AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Memorial Day VA Privatization Bills-Stop The Privatization Of The Veterans Administration

Veterans Healthcare Action Campaign

5/16/2018 11:26 AM

Two new bills being voted on in the next weeks:

In the next two weeks, Congress will vote on a bill that will significantly influence the future of the Veterans Health Administration. The VA Mission Act of 2018, H.R. 5674, has already been voted out of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, and will reach the full House very soon. The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee will be voting on a mirror image bill and may receive favorable treatment there. Then it will be voted on by the full Senate. Although this bill has been supported by virtually all veterans service organizations (VSOs) , after careful analysis of the bill (please see our website for the full analysis), we believe it should be opposed by every veteran and every American concerned with the delivery of high quality care to veterans, as well as the maintenance and improvement of a healthcare system that can serve as a model for how health care should be delivered.
Provisions in this bill will open the floodgates for expanded outsourcing of VHA care to the private sector. The high costs of this outsourcing will threaten VHA care and caregivers, leading to staff layoffs and facility closures. Because of sequestration, the high cost of this will also pit veteran healthcare against other needed government programs.
Provisions in the bill will fragment the VHA’s model of integrated care by channeling more veterans into walk-in clinics that are already a subject of controversy in the private sector system. The bill will create an unaccountable commission that will assess which VHA facilities should be closed. Although many VSOs believe that this Commission will be subject to public control and can lead to creating expanded facilities and much needed infrastructure repair, we worry that a Commission chosen largely by President Trump and a deeply anti VHA Congress will do just the opposite. The kind of increased outsourcing of care encouraged by the Act threatens to deprive VHA facilities of patients and staff and justify their closure.
Veterans service organizations are convinced that these problems are manageable, can be monitored, and even reversed. We are not so sanguine about the ability to harness the outsourcing of care and protect veterans from predatory providers more interested in getting their hands on taxpayer money than serving vulnerable veterans.

Contact your representatives in Congress:

We urge you to contact your lawmakers at 833-480-1637 and ask them to vote against the bill. If it passes, we also urge you to make sure they monitor the roll out of an experiment that may deliver lower quality care to veterans at higher cost, overburden the private sector healthcare system, pit veterans against private sector patients, and erode a shining model of healthcare that serves not only veterans but all Americans.
Sample Letters HERE