Vets healthcare system criticized

Injured soldiers returning home for medical treatment face an unacceptable maze of paperwork and bureaucracy, leaders of a presidential commission on veterans’ healthcare said.

At its first public meeting, the nine-member commission heard from veterans, spouses and advocacy groups who decried what they said was a failed system. The commission pledged to work quickly to find solutions rather than assign blame.

Former GOP Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, one of the heads of the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, said the panel would build upon the work of other committees that began investigating veterans’ healthcare after disclosures in February of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.