Why Vets on the Ballot Should Defend the VA!

In this crucial election year, men and women who served in the military are seeking Democratic primary votes by branding themselves as more effective foes of Republican policies.

They include new faces like Graham Platner in Maine, now his party’s presumptive nominee for the U.S. Senate seat held for five terms by Republican Susan Collins. In the Bay State, Congressman Seth Moulton is also playing both the vet and youth card in his primary challenge to nearly 80-year old Senator Ed Markey.

“We can’t just have people who seem like tired old Democrats,” the former Marine captain from Salem declared last year. To prove that point, Moulton recently jousted with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a fellow post 9/11 combat vet, over the rising cost of war in Iran.

Former soldiers, who are Democrats, voice similar concerns about White House assaults on domestic social programs, immigrants and labor, civil liberties and voting rights, and environmental protection.

But public provision of healthcare for nine million vets is also under attack by the Trump Administration. And not every former service member running for office, locally or regionally, is on the same side of that public policy dispute. Only some Democrats seem to appreciate what’s at stake for 100,000 veterans employed in good union jobs as care-givers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

As documented in April by the Globe, the direct care capacity of the VA has been seriously undermined by out-sourcing to the private healthcare industry. Many Democrats in Congress helped President Trump pass the VA MISSION of 2018, one his biggest first-term legislative victories, which accelerated this tectonic shift.

Since then, tens of billions of dollars--which should have been spent on the VA’s own high-quality, specialized treatment--was instead diverted to over 1.7 million private doctors and hospitals. This year, nearly a third of all VA spending on medical services will be diverted to Medicare-style reimbursement of outside vendors, who have less training and experience caring for veterans.

As a new RAND study found, New York state veterans referred outside the VA had only marginally improved access, while the cost of their care increased. In Massachusetts, as the Globe reported last month, VA facilities are suffering from staff cuts, fragmentation of patient care that was previously better coordinated, and longer in-house wait times. (This last problem is now a nationwide trend just documented by VetVoice Foundation, a research group aligned with the national Democratic Party.)

Graham Platner, a VA patient himself, has not just criticized Susan Collins for standing “shoulder to shoulder with Elon Musk” when his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made damaging VA cuts. Platner wants to stop the whole failed experiment with privatization before it makes rural healthcare access problems worse in states like his own. Because, if even more more vets are referred outside the VA,that will lead to downsizing or closure of its own public hospitals and clinics.

In contrast, Seth Moulton bucked his own then- Majority leader Nancy Pelosi, eight years ago, when he helped the GOP minority greatly expand VA privatization. He doubled down on that position last fall, claiming in a donor appeal that “he’s seen government healthcare fail at the VA.” On his Senate campaign website, Moulton further disses what he calls “one-size-fits-all government healthcare” for former service members.

That’s Republican-sounding rhetoric you won’t hear from Matt McLaughlin, a 45-year old resident of Somerville, running for the state senate this year. He’s a post- 9/11 veteran from a working-class family who went to college on the GI Bill and used other VA benefits and services after his return from Iraq.

McLaughlin became a city councilor in 2017. When ICE came after his immigrant neighbors and constituents, he stood up for them. He was a union member at the U.S. Department of Labor, helping private sector workers, before DOGE aimed its wrecking ball at that agency, with VA-style job cuts.

On. Beacon Hill, McLaughlin hopes to improve legislative oversight over state-run facilities for veterans, which do have a record of catastrophic failure. To benefit non-veterans, he favors “expanded access to mental healthcare, addiction services and public health infrastructure that meets people where they are.”

That just happens to be a very good description of what the federal government already provides via a nationwide network of 1,200 public hospitals and clinics for veterans. Unfortunately, if too many other politicians continue to embrace the “tired old” idea of privatization, the VA’s death by a thousand cuts will continue unabated, until affordable care is one more broken promise to those who served in the military.

Suzanne Gordon, co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, has written four books about veterans’ health care. Co-authored with Steve Early, a former Bay State union official, her latest book is Courage or Complicity? How Veterans are Responding to the Assault on Democracy, from PM Press.

On Monday, June 8, at 6 pm, both of these longtime Arlington residents will be participating in a roundtable discussion of veterans’ issues, hosted by State Senate candidate Matt McLaughlin. Join them at Casey’s Tavern at 173 Broadway in Somerville. Or learn more about McLaughlin’s campaign at: https://www.mclaughlinforsenate.com/