When our troops come home, the VA health system keeps our nation’s promise to care for those who have borne the battle. These brave men and women served their country, and providing quality, veteran-focused VA health care and benefits is the least our nation can do to serve them in return. According to a shocking new report issued this week, however, not everyone sees it that way.
A Koch Brothers-funded front group called the Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) has been making waves on Capitol Hill lately, promoting a long list of anti-VA, anti-worker proposals that would break this sacred promise and leave veterans out to dry. Led by former Wall Street bank employee and failed Senate candidate Pete Hegseth, CVA has been the driving force behind efforts to dismantle the VA health care system and trim service members’ hard-earned disability and other benefits.
Unlike veterans groups whose mission is to provide critical services to veterans across America, CVA seems only to be concerned with promoting the Koch Brothers’ radical political agenda in Washington, D.C. In exchange for the millions in funding they’ve received from the groups associated with the infamous anti-government billionaires, they are also waging a campaign to reform Social Security and Medicare which veterans and their families heavily rely on, and government spending overall. In Koch-speak, “reform” means “cut relentlessly and put the rest toward tax breaks for the wealthy.”
Though it comes as no surprise that the Koch Brothers would support these radical attacks on veterans’ health care, doing so in the guise of a veterans’ advocacy group is a new low. CVA’s agenda is a betrayal to the millions of veterans who rely on VA health care. It is critical that the veterans community and those that support our nation’s heroes understand the true nature of this group and stop its radical agenda in its tracks.
Despite CVA’s harsh anti-VA rhetoric, the truth is that veterans consistently rate VA health care higher than private sector health care. Through 819 community-based outpatient clinics, 300 vet centers, 150 hospitals, 131 national cemeteries, 59 offices processing veterans’ claims, the VA is purpose-built to care for the needs of our veterans now and in the future. When given the choice, veterans choose the VA. Hear what veterans have to say about their VA care at www.afge.org/askavet.