No veteran should be treated in the VA medical system unless their condition is specifically service connected.
“No veteran should be treated in the VA medical system unless their condition is specifically service connected.”
Not so much.
VA Priority Group 1 is for those with a 50% or greater disability (service connected). At 50% or greater all medical care and meds, or all types for all conditions, service connected or not, are covered by VA.
As they should be.
My gripe is with “indigent care”, and priority groups 4 and below. If there is NO service connected disability, they should NOT be in the system.
Sadly, that’s at least 1/2 of those who are.
VA has a income cap for those who fall between the cracks. $38k SINGLE. Other than that it’s private care through either Tricare Prime or Life depending on age, unless Service Connected. They already Farm out many procedures. While they did hubbies hearing aids, and pulled the 5 teeth he had left both Service connected injury, our Private Dentist was contracted to make the dentures. He’s a Ret. Army Res. Dentist, 2 tours the M.E. 1 each war zone.
Tricare Life is 2nd to Medicare.
“No veteran should be treated in the VA medical system unless their condition is specifically service connected.”
I not only agree with you, but as a Cat 1 Vet I have my own insurance, medicare and go to private facilities simply because private health care is by far superior to VA.
But an argument can be made to give all honorably discharged VA health care. I have no proof or links of this, but I recall during the tail end of the Vietnam war when the all volunteer Army got going, it was a promise to include VA health care for all, which is what created this current tiered system.
If America wants to keep fighting these endless, winless wars and expect good American men and women to join up and risk their lives, there must be some incentives. If the swamp can afford the military/industrial complex’s ever so expensive war machinery and supplies, then the swamp can take care of those that get shot at, whether they get wounded or not.
It’s no longer a WWII scenario where our nation itself is at stake and it’s everyone’s duty to step forward.
There are many who disagree with you. I am not one of them. The system is abused. Many one-hitch vets leech off the system rather than take the responsibility of providing for their own health care after choosing to leave the service.
Even though eligibility for VA medical care was used as an armed forces recruitment incentive for many years, and probably still is?