Posted on 08/28/2008 9:34:50 AM PDT by B4Ranch
SAN FRANCISCO -- If John McCain is elected president, wounded veterans could be in for a world of hurt.
On the campaign trail, the Republican's presumptive nominee has talked of a new mission for the Department of Veterans Affairs, suggesting that veterans with noncombat medical problems be given vouchers to receive care at private, for-profit hospitals. In other words, McCain is seeking to cut off the kind of universal health care that the government has guaranteed to veterans for generations.
"We need to relieve the burden on the VA from routine health care," McCain told the National Forum on Disability Issues last month. "If you have a routine health care need, take it wherever you want, whatever doctor or health care provider, and get the treatment you need, while we at the VA focus our attention, our care, our love, on these grievous wounds of war."
Write a letter to Senator McCain on what you think of his position.
The Republican senator had argued that giving veterans a VA card that they can use for private doctors would shorten the long wait times that many veterans face in seeing government doctors, who are nearly universally viewed as among the best in the world.
A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that "VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care" and "received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up" than that delivered by other U.S. health care providers.
Virtually all veterans groups oppose McCain's plan. The Veterans of Foreign Wars' national legislative director has said the VA card would "undermine the entire system."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contribution than has Republican John McCain.
This may seem odd to some since McCain is a former naval officer, prisoner of war, and Vietnam War veteran.
However, Paul Sullivan, a Gulf War veteran and executive director of the nonpartisan Veterans for Common Sense, said that for McCain, free market ideology is more important than providing care for former Soldiers.
"Ideologues like John McCain and George Bush hate the fact that the VA exists," Sullivan said, noting that the Republican candidate also wants to partially privatize social security and offer private school vouchers to students currently enrolled in public schools.
"They hate the fact that there's a functional example out there of the government providing better care at a lower cost than the private sector," Sullivan said. "The problem that the VA faces now is that the Bush administration failed to hire enough doctors and disability claims adjusters when they chose to go to war with Iraq. If these doctors had been hired, the VA would be an example of the government doing good work. Bush and McCain don't want the public to see that."
McCain has also never spelled out what he means by a "combat injury," leading many veterans worried they could be left out in the cold.
"If I'm driving a Humvee in Iraq and a roadside bomb explodes and I veer off the road and crush my arm and end up losing it and needing a prosthetic, is that a combat wound according to Sen. McCain?" asked retired Air Force Colonel Richard Klass, the president of the Council for a Livable World's VETPAC, which has endorsed Obama.
Official Pentagon policy calls such an incident a noncombat injury. Technically speaking, the only Soldiers "wounded" in combat are those hit by direct enemy fire. As of Aug. 5, Department of Defense statistics showed that 32,799 U.S. Soldiers had been "wounded" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 10,685 had sustained "non-hostile" injuries which required a medical evacuation, while 29,881 were classified as ill enough to be airlifted out of the war-zone.
Veterans are also skeptical of McCain's plans because as a senator, he has repeatedly voted against fully funding veterans' health care. In 2005 and 2006, McCain voted against expanding mental health care and readjustment counseling for service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He also voted against efforts to expand inpatient and outpatient treatment for injured veterans, and against proposals to lower the copayments and enrollment fees that veterans must pay to obtain prescription drugs.
Read Senator McCain's full speech to the VFW announcing his health card plan.
McCain's vote also helped defeat a proposal by Sen. Debbie Stabenow that would have made veterans' health care an entitlement program such as social security, so that medical care would not become a political football to be argued over in Congress each budget cycle.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a D+ when they scored his voting record, whereas Obama got a B+. In addition McCain has voted with the interests of Disabled American Veterans only 20 percent of the time.
"If McCain would work to properly fund VA care, there would be no issue about a VA card," said Larry Scott, who edits the Web site VAWatchdog.org. "McCain, by wanting to give vets private care, is walking away from the VA and ignoring the problem. He is admitting that he will not properly fund the VA to the level where it can care for all qualified vets. "
Scott is sharply critical of the VA's often cumbersome and ineffective bureaucracy, but like most veterans' advocates, believes the VA system needs to be strengthened. He sees McCain's plan as a way to phase out the government's commitment to those who've served.
"For every vet who would get a VA card, that would be one less vet using the VA," he wrote in an e-mail to IPS. That "would mean, in a short period of time, a smaller budget, fewer locations ... and the eventual dismantling of the best health care system in the country."
© Copyright 2008 Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I’m a disabled vet and have never re-entered a VA hospital since my last medical review. First of all there are plenty of folks who need it worse and second the care isn’t all that great.
Save the money for those returning from war and their care. Let the others get a job and pay for their insurance.
Universal health care does not work.
Wow, what a biased steaming pile. Exactly how is giving “vouchers to receive care at private, for-profit hospitals” the same as “seeking to cut off” health care? Talk about spin!
But we are supposed to believe that Obama will fix it? He’s already said he will gut the military as he favors a KGB style organization to focus on internal opportunities.
seriously....am I missing something here??? if you have non-combat wounds you get to see the doctor of your choice and have the bill paid for you???
I’m sure many vets are quite pleased at this development....
