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To Republicans, please bear this in mind next time a report surfaces of sick veterans dying before getting a timely appointment.

I cannot even BEGIN to tell you what my wife and I see every time we go to the Long Beach VA, or the times we used to go to the Dallas VA, or even the Minneapolis VA, or the West Los Angeles VA.

What do we see?
We see thousands of old men who spent a lifetime partaking in every single bad health habit imaginable. Many of them had already received grave insults to their bodies because of their service but they compounded it by a lifetime of hardcore smoking, hardcore drinking, horrible diet, refusal to exercise in any fashion whatsoever.

If you want to see a collection of super-sized extra wide wheelchairs, no better place to see them than your local VA hospital.
I've even seen something I didn't think existed, super-sized TOILETS...toilets that are almost twice the size of a normal toilet, because they must accommodate persons who weigh 350, 450, even 500 or 600 pounds!

If you want to see a collection of lower extremities that have begun to turn purple or gangrenous, visit the VA. If you want to see diabetes so bad that the patient has to take up to ten or fifteen injections of insulin every day, the VA has these unfortunates.

My point is, there is a large contingent of sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines who absolutely refuse to maintain their health and refuse to see a doctor until their health has reached the point where they are circling the drain and the final countdown has begun in earnest.

This is the reason the VA has one of the worst "NO-SHOW" records in the entire healthcare industry.
This is the reason why veterans make up one of the largest groups of homeless in the country.
There's just something about the veteran mindset...many have tried to put their finger on it.

And unfortunately it is all too easy to just point the finger and claim that the VA isn't doing a good job. But when a man spends thirty or forty years letting his health go, and suddenly shows up in the ER with chest pains and purple extremities, and gets a referral to his VA cardiologist, and dies waiting, it's not always the fault of the VA. Sometimes they simply were too sick to save, and there was nothing anyone could have done.