A Critical Effort by VA Staff to Protect Veterans and the Nation’s Best and Only Genuine Healthcare System.
Early on the morning of Wednesday September 25th, a group of courageous physicians and other healthcare workers who have devoted their careers to the care of the nation’s veterans sent a letter of concern and protest to the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA’s Inspector General and key members of Congress like those who serve on the Senate and House Committees for Veterans Affairs. The letter, which was signed by over 170 VA staff – some who put their names down and some who signed anonymously – was titled “The Lincoln Declaration: a Letter of Concern about the Future of Veterans’ Healthcare.” It’s title was taken– as is the VA’s mission –from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address when, towards the end of the Civil War he promised that the nation would “care for those who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”
In this post I want to not only applaud the signers of this letter, who have put their jobs on the line to protect veterans as well as the integrity of a system that helps all Americans. I also want to put this letter into its proper context and explain why it is so important.
For almost a decade defenders of high quality veterans’ healthcare who have opposed the privatization of the largest and, in fact, only actual healthcare system in the United States (the US is replete with medical treatment facilities and systems but few if, any, address actual healthcare, which includes, but goes far beyond, medicine), have testified in Congress, written reports and articles, and mobilized to protect the VA. I and my colleagues at the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute (VHPI) have written and sponsored many of these appeals which have included VA nurses, psychologists, and social workers, as well as union members and leaders, among others. With some notable exceptions, physicians and their organizations have too often been absent from these appeals.
In this case, this effort to protect the VA and veterans has been led by physicians. That is noteworthy, not because I believe, like too many, that physicians play the central role in the healthcare system. They don’t.
This letter is so noteworthy because too many physicians have historically opposed the kind of national healthcare systems, like the VA, that are publicly funded, government run, and focus not only on narrow medical goals but also on what are known as the “social determinates of health,” that are as critical, if not more so, than medical treatment.
It is also worth remembering, that these physicians and the all other healthcare staff who have signed on to the letter, have not only taken a great risk in alerting the public to the dangers of privatizing the VA. Far before writing this letter or signing it, physicians and all other VA staff have made huge sacrifices just to work at the VA. Physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists, social workers and every other category of VA worker, have sacrificed thousands – sometimes many thousands – of dollars to work in a system whose mission is to serve veterans and the broader public. They didn’t take these jobs because they couldn’t find better paying or more prestigious ones. They took these jobs because they wanted to work in a mission – rather than profit – driven system. They took jobs working for some of the sickest, poorest and most complex (and sometimes crankiest) patients in the United States because they want to serve those who served.
And from this administration, what do they get for their service and sacrifice? They get bombarded with memos telling them to please quit, memos accusing them of failing to advance “American prosperity,” memos advising them to find “more productive work,” elsewhere. As one VA physician recently told me, holding back tears, “We took this job and are still doing it because we felt we were doing our duty to America. But all they are doing is putting out all this stuff about how lazy and incompetent we are and trying to paint this picture in which we are the bad guys. It’s a constant and insidious drumbeat.”
Sadly, these VA staff who have done so much for veterans have also gotten very little support from the traditional veterans’s service organizations (VSOs) whose millions of members they serve.
Well hopefully this will change, and soon.
So please read the letter and the excellent Guardian article that was published soon after it was sent out.
To quote from the letter:
“For 160 years, this vision has inspired VA healthcare workers to honor Lincoln’s promise by serving those who served. We are those healthcare workers: active and retired VA clinicians writing on personal time without use of government resources; faculty at VA affiliated medical schools; care providers across the nation who trained at VA and remain committed to its mission. We have offered our veterans lifesaving therapies and groundbreaking research; removed their cancers and repaired their hearts; seen them through crises and comforted them as they lay dying.
“We are also veterans who receive care at the VA, caregivers who support them, and public servants whose work complements the other services VA provides to the nation: health education, research, and public health emergency response.
“ We write to raise urgent concerns about proposed policies which, in addition to ones already enacted, will undermine VA’s healthcare system, overwhelm VA’s budget, and negatively affect the lives of all veterans. We have witnessed these ongoing harms and can provide evidence and testimony of their impacts.”
To Read the Full Letter Click Here.
