[HM2Viking]

Times have changed since McCain needed veterans services so urgently. And for many of those thirty-five years, McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, the candidate who talks the best talk on veterans issues, has demonstrated a tendency to work against veterans' interests, voting time after time against funding and in favor of privatizing services--in other words, of rolling back the VA's improvements by supporting some of the same policies that wrecked Walter Reed.
During a March 2005 Senate budget debate, McCain voted to kill an amendment that would have "increase[d] veterans medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006." That amendment lacked an assured funding stream, but lest one mistake this incident for a maverick's stance against budget-busting, there's more. Just a year later McCain voted against an amendment that would have "increase[d] Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes." Two days after it failed, he voted to kill "an assured stream of funding for veterans' health care that [would] take into account the annual changes in the veterans' population and inflation to be paid for by restoring the pre-2001 top rate for income over $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy." That amendment died quietly, forty-six to fifty-four.
In September 2006 McCain voted to table an amendment to a Defense appropriations bill that would have prevented the department from contracting out support services at Walter Reed. The amendment was indeed tabled--by a vote of fifty to forty-eight, the sort of margin a true veterans' senator might have been able to flip if he really cared about veterans' healthcare.
"John McCain voted against veterans in 2004, '05, '06 and '07," says Jeffrey David Cox, who spent twenty-two years as a VA nurse before moving to the American Federation of Government Employees, where he serves as secretary-treasurer (AFGE represents employees of several federal agencies, including the VA). Cox is right.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080602/beutler

[herring_RN]

The Senate yesterday approved $165 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan well into the next presidency, but in a break with President Bush and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, it also approved billions of dollars in domestic spending that includes a generous expansion of veterans' education benefits. ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052300064.html

Don't our veterans deserve all we can do?

[wtbcrna]

Could you have found a more biased article? I basically agree with the way McCain voted on the VA issues and I am active duty AF. The VA is a bureaucratic nightmare that is in dire need of being privatized.

[herring_RN]

I love my country and believe that we can and should support the men and women we have sent to fight.

Twenty-five Republican senators broke with President Bush and voted Thursday for a major expansion of veterans benefits as part of a bill to finance another year of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

The proposal, adopted by a vote of 75-22, also provides money for extended unemployment insurance benefits and other domestic programs to which Bush has objected.- http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004433500_war23.html

The education benefits proposal passed by a 75-22 vote, more than enough to override a threatened White House veto - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/22/johnmccain.usa

Congress honors our post-9/11 soldiers, approving legislation to pay for their college education
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/5797430.html

"I have spent many days in the United States Senate, and I don't know of any days I will cherish more than this one," Republican Sen. John Warner declared. -
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121152378773017047.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Bob Dole supports the GI Bill - http://blogs.reuters.com/trail08/2008/05/23/on-veterans-education-bill-dole-backs-obama-over-mccain/

[herring_RN]

I am asking for the rationale for opposing rationale.
Don't recruiters tell them their school will be paid for?

Now that line can be true.
Don't they deserve that much after serving in a war?

[HM2Viking]

Originally Posted by wtbcrna

Could you have found a more biased article? I basically agree with the way McCain voted on the VA issues and I am active duty AF. The VA is a bureaucratic nightmare that is in dire need of being privatized.

I think that the article was asking a very simple question about Sen. McCains willingness to vote against funding veterans programs. He most recently opposed the improvement of the GI bill for veterans.

The VA like any health care system has issues with bureaucracy. The simple fact is that the VA provides better quality of health care at lower cost than the "efficient" private sector.

Over the last decade or two, the VHA system has become a worldwide leader in both the adoption and the invention of health-information technology, and it has leveraged its innovations into quantifiable gains in quality of care. As Harvard's Kennedy School noted when awarding the VHA its prestigious Innovations in American Government prize:

[The] VHA's complete adoption of electronic health records and performance measures have resulted in high-quality, low-cost health care with high patient satisfaction. A recent RAND study found that VHA outperforms all other sectors of American health care across the spectrum of 294 measures of quality in disease prevention and treatment. For six straight years, VHA has led private-sector health care in the independent American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Indeed, the VHA's lead in care quality isn't disputed. A New England Journal of Medicine study from 2003 compared the VHA with fee-for-service Medicare on 11 measures of quality. The VHA came out "significantly better" on every single one. The Annals of Internal Medicine pitted the VHA against an array of managed-care systems to see which offered the best treatment for diabetics. The VHA triumphed in all seven of the tested metrics. The National Committee for Quality Assurance, meanwhile, ranks health plans on 17 different care metrics, from hypertension treatment to adherence to evidence-based treatments. As Phillip Longman, the author of Best Care Anywhere, a book chronicling the VHA's remarkable transformation, explains: "Winning NCQA's seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. And who do you suppose is the highest ranking health care system? Johns Hopkins? Mayo Clinic? Massachusetts General? Nope. In every single category, the veterans health care system outperforms the highest-rated non-VHA hospitals."

at http://prospect.org/cs/articles?arti...lth_of_nations .

The VA can teach the rest of the country about how to achieve better quality of care at lower costs.

(Note who supported Veterans issues in the senate vote. Bob Dole. (A disabled vet treated in VA hospitals who used his GI educational benefits to lay the groundwork for a career in public service.) )

[wtbcrna]

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

I think that the article was asking a very simple question about Sen. McCains willingness to vote against funding veterans programs. He most recently opposed the improvement of the GI bill for veterans.

The VA like any health care system has issues with bureaucracy. The simple fact is that the VA provides better quality of health care at lower cost than the "efficient" private sector.

at http://prospect.org/cs/articles?arti...lth_of_nations .

The VA can teach the rest of the country about how to achieve better quality of care at lower costs.

(Note who supported Veterans issues in the senate vote. Bob Dole. (A disabled vet treated in VA hospitals who used his GI educational benefits to lay the groundwork for a career in public service.) )

You seem to have some personal agenda against McCain..? Not that I am for McCain (I am voting for Obama), but providing obvisously one sided questionable news articles from biased websites is not a way to make your point. The VA is not efficent/cost effective. The majority of the providers at the VA I worked at, that were VA employees, were there simply because they couldn't get a job anywhere else. You can think whatever you want about the VA, but my personal opinion is that it sucks. The only thing that privatizing parts of the VA won't do is protect some of the long term employees of the VA that don't do anything worthwhile but draw a paycheck from the government. Don't get me wrong there are some excellent employees at the VA, but they are far outweighed by the bad ones.

I don't really think we need more benefits until we fix the system delivering veteran's benefits now. You can vote in all the benefits in the world, but if you don't have appropriate vehicle/system to deliver it to veterans/AD then all those benefits are basically worthless.

[ZASHAGALKA]

Seriously?

Keep up this delusion/slur. It won't win the election.

I'm a vet and the current GI bill was great for me. It's not 'selling out' veterans to be opposed to a program that would cause an 18% attrition rate of active duty at a time when we need our active duty.

Playing off our active duty against our vets for vote pandering is over the top. The real 'sell out' is to play pandering games with our heroes. The concept that vets are being 'sold out' because they haven't been bribed enough is an insult.

~faith,
Timothy.

[HM2Viking]

Mr. McCain's voting record speaks for itself....

[herring_RN]

I pray that President Bush signs the bill.
And if it is vetoed that even more Senators vote to override the veto.

We need support for the men and women who have been sent over and over again. Called back after discharge. And after they are truly discharged they deserve the same opportunities our WWII veterans got.
That created the American middle class. It will be good for all of us.