Vet to Trump: "Taking money from me to give to profit-making medical providers is wrong"

How does Trump/Putin plan to keep his promise to improve health care for our nation's veterans? He is going to take away disability payments for a quarter of a million veterans. These are military men and women who suffered such extensive injuries that they can no longer work. Part of their contract with the federal government that employed them to keep the nation safe was that if they were injured, the nation would take care of their injuries. If they died, the nation would take care of their loved ones. And, if they suffered injuries that made it impossible for them to work, the nation would provide for them rather than just dumping them onto the streets where they would have to scramble for themselves in a world which increasingly has little to offer the poor, homeless and disabled.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/06/01/proposed-va-benefit-cut-angers-elderly-disabled-vets.html

""Taking money from me to give to profit-making medical providers is wrong. You are screwing me and my wife," said a former Marine sergeant who served with the 26th Marines at Khe Sanh. "It makes no sense for [the Department of Veterans Affairs] to have to fund the Choice program.

"We did our part by serving, and so many gave their lives. Maybe some of those supporting the bill should visit the VA hospitals with veterans suffering and just waiting for their final call. Then tell their families, 'He was a good man,' " said the sergeant.

Major veterans organizations slammed the budget proposals as soon as they were issued and also questioned Shulkin's push to expand the Choice program.

"We are very concerned the administration's request to make the Veterans Choice Program a permanent, mandatory program could lead to a gradual erosion of the VA health care system," the Veterans of Foreign Wars said in written testimony to a hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee last month."

The "CHOICE" program is designed to get veterans who do not live near VA medical facilities accessible, timely care. It was never meant to take the place of the Veterans Administration--except in the dreams of orthopedic surgeons like Secretary of Health Tom Price, who takes money from the artificial joint industry to promote their product. And it was never, ever intended to take the food out of the mouths of hungry, disabled veteran so that a private sector surgeon somewhere could make a Lexus payment by putting an artificial knee in a patient who does not need one. Or performing unnecessary back surgery, sinus surgery, hysterectomies---

But let's not get into what constitutes necessary medical care. That is something that must be decided on a case by case basis. Instead, I ask you to consider the ethical question---by asking disabled veterans to give up food and housing in order to pay for health care for other veterans, is not the Trump administration creating a sort of Death Panel? As in "You are too disabled to work, therefore your need to eat and have a roof over your head is less important than fixing someone else's knee so he can get back to work. Only those who can work count in Trump's America. Everyone else belongs on an ice floe."

If they'll do it to the veterans, they will do it to every one of us. Because Trump actually (claims to) give a damn about the military. The rest of us were put on this earth to make him and his Russian handlers money.