Which Veterans on the Ballot Defend VA Health Care?

There’s a difference between candidates who have used VA health care and want to preserve it, and those who haven’t and want to privatize it.

By Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early, The American Prospect

It’s become a perennial trend: Democratic candidates who served in the military are wooing voters by presenting themselves as tougher, more effective public servants. Across the country, anti-MAGA “service candidates” have questioned billions in new Pentagon spending on another Middle East war, amid Donald Trump’s assault on domestic social programs, immigrants and labor, civil liberties and voting rights, and environmental protection.

Unfortunately, too few of these service candidates have been equally vocal about saving the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) health care system from a failed bipartisan experiment with privatization that began under the Obama administration. During Trump’s second term, not only is public provision of health care for nine million former service members at risk, but so are services the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides all Americans by teaching future health care professionals and conducting critical research. Also at risk are good union jobs for 100,000 veterans (and 300,000 others) employed by the VA.

Where politicians stand on the issue often reflects their own class background, rank in the military, and material circumstances after they return to civilian life. Their positions also reflect their views about broader health care reform, including proposals like Medicare for All or the increasing corporatization of the non-VA system.

Vets from working-class backgrounds who have held blue-collar jobs depend on veterans health care and benefits far more than former members of the officer class. The latter include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), who is running for Senate this year against incumbent Democrat Ed Markey. Both Hegseth and Moulton graduated from Ivy League schools and then did postgraduate work at Harvard, before getting hired as a broker on Wall Street or corporate manager, respectively.