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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Koch Brothers are About to Destroy Veterans' Health Care and No One Knows About It
Today, the VA is seeing more patients than ever before while continuing to deliver quality, integrated care designed just for veterans. There is still a lot of progress to be made in filling the more than 40,000 job vacancies at VA medical facilities across the country, but the trend is undoubtedly headed in the right direction.
Now along comes Representative Jeff Miller and Senator Marco Rubio who saw an opportunity in the waitlist scandal; not an opportunity to improve access to care for veterans, but an opportunity to chip away at the basic rights to due process that protect all VA employees from discrimination and wrongful firing.
Miller and Rubio's proposals - H.R. 1994 and S. 1082 - would do away with those vital rights with the stroke of a pen. They do nothing to address the current $2.5 billion funding shortfall facing the VA; they do nothing to add new hospital beds or fill vacant positions. Their proposal instead would make every VA employee - doctors, nurses, benefit claims processors - at-will employees who can be fired at any time with little to no recourse.
But Miller and Rubio are not alone in pushing this dangerous agenda; they are doing so with the full backing of a "veterans organization" called Concerned Veterans of America, which was recently exposed as a Koch Brothers-funded front group in a scathing report. Unlike other veterans groups, CVA lobbies aggressively to privatize the health care veterans fought for, gut the rights of VA workers, and reduce veterans' benefits in the name of smaller government.
Now along comes Representative Jeff Miller and Senator Marco Rubio who saw an opportunity in the waitlist scandal; not an opportunity to improve access to care for veterans, but an opportunity to chip away at the basic rights to due process that protect all VA employees from discrimination and wrongful firing.
Miller and Rubio's proposals - H.R. 1994 and S. 1082 - would do away with those vital rights with the stroke of a pen. They do nothing to address the current $2.5 billion funding shortfall facing the VA; they do nothing to add new hospital beds or fill vacant positions. Their proposal instead would make every VA employee - doctors, nurses, benefit claims processors - at-will employees who can be fired at any time with little to no recourse.
But Miller and Rubio are not alone in pushing this dangerous agenda; they are doing so with the full backing of a "veterans organization" called Concerned Veterans of America, which was recently exposed as a Koch Brothers-funded front group in a scathing report. Unlike other veterans groups, CVA lobbies aggressively to privatize the health care veterans fought for, gut the rights of VA workers, and reduce veterans' benefits in the name of smaller government.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/28/1406562/-The-Koch-Brothers-are-About-to-Destroy-Veterans-Health-Care-and-No-One-Knows-About-It?detail=facebook
http://bridgeproject.com/app/uploads/Concerned-Veterans-for-America-Report.pdf
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The Koch Brothers are About to Destroy Veterans' Health Care and No One Knows About It (Original Post)
Bubzer
Jul 2015
OP
So what does the American Legion, VFW and Viet Nam Vets think about this action?
LakeVermilion
Jul 2015
#1
LakeVermilion
(1,047 posts)1. So what does the American Legion, VFW and Viet Nam Vets think about this action?
Bubzer
(4,211 posts)2. They may not know about it.
Pauldg47
(640 posts)3. I bet they know now!!
madokie
(51,076 posts)5. This is news to me
I'm not liking it one bit either
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)4. Good lord, vets. They never really loved you.
If you're not cannon fodder over there, too bad for you. I guess.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)6. This is a Republican stealth attack on the veterans of America.
Just what we would expect from Fascists.