[Dialogue] Emailing: McCain's Plan to Privatise Veterans' Health Care CommonDreams.org.htm

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Published on Thursday, August 21, 2008 by Inter
<http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43626> Press Service 

McCain's Plan to Privatise Veterans' Health Care

by Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO - If John McCain is elected the next U.S. 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 (VA) and argued that
veterans with non-combat medical problems should be given vouchers to
receive care at private, for-profit hospitals -- in other words, an end to
the kind of universal health care the government has guaranteed 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." 

The Republican senator argues that giving veterans a VA card that they can
use at private doctors would shorten the long wait times 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 Centre 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
non-partisan Veterans for Common Sense, says 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 told IPS, noting that the Republican candidate also wants
to partially privatise 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 non-combat injury.
Technically speaking, the only soldiers "wounded" in combat are those hit by
direct enemy fire. As of Aug. 5, Department of Defence statistics showed
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 sceptical 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, efforts
to expand inpatient and outpatient treatment for injured veterans, and
proposals to lower co-payments and enrollment fees veterans must pay to
obtain prescription drugs. 

McCain's vote also helped defeat a proposal by Democratic Sen. Debbie
Stabenow that would have made veterans' health care an entitlement programme
like social security, so that medical care would not become a political
football to be argued over in Congress each budget cycle. 

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) gave him a D+ when they
scored his voting record (whereas Obama got a B+). He's 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 website 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." 

IPS Correspondent Aaron Glantz is author of the upcoming book "The War Comes
Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans". 

C 2008 Inter Press Service

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arise257 August 21st, 2008 3:04 pm

The new comment system sucks by the way.

No posts over 250 words? Come on now...

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arise257 August 21st, 2008 3:03 pm

The new comment system sucks by the way.

No posts over 250 words? Come on now...

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arise257 August 21st, 2008 3:02 pm

What we essentially have is the ongoing privatization of our military. This
is something which we will come to regret as we move toward a time of
increased global conflict due to scarcity of resources. I see this as
nothing short of intentional because as we face future battles, our military
as a private sector is held to lower standards of accountability than a
public one. It also fits the model of other major industries such as the
financial one; privatize the profit, make the risk public. We saw this in
the form of taxpayer bailouts for private sector ineptitude, greed, and
failure.

This is the course our government is charting in all its sectors and it
essentially amounts to a private government that answers to no one.
Oligarchy and fascism in place of democracy and sound social policy. The
founding fathers' nightmare is upon us and most people are entirely unaware,
even supportive of it. Truly shameful.

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arise257 August 21st, 2008 3:02 pm

Apply this model to our military and suddenly all of its ills make perfect
sense.

The Pentagon has made it a habit to deceitfully deny thousands of veterans
their benefits from service, medically and financially. In fact, one can
argue that they've intentionally underfunded the VA program since the 1970s.
If you look at pay rates for soldiers adjusted for inflation - they make
less than soldiers of previous wars - yet are redeployed up to 5 or 6 times.
More work, less pay. Now take a look at what they did for the Iraq/Afghan
war - hired hundreds of thousands of mercenaries; contracted killers. Uncle
Sam doesn't owe Blackwater mercs a goddamn thing in terms of health benefits
or low-cost loans to re-establish themselves as regular members of society
when they return from war.

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arise257 August 21st, 2008 3:01 pm

He doesn't care about the troops. The system doesn't care about the troops
and hasn't since at least WWII. Instead of an army which operates as an arm
of the government, we have 1.5 million contractors - which we are striving
to strip of job benefits. It boils down to this:

When a private company looks to reduce its overhead, the first thing it does
is reduce the benefits offered to employees. If that's not sufficient, it
fires people then replaces them with people who will work more for less pay.
When that doesn't work, it switches to subcontractors who must bid each
other down to the lowest price - and aren't contractually granted any
benefits.

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wilmoor August 21st, 2008 2:25 pm

As a senior who learned about Medicare before privatization, while taking
care of a parent, and as a Medicare recipient after privatization, I'd say
veterans should be very worried.

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greendeb99 August 21st, 2008 1:48 pm

If we had a decent non-profit health care system that was open to all,
(single payer) this might not be a bad idea. Health care costs would be
contained, and vets could go to any hospital for care--any doctor for
care--any pharmacy for their prescriptions -- The VA system would pay the
providers and the costs of operating the VA system would be lessened. But
with the broken system we have now, no health care provider would accept the
vets. It would have to be like Medicare, but better. The VA currently
negotiates for the best drug prices; Medicare has no power to negotiate due
to the lousy system we have that made sure that insurance companies and big
pharma continue to reap obscene profits. When are our so called leading dems
going to get smart and quit talking about helping people find affordable
health insurance? Do what works in every other modern nation in the world
and provide universal care. DK Blake

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Humbaba August 21st, 2008 1:40 pm

Egad! Not just underfund the VA but to destroy it entirely.
This guy is more of a 'slash and burn' Neocon that Darth Cheney.

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zaz August 21st, 2008 1:30 pm

Obama has recieved six times more in contributions from deployed overseas
troops than mccain. Is the MSM reporting this? Is it mentioned in obama's
ads?

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FrederickJohnson August 21st, 2008 1:19 pm

Those veterans had better stand up to these phony wars if they want
anything. Frankly, it doesn't matter if Mccain or Obama becomes president
next year the way they're pandering these past two years. Oops, I forgot,
many veterans having become Limbaugh-ized ZOMBIES ! Sad !

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elmysterio August 21st, 2008 1:12 pm

Does McCain REALLY care about the troops? Seriously doubt that. They're just
fodder for the war machine and a burden when they get wounded.

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