Several years ago, Dr. James Allen, a veteran of the Korean War and an ophthalmologist who has worked at the VA Hospital in Madison for over 30 years, wrote to tell me about a gap in health care coverage facing many of his patients.
He informed me that veterans who suffered a service-connected blindness in one eye receive no additional VA compensation when they lose vision in the other eye. Dr. Allen believed this was unfair because had it not been for the first injury while in service, the individual would still have vision in one eye after the subsequent injury.
From that letter began the long, sometimes frustrating, ultimately exhilarating process of turning one person’s quest for fairness into law.
In 2002 I proposed the Dr. James Allen Veteran Vision Equity Act. This bill would allow veterans in this situation to receive increased disability compensation if they begin to lose sight in their second eye, regardless of whether that loss of sight is service-connected.
I garnered bipartisan support for the bill including backing from many of Congress’s most vocal advocates for veterans. Unfortunately the Republican leadership in previous sessions failed to give the bill a vote.
However, earlier this year the House of Representatives passed this legislation (H.R. 797), and today I continue to advocate for the passage of this legislation by the Senate.
I know it’s easy to assume that life is unfair, government is unresponsive, bureaucracies are intractable, and there’s nothing any one of us can do about it. But Dr. Allen, believed otherwise; and so do I. We’ll keep working on the bill until it passes—and Dr. Allen will have made difference in the lives of many veterans.
Change doesn’t always come as quickly. But change will never come without the participation of committed citizens. In a democracy, the power lies with the people, not the pundits; and each of you has the power to make a difference.