Senate votes care upgrade as commission readies report for Bush

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Wednesday his hand-picked investigative panel has interesting suggestions on improving health care for those wounded in battle, but the White House said not to expect action right away.

Just after the Senate on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue passed sweeping legislation to expand brain screenings, reduce red tape and boost military pay, Bush thanked former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, and other panel members as they presented their draft recommendations to him in the Oval Office.

The panel was to hold a hearing later and approve the final report later in the day.

"We owe our wounded soldiers the very best care, and the very best benefits, and the very easiest to understand system," Bush said. "And so they took a very interesting approach. They took the perspective from the patient, as the patient had to work his way through the hospitals and bureaucracies. And they've come up with some very interesting and important suggestions."

Bush created the panel March 6 to investigate problems in the treatment of wounded veterans following disclosures of roach-infested conditions and shoddy outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, one of the nation's premier facilities for treating those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Veterans advocates say the Pentagon and VA had years of warnings about growing problems amid a burgeoning war, but the final report will not seek to assign blame.

The White House event followed the Senate's vote by unanimous consent on legislation that seeks to end inconsistencies in disability pay by providing for a special review of cases in which service members received low ratings of their level of disability. The aim is to determine if they were shortchanged.

The bill also would boost severance pay and provide $50 million for improved diagnosis of veterans with traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. The House was considering similar measures.

"Today, the Senate took action to provide real solutions," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. "From inexcusably long waits for basic care and claims, to squalid living conditions, to daunting mazes of paperwork, our heroes deserve better than what they have received from this administration. As the president considers the results of a study he commissioned nearly five months ago to examine the extent of problems, we are acting to fix them."