I got the call from the VA hospital on a dark winter day. My 90-year-old dad, a WWII veteran, was there and in dire need of a triple bypass heart surgery. Three of the four main arteries to his heart were clogged.
Dad recovered completely. Several years earlier he went through a six-month VA treatment for prostate cancer ? another success. And Dad raves about his care. As you can imagine, I am so happy to still have my dad and grateful to the VA for saving him.
In spite of its many successes like the first liver transplant and significant research, Republicans want to kill off the VA as we know it. They want to privatize it.
That’s just crazy. The VA has had its share of problems like the terrible wait times and poor service crisis. But the GOP knew those problems were coming. It was part of their malevolent plan.
During this crisis, Republicans slipped temporary privatization services into the VA to ease the veterans’ problems. ?But putting a for-profit business between the veterans and their health care makes no sense.
The GOP wants to privatize everything it can get its hands on ? the Post Office, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare), and the VA. And we know what happens. The dollar drives everything ? not service to the citizens.
Republicans’ Plan To Destroy VA
We have to understand that Republicans have a solid plan in place to privatize most of the big government agencies. Here is how they do it:
- Create a crisis by under-financing an organization
- Disregard the organization’s obvious increasing needs such as,
- The huge number of expected returning wounded veterans
- The well-known shortage of general care physicians
- Slip a partial-privatization plan into any legislative fix
- Watch that plan erode the foundation of the organization
- When the organization becomes shaky, privatize it.
Secretary McDonald’s VA Fixes
The VA is like a huge cruise ship. It takes a long time to turn it around. But the new Secretary of Veteran Affairs, Robert McDonald has made surprising strides in his few months on the job. He said in his government website remarks,
“It begins with our mission and immediate objective: To better serve and care for those who have ‘borne the battle’ and for their families and survivors. From there, we developed a series of goals and actions that enable the Department to move quickly and decisively to:
- Rebuild trust with Veterans and stakeholders.
- Improve service delivery, focusing on Veteran outcomes.
- And set a course for long-term excellence and reform.”
Republicans set the VA up to fail by ignoring the inevitable numbers of Middle East wars? wounded and the declining number of physicians.
Even though their plan for a fix looks good, just know it is but the first step in their plot to undermine the VA. Republicans have every intention of making their temporary privatization permanent in 2016.
Apparently in their greedy plan to privatize the VA, they don’t care about ‘collateral damage.’ Well, we do!
