ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the contemporary scandals and reform efforts within the veterans' bureaucracy, from its promotion to a cabinet department to malfeasance in Veterans Health Administration (VHA). As part of the World War Veterans Act of 1924, veterans became eligible for medical care even in the case of nonservice-related disabilities, with preference given to the indigent. Second World War did much more than to make Armistice Day obsolete. It also spurred an extensive construction project that dappled America with veteran’s hospitals. By the mid-1990s the VHA, oft proclaimed the largest integrated health-care system in America was "socialized medicine writ large," according to former Congressman Robert Bauman (R-MD), who had worked in the department's Office of the General Counsel from 1990 to 1993. Something about a bureaucracy just cannot stand prosperity. While the quality of veterans' health care improved in 1990s, the revamped TRICARE program of medical coverage threatened to drown the apparently unsinkable Pentagon in a sea of red ink.
