SAN FRANCISCO -- If John McCain is elected 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, suggesting that veterans with noncombat medical problems be given vouchers to receive care at private, for-profit hospitals. In other words, McCain is seeking to cut off the kind of universal health care that the government has guaranteed to 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 had argued that giving veterans a VA card that they can use for private doctors would shorten the long wait times that 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 Center 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 nonpartisan Veterans for Common Sense, said 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 said, noting that the Republican candidate also wants to partially privatize 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 noncombat injury. Technically speaking, the only Soldiers "wounded" in combat are those hit by direct enemy fire. As of Aug. 5, Department of Defense statistics showed that 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 skeptical 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. He also voted against efforts to expand inpatient and outpatient treatment for injured veterans, and against proposals to lower the copayments and enrollment fees that veterans must pay to obtain prescription drugs.
McCain's vote also helped defeat a proposal by Sen. Debbie Stabenow that would have made veterans' health care an entitlement program such as social security, so that medical care would not become a political football to be argued over in Congress each budget cycle.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a D+ when they scored his voting record, whereas Obama got a B+. In addition McCain has 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 Web site 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."
© Copyright 2008 Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
