2 million during the Vietnam War, and 664,000 during the war against Iraq.

Preparing for and fighting wars have cost America trillions of dollars and claimed the lives of over a million American soldiers. But the costs of war do not end there. We continue to pay for war's survivors long after the guns go silent.

JOHN HANSON: This country has a really interesting reputa-tion, I think, of getting the bad news behind it and trying to move on and ignoring what awful things might have happened. And the philosophy of a lot of people who've never been involved in a war is that, once the shooting's over and the treaties are signed, then the war's over.

NARRATOR: John Hanson is director of the National Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Commission of the American Legion, the nation's largest veterans' service organization.

Mr. HANSON: The country doesn't stop paying for a war when people stop shooting at each other. In fact, the expenses can get much greater.

NARRATOR: Because we are a nation that believes it owes a special obligation to those who wore the uniform, we reward our veterans and their families with tax-free benefits, benefits ranging from free medical care to free burial headstones.

More than a quarter of all Americans, almost 71 million veterans, dependents, and survivors of deceased veterans, are potentially eligible for these and other benefits administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the VA. Generally, to qualify, a veteran must have received an honorable or general discharge and have satisfied a minimum service requirement -- currently two years for enlisted personnel -- or the full period of service obligation for officers. Some benefits require wartime service.

VETERAN at VFW Post: I took out a GI loan for my home. I think most people that can qualify for it do try to take advan-tage of the educational and the home loaner's situation, especially with a family.

NARRATOR: Rewarding veterans for their sacrifices dates at least to the support the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony provided to members of their community disabled in skirmishes with Indians. In 1776, the Continental Congress encouraged enlistments during the Revolutionary War by promising pensions to soldiers if they became disabled. By the time America entered World War I, federal programs had been created for veterans' disability compensation, insurance, and vocational rehabilitation.

In 1930, the Veterans Administration was established to coordinate veterans' benefits. Before the end of World War II, Congress passed the GI Bill, which provided millions of veterans with educational assistance. Since then, additional educational benefits have been awarded to subsequent veterans.

In 1989, the Veterans Administration was given a new name, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and, more importantly, added stature as the federal government's fourteenth Cabinet-level department.

With nearly a quarter of a million employees, the Department of Veterans Affairs, still the "VA" to most people, is the country's second largest Cabinet department, behind only the Department of Defense. With a proposed 1994 budget of $38 billion, the VA ranks seventh among Cabinet departments in spending.

This $38 billion to reward those who fought past wars is in addition to the $277 billion America plans to spend in 1994 preparing to fight future wars. VA benefits also do not include $27 billion in annual retirement benefits received by 1.5 million retired career military personnel. Add VA benefits and military retirement benefits and America spends at least $65 billion on its veterans each year.

Mr. HANSON: If you rate the United States against any other Western nation, we do more than anybody. And I'm sure the members of Congress who oppose us the most will say that we do a lot for this country's veterans.

Do veterans earn that? We think they do.

NARRATOR: Veterans' groups such as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Vets, and Vietnam Veterans of America lobby Congress to ensure that veterans and their families continue to receive all the benefits they have earned.

Mr. HANSON: Their sacrifices have been more than most other citizens. Veterans are people who left the security of their homes and their families to serve their country in a time of crisis, generally. And because of that, we think they deserve some extra consideration whenever they might need some help. We don't fully know yet what the wages of war are.

NARRATOR: Of the VA's $38 billion in proposed 1994 spend-ing, almost half, about $18 billion, will go to provide compensa-tion and pensions to disabled veterans and survivors of deceased veterans. About $16 billion will go to provide veterans with health care. The remaining $4 billion will go to provide veterans with readjustment counseling, life insurance, employment assis-tance, education assistance, home loan guarantees, vocational rehabilitation, and burial allowances.

