Gus Wagner is an 82 year old World War II veteran who served in Japan where he got jungle rot on his feet as a souvenir of his time there. His fondest memory of his military experience was returning to America on a ship that crossed the Pacific. At night he would lay on the deck looking up at the clearest night sky this New York City boy had ever seen with an infinite number of stars shining so brightly.
His whole future was in front him at this time and he took it all in excitedly wondering what it would hold for him. He returned home to marry a neighborhood love, raise two daughters in a suburban Long Island home while working to put a man on the moon and building the very jet fighters that defended this nation at Grumman Aerospace. He dedicated his life to the service of his country.
Soon after he retired he suffered a severe stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to care for himself. Eventually he ended up in the State Veterans Home in Stony Brook, NY where he received great care and attention and lived a fairly good quality of life in a very scenic setting with other vets in equally poor health.
Then came the new health care law and as of July 2010 instead of being allowed 30 cumulative days in the hospital during the course of a year he is only allowed two weeks and he has already used up five of those days with another eight months to go for the next cumulative cycle to begin. After two weeks you lose your room and you are out of the home unless you can pay an exorbitant daily rate that no middle class senior could possibly afford. The only other option is to be warehoused at any nursing facility in the state far away from loved ones.
The only way to describe this travesty of our infirmed vets in their time of need when they most likely will be routinely hospitalized is that it is a slap in the face of those who risked their lives for all of us while the politicians looked us in the eye and said we are going to really start caring for our vets. It is no wonder Congress has an 11% approval rating!
What can be done about this? Do we just leave our infirmed vets on the street to perish while patting them on the back and saying thanks for the service but this country is about survival of the fittest and there is no place left for you?
Well one person is not taking this sitting down and that is Gus’s daughter Stacey Romeo who is launching a petition drive to end this injustice taking the cause to veteran organizations across the state and calling her local congressman and Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. We urge you to to do the same and call your elected officials.
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