Should the Veteran's Administration be dispensing Hearing Aids?

With the V.A.s current budget request topping $125 Billion for 2011 and expected rise, our tax allocations to this one branch of the federal government now tops the total for the entire budgets for the states of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, combined.

Even as the costs of caring for our current generation of veterans continues to sky rocket, as more and more of our young men and women return home with the horrendous wounds of  our nation's current conflicts, the Veteran's Administration and it's network of hospitals and clinics dispensed almost half a million hearing aids last year.

Many of these were fit to older veterans who are functionally deaf, or at the least, severely impaired, without their instruments.   Yet, every veteran I've met, who's ever been so fit acknowledges waits of from two weeks, to three months for an appointment to receive any kind of service.

This begs the question, should this branch of our government be allowed to dispense almost half a million hearing aids a year to veterans all over the country, without providing for the adequate follow-up care and regular maintenance such equipment requires and these veterans deserve?

According to the recent Marke Trak surveys, as published in "Hearing Review", the Veteran's Administration was responsible for dispensing 14.9 % of all hearing aids dispensed in this country in 2008, and 14.5% of all fittings in 2009. up from just 1.8% of total instruments fit in 1989.  Talk about expansion of Government!

That is over 800,000 instruments in the last two years alone, who's every wearer, regardless of what equipment was fit, can expect a wait of two weeks, to three months for any kind of service from the V.A. (Excepting their provision of a prepaid mailer to their service facility in Colorado for repair and return of the instrument.)

That these veterans need and deserve our care is beyond question.

What is in question, is the desirability of having the Veteran's Administration tasked with this mission, when they are very clearly over tasked with other priorities and have a demonstrated, ongoing inability to provide these veterans with the timely, quality follow-up service and care that such dispensing requires and these veterans deserve?

Or, would our nation's veterans, our economy and the nation as a whole be better served, if all qualified veterans were simply issued a benefits card that would allow them to shop for these services from any licensed professional, within whatever open and free markets we have left?