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Getting Veteran Voters on Board

Summary:
I would like to use Veteran Healthcare. However, the backlog is months out. So, I go to the outside for care. It is not that I want to do so. The VA has been short of staff for a while now. Much of this is a concerted effort to kick us out into public care. The present head a holdover from the Trump Admin. has not been doing much to staff the VA. This last go-around for my spine was a disaster. I met the surgeon who was good. She decided it might be better to go for epidural shots instead of surgery. A month later and I am back to see a PA and then a doctor. They want to treat me for blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight. My blood pressure is typically 110/68, Cholesterol is around 120, and my weight says I am overweight but not at the

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I would like to use Veteran Healthcare. However, the backlog is months out. So, I go to the outside for care. It is not that I want to do so. The VA has been short of staff for a while now. Much of this is a concerted effort to kick us out into public care. The present head a holdover from the Trump Admin. has not been doing much to staff the VA.

This last go-around for my spine was a disaster. I met the surgeon who was good. She decided it might be better to go for epidural shots instead of surgery. A month later and I am back to see a PA and then a doctor.

They want to treat me for blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight. My blood pressure is typically 110/68, Cholesterol is around 120, and my weight says I am overweight but not at the extreme. 10# and I am home free. I brought a recent blood test in. They wanted to do a new one. I objected to it and everything else other than a platelet test. Not a word about my back and right leg being numb.

This is what Suzanne and Steve are referring to with outside care for Vets. Going to the outside is akin to Medicare Advantage ordering more tests than needed. There are reasons why they do so. Go where the money is. The VA does the care for less cost and you are not a money pit.

How Walz Can Help Harris Woo Vet Voters

by Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early

The American Prospect

Amid the rhetorical fog of their game-changing presidential debate on June 27, Donald Trump and his then-opponent dealt with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) only in passing.

Trump claimed that, after he vacated the White House, “crazy Joe Biden” simply abandoned his policies of giving eligible veterans the “choice” to remain inside the VA health care system or seek treatment outside it. According to Trump, VA patients were able to “get themselves fixed up” in private hospitals and medical practices, rather than waiting “three months to see a doctor.” The results were “incredible,” and earned his administration “the highest approval rating in the history of the VA.”

The dramatic and energizing midsummer switch at the top of the Democratic ticket has made it possible to imagine a more substantive debate about the past, present, and future of VA care. Particularly since both parties are now fielding, as their vice-presidential candidates, military veterans who have personally used VA-dispensed benefits to attend college.

Walz to the Rescue

Before becoming governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz was an Army National Guard member for 24 years who used GI Bill benefits to attend a state college, and then become a public-school teacher and union member.

Walz ran for Congress in 2006 after Vietnam veteran John Kerry’s failed bid for the presidency two years earlier. After winning the first of six House races, he joined the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee (HVAC)—a low-status committee assignment spurned by many aspiring politicians.

If the VA becomes part of Walz’s vice-presidential portfolio, he could help engineer much-needed personnel and policy changes.

Walz eventually rose to become ranking Democrat on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. In 2018, he joined just 69 other House Democrats in opposing the VA MISSION Act, one of Donald Trump’s proudest legislative achievements and the basis for his 2024 campaign pledge to make VA “patient choice” more widely available.

This is exactly what has transpired, with serious manpower shortages and red ink throughout the VHA. Walz was absolutely right, and he should take that good judgment into office if he wins.

A VA Union Ally

Fixing the VA in 2025

On the website’s policy section, Harris and Walz promise “end[ing] veteran homelessness, investing in mental health and suicide prevention efforts,” and “expanding economic opportunity for military and veteran families.”

Platform Differences

This lone paragraph, buried in the Republican platform adopted in Milwaukee, leads off with immigrant bashing. The party pledges to “end luxury housing and Taxpayer benefits” for border-crossers and “use those savings to shelter and treat homeless Veterans.” In addition, a second Trump administration will “expand Veterans’ Healthcare Choices, protect Whistleblowers, and hold accountable poorly performing employees not giving our Veterans the care they deserve.”

“Going forward,” the Democrats declare, “we will strengthen VA care by fully funding inpatient and outpatient care and long-term care, and by upgrading medical facility infrastructure.” The adverse impact of Biden administration outsourcing on funding for all of the above is not mentioned. The platform also reminds voters that, as president, Trump “pushed to cut funding for veterans’ benefits.”

Tying Trump to Project 2025

According to Deluzio, the “ultimate endgame of these plans—to dismantle the VA’s clinical care mission—should send shivers down the spines of America’s veterans and those who want them to have the best care.”

According to these MISSION Act defenders, “community care is more cost-effective than VA’s direct care system”—despite all evidence to the contrary. It also doesn’t provide care that is suited to the particular needs of veterans.

Between now and Election Day, it will take a lot more truth-telling and plainspokenness by people like Walz and Deluzio to counter the steady drumbeat of disinformation directed at veterans. And it will take the commitment to a new way forward to roll back the bipartisan damage of privatization.

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