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A rude awakening awaits disabled war veterans when they come home.

A column in the Oct. 19 Tribune by Joline Gutierrez Krueger ("Is this how we treat our veterans?") is a testament to the long and brutal suffering disabled vets have endured since the Vietnam War.

Poor medical care and improper treatment are familiar to patients at every veterans hospital. Criticizing is easy, but real, long-lasting action is not.

Congress got its panties in a knot over the mess at Walter Reed Hospital earlier this year. Many harrumphs and loud speeches about disbelief make for good press, but sustained change is what many vets have been begging for since the 1960s.

If James Morris, the veteran in Joline's column, had come home during the Vietnam War, his complaints about lousy, uncaring and incompetent treatment might have gone unheard. Thousands of injured men and women were cramming the halls of veteran's hospitals and medical care offices all over the country.

Veterans who requested care for post traumatic stress disorder were put in mental hospitals. The term wasn't even widely recognized. "Shell shock" was the term of the day, meaning your brain couldn't take the horrors of war, and you were packed up and sent away - if you received any treatment at all.

Gulf War vets who suffer from chemical disorders are familiar with the agony that Vietnam vets, who were sprayed with Agent Orange, are going through. The military still refuses to admit anything similar to chemical warfare was used in the Gulf War. Disabled vets have been fighting a battle at home that is lasting much longer than any time they spent on active duty.

Overhauling the Veteran's Administration is not going to be easy - which is why no one is even starting any significant long-term changes. Untangling the bureaucratic mess it's become seems impossible. Cutting away the so-called fat usually means vets lose services.

The Veteran's Administration could be saved by an outside entity, benefiting from fresh minds and new ideas. But the prospect of giving control of the VA, for example, to an ally of the Bush administration gives me pause. It could cause veterans to suffer even more. Don't suggest an oversight committee - it's been done, and that didn't work out, either.

Morris isn't the first person with a disability to have more medical problems after leaving the hospital than before he came in. And veteran's hospitals aren't the only ones that make mistakes. If he talks to other people with disabilities, he'll find out how bad the world of medicine for disabled people really is.

Having military medical benefits used to mean the best received excellent care from the best. Military medical care lately has plunged to the level of care for the indigent. No - it's more like health care for middle-class people who can't afford insurance. They have to take whatever they get and be grateful about it.