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A new report’s recommendation to break up – or privatize – the nation’s veterans’ health care system drew a blast from J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents VA health system workers.
Cox is a retired Veterans Administration psychiatric nurse.
The VA Commission on Care’s “horrendous, anti-veteran proposal…would essentially destroy the veterans’ health care system, leaving millions of veterans without the integrated care they rely on,” Cox said on July 7 after reviewing the report, issued the day before.
“Veterans would suffer from a drastically reduced quality of care, higher costs, less access, and the system as a whole would become unaccountable to veterans and taxpayers. Instead it would place veterans’ care in the hands of executives with corporate backgrounds, leaving veterans without a voice.”
The report calls the current Veterans Affairs Department hospital system outmoded. It should be replaced by a nationwide network of VA-certified private providers, the panel says. VA Secretary Robert McDonald named the panel after scandals two years ago over treatment.
The panel issued its report just after AFGE members held protests in 38 cities on June 30 against its pending recommendations. They based their opposition on knowledge that a substantial minority of the 15-member commission – including two members with ties to the notoriously right wing anti-worker billionaire Koch brothers – was predisposed to privatization.
Polls show veterans are overwhelmingly opposed to privatizing the VA. Instead, their main demand is to cure its short-staffing by hiring more doctors.
Cox said the recommendations would “push veterans out the door to lower quality, for-profit providers who will inevitably offer inferior care. As it stands now, only 13 percent of mental health providers in the private sector are properly prepared to treat our veterans.
“Veterans will not be helped by having inferior care at higher costs. It is far better for veterans and taxpayers to invest in the only system tailored to veterans that is already proven to be better and has already made vast improvements.”
The recommendations now go to the Veterans Administration and Congress. President Obama has already indicated he opposes privatization.
“The notion of dismantling the VA system would be a mistake,” Obama told The Colorado Springs Gazette in June. “If you look at, for example, VA health care, there have been challenges getting people into the system. Once they are in, they are extremely satisfied and the quality of care is very high.”