When veterans return home, they expect and deserve to receive world-class health care and medical treatment for the injuries they have sustained, both physical and mental. The VA health care system is there to treat all veterans, from all wars, with any injury, serving as the cornerstone of America’s solemn promise to “care for he who shall have borne the battle.”
If you’ve listened to the news lately, you may think the VA has failed to keep this promise and the time has come to explore new alternatives. If you think that’s the case, then you disagree with one key group: the veterans themselves.
As a new bipartisan poll makes clear, veterans overwhelmingly want to receive their care in VA hospitals and clinics – not private, for-profit hospitals where the top concern is making money, not healing our wounded warriors.
A full eight out of 10 veterans said they are opposed to voucherizing the VA health care system. Veterans agree that forcing them to shop for care on the open market, instead of being treated by VA doctors and nurses, means their health care will suffer and they will end up footing the bill for claims that are denied or only partially paid.
So why then is Sen. Marco Rubio supporting a plan to dismantle the VA health care system and leave veterans to deal with private insurance companies? Perhaps because he’s listening to lobbyists from the Koch Brothers-backed Concerned Veterans for America, instead of listening to what veterans actually want.
The poll found that veterans strongly support the care they currently receive, but wish they could get it sooner. The VA’s detractors use this point to justify privatization and deride the agency as an intractable bureaucracy. What they fail to mention is that the VA currently has about 41,500 vacant health care positions, and a flood of new veterans entering the system. The solution to wait times isn’t scrapping the entire system – it’s hiring the clinicians it takes to get the job done.
Ignoring the obvious solution, all Congress seems intent on doing is making it easier to fire the very doctors and nurses who are delivering quality care to our nation’s veterans.
While not on the presidential campaign trail, Sen. Rubio has found time to introduce legislation that would chip away at the basic rights to due process that protect all VA employees from discrimination and wrongful firing. Rubio’s bill, like a measure passed by the House in July, would give political appointees unprecedented authority to fire doctors, nurses, benefit claims processors, and any other VA employee at a moment’s notice.
Frontline hospital workers have faced fierce retaliation for blowing the whistle on managers and executives who cooked the books to mask growing wait times for appointments – and that’s with the current due process protections in place. Trashing those limited protections would silence future whistleblowers and leave veterans with a health care system that is no longer accountable to them.
Rubio’s bill does nothing to add new hospital beds or fill vacant positions. It’s a blatant attempt to dismantle the VA health care system by giving hospital executives the power to fire frontline workers at will – the same executives who scored pitiful marks for their honesty and transparency in the new poll, with less than 30% of veterans rating their performance favorably.
Not to be outdone, Sen. John McCain has introduced legislation that would ship more veterans away from VA hospitals to for-profit hospitals and clinics.
Veterans value the expert care they receive by qualified doctors and nurses. It is the only health care system in the country built to meet the specific needs of veterans. They understand that they’re unlikely to get that same level of specialized service and attention outside the VA system.
Lawmakers like Rubio and McCain need to stop taking their cues from Koch Brothers-funded front groups and start listening to what actual veterans want.
What veterans want is for the VA to hire more doctors and nurses so they can be treated faster – not handed a voucher and told to fend for themselves.