Veterans: Eliminate the VA medical program

The 2017 Veterans Affairs medical program costs $65 billion. However, veterans still face excruciating and unacceptable waits and overcrowded, understaffed and largely uninviting facilities. When obtained, care is super.

Eliminate the VA medical program, sell facilities and property, and transition staff to civilian practice.

When soldiers exit service, they’re issued a discharge statement. The services should add a code to correspond to a level of required future care. This way, veterans can obtain the same timely care at medical facilities civilians sometime take for granted. Veterans would only need to provide their Social Security number to allow providers to match the care allowed. Simple.

An extension of failed politics, war scars soldiers and families, drags down national morale and drains the treasury. War is a costly endeavor, regardless of the outcome.

Our defenders of freedom earned the right to necessary care as the cost of failed politics, so vote carefully. Care should not be an afterthought and is an earned right, not a privilege.

It’s sickening to hear of waits resulting in veteran deaths, suicides and lack of regard for the very best of our fellow Americans. The current VA medical program must be abolished, post-haste.

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 1:20 PM with the headline "Veterans: Eliminate the VA medical program."