For veterans who have suffered disabilities through injury or illness during active military service, the VA provides compensation in monthly payments. The amount varies depending upon the VA's assessment of the degree of disability and the extent to which it has impaired a veteran's earning capacity. Current payments range from $83 a month for veterans judged to be 10 percent disabled, to $1,680 a month for those judged to be 100 percent disabled.

Mr. HANSON: People suffer and they suffer for their life-times. And the paradox of Vietnam was that we could get a lot more wounded people off the battlefield than we could before, so we have a lot of people out there suffering and who are going to suffer for an awfully long time from what happened to them in that war and in subsequent wars.

NARRATOR: The VA also furnishes pensions to wartime veterans with limited income who are permanently and totally disabled, albeit for reasons unrelated to military service.

Currently, more than two million veterans receive VA disability payments. Another 464,000 veterans receive VA pensions. In addition, the VA compensates 710,000 surviving dependents of deceased veterans.

The VA also operates the largest health care system in the nation, one that has grown from 54 hospitals in 1930 to 171 today. There is at least one veterans' hospital in each of the 48 contiguous states.

In 1992, nearly a million veterans received treatment at VA hospitals. By law, the VA must provide cost-free medical care to all veterans who have service-related injuries or ill-nesses, are former prisoners-of-war, receive VA pensions, or have limited yearly incomes.

Provided that the space and resources are available, VA hospitals may also choose to provide care to veterans with ample incomes who are suffering from injuries or illnesses unrelated to military service. However, these veterans must pay for their treatment.

VETERAN at VFW Post: You teach a man to go out and kill, and he's young and he's aggressive and he goes out and he does his job, and then he watches his buddies get killed or he gets hurt real bad, then he comes home, it's not easy to adjust to.

Ms. STOUT at VVA Picnic: Even this many years after the war, you'll still hear about veterans whose life was going very, very well, had the good job, the nice house, the family and, in a very short time, it all fell apart.

NARRATOR: For veterans who experience problems readjusting to civilian life, the VA offers psychological and social counsel-ing at more than 200 veterans' outreach or Vet Centers. Vet Centers were established in 1979 in recognition of the special readjustment needs of Vietnam veterans.

BOB TECKLENBURG: It was felt that Vietnam veterans were not accessing the VA medical centers. They weren't using those services, they didn't want to come in.

NARRATOR: Bob Tecklenburg is chief administrator for the Springfield Vet Center in Northern Virginia. Since 1991, vet center services have also been available to veterans of more recent combat zones in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf.

Mr. TECKLENBURG: The primary focus of readjustment counsel-ing is treatment of what we call post-traumatic stress disorder. It's a combat or war-related trauma that many of our veterans are suffering.

Ms. STOUT at VVA Picnic: We still have a lot of veterans who are suffering the effects of their time in the service, particularly in Vietnam with post-traumatic stress disorder.

VETERAN at VFW Post: There is a lot of problems out there that hasn't been taken care of. I'm lucky, I came home with no major problems. There's a lot of guys, a lot of veterans that need help.

VETERAN at VFW Post: When I put my time in the military, I was promised, if I put enough time in to retire, they would take care of me for the rest of my life, medical and otherwise. They failed that.

VETERAN at VFW Post: We were promised so much and we're getting back so little, and they keep taking more and more benefits away from us.

NARRATOR: Despite $38 billion and a quarter of a million federal employees providing them with benefits and services, clearly not all veterans feel that the VA has met their needs.

VETERAN at VVA PICNIC: Some people have not been treated well by the government or the Veterans Administration.

VETERAN at VFW Post: I have seen cases where a lot of the veterans have not been given the proper treatment and the proper care.

Ms. STOUT at VVA Picnic: We certainly need to make sure that people that work in the VA and veterans that go there get the highest quality care that's available to anybody in this country and it's done with respect for them and their service.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the most common complaints voiced by veterans about the VA concerns the quality of and access to its health care.

INTERVIEWER: What do you see as some of the most important issues affecting veterans today?