My best friend (on the train to work anyways), has been working for the VA for 2 decades, has seen it through the bad times, and the good. He has said this to me for as long as I have known him (10 years). While the VA hospital system is quite good these days, many vets hate the commute. Already, many are “farmed out”, so to speak, to private healthcare. Sounds like he is just looking to expand this system already in place.
“Veterans are also skeptical of McCain’s plans because as a senator, he has repeatedly voted against fully funding veterans’ health care.”
Many also thought McCain would be a champion of the possible POWs during the 1993 POW/MIA hearings. He was the opposite, doing everything he could to discredit witnesses who had evidence of possible live POWs, and doing everything he could to prevent the declassification of evidence of live POWs. He seemed more interested in disposing of the issue and granting diplomatic recognition to Vietnam.
Not sure about the details of his proposals related to the VA, but McCain is no champion of the veteran.
I’m not a veteran. But if I had cyst to remove, and had the choice of driving 100 miles to a VA hospital, or getting a voucher and having it done down the street by the local doctors, I’d chose the latter.
And I wouldn’t worry about how my not driving 100 miles to the overcrowded VA hospital might effect their budget.
“Save the money for those returning from war and their care. Let the others get a job and pay for their insurance.”
So, you’re fine with abandoning the promise made to service members for at least 50 years, that VA health care would be available to them after active service?
More likely, if any money was saved, it’d go to more welfare type programs.
There's another side to the issue that's not covered. VA healthcare is NOT free healthcare for all who are enrolled. I'm enrolled and pay a portion of the medical expense because of income.
On the surface I have no issue with what I see here, but don't understand how it would be significantly different that what is available now, except it would free up the VA clinics and hospitals to focus on war-related injuries.
The other issue is availability of public healthcare. As mentioned, I have non-combat related illness which includes a history of stroke, heart attack and bypass operations. Yet I can get quite good healthcare on the market without pre-qualification, at $62.00/month. And that includes medication. My co-pay is $10 per doctor visit, $25 per emergency room visit, $35 per outpatient procedures such as CT's, and $100 per hospital visit. The only qualification is that one must already be a Medicare recipient. In fact, this plan replaces Medicare as the payer.
I bet the VA is very good about hiring veterans.
I bet the VA also goes out of its way to have good relations with the various veteran’s organizations.
Veteran’s organizations may therefore feel it is in their interest to protect the VA as an institution, instead of just looking out for what is best for veterans as a whole.
This is the same argument the teachers unions put forth against vouchers for parents to send their kids to the schools of their choice. No agenda here.
This is a bogus story. McCain outlined his health program before the American Legion. He essentially refuted every point made against him in this article. He promised not to reduce the VA system, not block pending plans to expand the sytstem, increase expenditures on health care for veterans, and supplement care by providing veterans with a card that would allow them to use local facilities at VA expense to assist those vets who are not located conveniently to VA facilities. I am not a big McCain fan, but on this issue I trust him.
This is such a biased article, it almost leaves me gasping. First of all, giving vouchers for veterans so that they can obtain health care locally instead of driving 200 miles for a 15-minute visit? Good idea! Giving vouchers for private care will result in NOT a single vet being delayed from obtaining medical care; just the opposite will happen.
Boy, this writer has such an agenda.
I have advocated exactly that for years. Veterans would receive MUCH better care and they would be closer to home in most cases.
“So, you’re fine with abandoning the promise made to service members for at least 50 years, that VA health care would be available to them after active service?”
yes aside from service connected injuries. Government run health care does not work. Save the resources for those coming off active duty and who really need the care.
“More likely, if any money was saved, it’d go to more welfare type programs.”
Thats where Obama plans to spend it. He’ll give it to druggies and leave vets outside in the rain.
‘I bet the VA also goes out of its way to have good relations with the various veteran’s organizations.”
Not really, take their record of using Service Disabled veteran owned businesses. The VA uses a NASA contract for all of its IT contracts. They will not use a contract set up specifically for service disabled vet company’s.
Nor can new companies get on those existing NASA contracts.
As a Service Disabled Vet business owner the VA won’t even take the time to speak with me about alternatives. They will only tell you to call one of the companies on the NASA contract.
Very recently a new bill was proposed to allow the VA to open this up. It may get thru the system in a couple years.
The VA has a 7% spending goal for these companies and are not even close to meeting that requirement.
My thoughts exactly. If anyone wants to see UHC in action go to a VA or Military hospital and prepare for a long wait. My father (WW 2, Korea, & Vietnam vet) fought the red tape from 1965 until he died in 1990.
People don’t understand the endless crap they put patient through just to receive basic care. As his dependent child trying to get basic care was an all day event.
These places are notorius for losing/misplacing records, scheduling visits 2-4 months out, etc...
I have always beleived that if they did away with the VA medical system and gave our vets vouchers for service that they and the country would be better served. the public doesn’t understand that there is not a VA hospital in every city and the time and expense it cost just to go to travel to one only to find out that what you thought was going to happen didn’t...
On the face of it I don’t see a problem with it. The government committed to providing for the veteran disabled while in the service and this certainly does that. The fact that it may be in a private rather than a veteran’s hospital should make no difference.
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