Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
While Democrats push Sen. Bernie Sanders' bill to allow the Veterans Affairs Department to lease 27 new medical facilities and hire more doctors and nurses to reduce wait times for veterans seeking medical care, Republicans are
preparing to unveil their own plan. Sens. John McCain, Richard Burr, and Tom Coburn are teaming up on this one, and it's a safe bet it will involve privatized care:
“The solution to this problem is flexibility to the veteran to choose their health care, just like other people under other health care plans are able to do,” McCain said June 1 on “Face the Nation.”
Isn't it cute to watch all these wealthy senators not realizing that people on other health plans also face substantial wait times for appointments? And by cute I obviously mean rage-inducing. Not to mention the suggestion that veterans should just pop over to their local general practitioner—the one with the shortest wait time for appointments, who is definitely going to be the best doctor in the area—to have their spinal and brain injuries and missing limbs treated. Then there's the money question:
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, said in an interview after the announcement last week that Congress has “flooded the VA with money” in recent years.
Burr told reporters today that “money is not the problem.”
“But if down the road, once we reform it, if they need more money, the Congress will respond to it,” he said.
The VA may have been flooded with money in recent years. It's also been flooded with veterans of Republican wars, many of them with grievous injuries. So when Republicans like Burr, who
participated in the filibuster of increased funding for veterans' health care in February, claim that "if they need more money," Congress will act, it rings a little hollow. They need more money. You blocked it. Quit pretending that's not what happened.