VETERAN at VFW Post: A lot of it has to do with health care and benefits.

VETERAN at VFW Post: I think the medical care, probably, and I think most veterans feel that way.

VETERAN at VFW Post: Mostly right now is the hospital, the VA hospitals.

Mr. HANSON: We've had some problems at VA hospitals in the past. We've had some weak administrators at hospitals and at regional offices that -- and there are VA adjudicators who don't believe that post-traumatic stress disorder is a real diagnosis.

NARRATOR: In 1991, the VA Inspector General, investigating a veterans' hospital in Chicago found that at least eight patient deaths had been attributable to questionable medical practices. While no one is suggesting that all veterans' hospitals experience such problems, many veterans choose to avoid VA health care completely if they can afford private sector care.

VETERAN at VFW Post: Dependents, draft dodgers, and other- wise are ahead of me when it comes to benefits and medical atten-tion today, and I think that's entirely wrong.

NARRATOR: Many veterans who have applied for VA benefits are unhappy with the slow pace of the department's claims proces-sing system. Veterans and their dependents sometimes wait months before learning that a claim has been approved. The VA currently has a backlog of about 600,000 pending claims.

Many veterans have had difficulty convincing the VA of their eligibility for treatment and compensation. It was years before the VA would admit that post-traumatic stress disorder, from which as many as half-a-million Vietnam veterans may be suffering, is a real illness.

Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange had to fight for years to win even limited disability compensation from the VA. So did the so-called "atomic veterans" who participated in America's atmosphere nuclear test program. Veterans of the Iraq war suffering from yet-to-be-explained illnesses can only hope that the bad experiences of these earlier veterans with the VA are not repeated with them.

John Hanson believes that, despite its shortcomings, the VA continues to have the best interests of America's veterans in mind.

Mr. HANSON: Overall, I'd give VA a high "B," and that's -- as far as government goes, it's not a bad grade.

INTERVIEWER: What are its major strengths?

Mr. HANSON: I think the people there really are compas-sionate. I think they understand what their mission is. I think VA really does want to do what's right for this country's veterans and the families and children of veterans who were either killed or severely disabled.

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that the country is doing enough for its veterans?

VETERAN at VVA PICNIC: For the most part, yes. I mean, there's always people who get left out or caught in between the cracks. Homeless veterans are an example of people who you don't think [of] wanting or needing benefits. But the homeless veteran is a major concern and a major portion of the homeless population are veterans.

NARRATOR: Despite the safety net that America has construc-ted for veterans, an alarming number still fall between the cracks. Some have gone from being war heroes to being homeless.

RICHARD FITZPATRICK: There are probably a quarter of a million veterans in the United States who are homeless.

INTERVIEWER: How does this compare to the total homeless population in the country?

Mr. FITZPATRICK: Of all the homeless throughout the country, about one-third of the homeless are veterans. And if we look at the males, well over half of them are homeless vets and this number is a very significant number.

NARRATOR: Richard Fitzpatrick is executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, an organization which initiates and supports community-based programs to assist home-less veterans.

Mr. FITZPATRICK: We're probably finding that about 55 to 60 percent of the homeless are from the Vietnam era. So, there's about still 10 percent of the people we're seeing are World

War II vets and about 10 percent are the Korean-cold war era. But if anything, the largest group that we're beginning to see growing is the -- certainly the post-Vietnam and now the Desert Storm veteran.

Where they are is all across America and it's certainly the most obvious in the major urban areas -- in New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, L.A. Probably we see more in the areas where there are military bases.

NARRATOR: Veterans become homeless for many of the same reasons as non-veterans: unemployment, substance abuse, lack of affordable housing. But post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related problems are also likely factors.

Mr. FITZPATRICK: We find that, overall, it's the combat vet that has the greatest problem. While only 10 percent of the military are in the combat arms -- armor, artillery, infantry -- we're finding 40, 50 percent of the homeless are from the combat arms.

