Did Congress Try to Break VA to Sell Off Veterans?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 26, 2014

It is about someone asks this question. Did the Congress purposely set out to break the VA to sell off the care of veterans to private for profit corporations?

I am hardly the first to think that very well may be the case. Between the money pharmaceutical companies have made off medications doing more harm than good, no matter how many years the reports go back, to billions spent on making PTSD troops believe it is their fault with the failure called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness all the way up to betraying all the troops by not making sure the DOD and VA records system worked together and there were enough working for the VA.

How much more evidence do we need to know before we ever ask that question?

Where was all the outrage 7 years ago before 56,210 veteran suicides?

How about politicians making speeches years ago to do just that?

At least now they admit it.

GOP leaders, whistle-blower join in calls to privatize veterans' care

“It’s absolutely a good idea,” Dr. Margaret Moxness, who exposed long waits at a VA facility in West Virginia, told “Fox News Sunday.” “This should have happened years ago.”

Boehner said Saturday that he supported the idea of “privatizing” the department two decades ago, and that he has a renewed interest amid allegations that government employees kept secret records to conceal veterans’ long waits for medical treatment and that as many as 40 died while waiting.

The idea of privatization has gained steam since allegations of a wait-list at a VA facility in Phoenix were exposed last month, but the concept has been posed for years by conservative lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2008 and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who both faced a backlash from such groups as the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Politicians let it get worse shirking their duty to them. Maybe now you know why they let all of this happen!

This shouldn't surprise anyone since they also tried to privatize the wars when there were more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than there were members of the military.

If you lost a son or daughter to suicide tied to military service, blame them for not fixing the problems years ago instead of trying to make sure it didn't work so they could do what they wanted to. Blame them for the backlog of claims. We've been watching this horror show for years for far too many when we were wondering at the same time why so many others have received excellent care. Now you know the rest of the story and they are no longer ashamed to admit that this was their goal. It didn't matter how many had to suffer for it.

UPDATE

Veterans Groups Lash Out at Republican Senator
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
MAY 26, 2014

WASHINGTON — An “open letter” from a senior Republican senator to the nation’s veterans in which he castigates the leadership of veterans organizations has prompted a brutal war of words over the Memorial Day weekend, including a promise from the Veterans of Foreign Wars that its “hat in hand” approach to Congress will turn more combative.

The burgeoning controversy over delayed access to care at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals has always contained risks for Republicans pushing the issue. The logical conclusions of the push would be either a politically difficult effort to privatize veterans’ health care or to supply substantially more money to a system burdened by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an option veterans groups have demanded but Republican leaders have resisted.

The open letter from Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee — and the groups’ responses — pushed that conflict into the open. Mr. Burr, angry that only the American Legion has called for the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, accused the groups of being “more interested in defending the status quo within the V.A., protecting their relationships with the agency, and securing access to the secretary and his inner circle,” than helping members.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans and the Paralyzed Veterans of America hit back hard.
read more here