NARRATOR: On the matter of homeless veterans, Richard Fitzpatrick believes that organizations such as his may be better suited than the VA at providing answers.

Mr. FITZPATRICK: It is not particularly an area that they're adept at. Their overhead, their cost factors are so sub-stantial, it's really difficult for them to do homeless programs. And in a basic VA hospital, if you walked in the door and your only diagnosis is homeless, you're asked to leave.

NARRATOR: According to Richard Fitzpatrick, the best programs for helping America's homeless veterans are ones that feature a military-style setting in which veterans help them- selves and each other.

Mr. FITZPATRICK: We have a network of probably about 50 different programs around the country that are all run by veterans for veterans, that has a military-type model in varying degrees of severity, from some that are close to boot camp to some that are a little more laid back, but still have the camaraderie of being around fellow military people. That in that environment, we find a tremendous success ratio.

VETERAN at VFW Post: My son is in the military. He's stationed out at Fort Meade. And I told him don't believe any-thing the Army tells you because you're not going to get those promises that they keep telling you about.

VETERAN at VVA PICNIC: I really think that when you talk about something about military service for a country, you're really talking about a very strong moral commitment to those people that are willing to do it or are called to do it. And I think it's a travesty to not follow-up on any promises that were made and to take care of those that suffered for it.

VETERAN at VFW Post: The veteran should get preference and should get the treatment that he needs.

NARRATOR: Can America keep its promises to veterans? Have we promised them too much?

Assuming that there is not a major war, the total veteran population is expected to decline by 24 percent over the next 20 years to slightly more than 20 million. But while veterans may be fewer in number in the future, those fewer veterans will be older veterans. In 20 years, the number of veterans over the age of 75 is expected to almost triple.

As the veteran population ages, its demands for health care will multiply. How can the VA meet the increasing demand?

Many of the VA's shortcomings might be remedied with additional money and resources, but given our current big federal deficits and anti-tax climate, that would seem an unlikely outcome. Part of the solution may lie in the Clinton administra-tion's plans to reform national civilian health care.

Ms. STOUT at VVA Picnic: Changes in the way we do health care in the future may have great effects on veterans' health care.

NARRATOR: Any reforms to the nation's health care system that expand the range of options available to veterans may have an impact on the demand for VA health care. According to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, under a nationwide universal health insurance coverage plan, demand for VA hospital care could drop by as much as 50 percent.

Part of the solution may also reside in shaking up the VA benefits system. Some benefits may be excessive, but others are poorly matched to emerging needs. Right now millions of non-combat veterans receive the same benefits that a combat veteran receives. Some believe the VA should limit all or most of its benefits to those who saw the horror of combat.

One obvious response to the challenge of providing for so many veterans is to stop creating new veterans. John Hanson describes the American Legion's ideal solution.

Mr. HANSON: We don't want people to forget not just the price people pay, but the price the country is going to pay them for making that sacrifice. And if it takes rehabilitation for 50 years for a 19-year-old who was wounded at Normandy, then it takes that and that's going to cost the country some money. And it speaks really toward decisionmakers to work harder at not sending young men and women into harm's way.

Our dream would be to have no more wars, no more veterans, and for us to go out of business when the last veteran is taken care of.

Admiral LaROCQUE: Well, I think most objective observers would agree that the benefits provided to the veterans of the United States, all 27 million of them, are rather generous and complete. There are, however, some people who feel that they deserve still more. But, by and large, I think most American veterans feel that they are citizens first and veterans second and they recognize that the expenditure of nearly $38 billion a year just on veterans' care alone is a rather large burden for the American public to bear. Also, when you factor in the nearly $27 billion a year for retired veterans, you have a total cost of $65 billion a year that America is spending to care for veterans, individuals who served in previous wars.

I hope you found the program interesting and somewhat provocative. Until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque.

[End of broadcast.]