WASHINGTON — Most members of a veteran-led advocacy group who answered its new survey want incoming elected officials to strengthen the Department of Veterans Affairs health system rather than shrink or privatize it, the group said Nov. 3.
Common Defense, a progressive grassroots organization of veterans founded in 2016, said 85% of the 457 members who took its survey agreed the VA and the Veterans Health Administration should be improved and expanded, including 68% who strongly agreed. Only 4.6% supported cutting or privatizing VA staff and services, while 93% opposed it, according to the group.
The group said 77% of respondents trust the VA to provide the care they need, and 84% of VA health care users said they always or usually got care when they needed it over the past year.
On a scale of 0 to 100, members rated VA health care at 78, VA Community Care — which pays for veterans to see private providers — at 72 and private health care at 67, the survey found. Asked which they would rather see funded, 2% chose Community Care alone, 38% chose the Veterans Health Administration and 55% said both were equally important.
“Veterans aren’t asking for the VA to be torn down. We’re asking for it to be built up,” said Naveed Shah, an Army veteran and the group’s political director. “What they want from incoming lawmakers is more doctors, shorter waits, and real investment, not cuts dressed up as reform.”
Asked to name the one improvement they most wanted, members most often cited more staffing and hiring and shorter wait times, the group said. It identified mental health care as a weak spot: members’ ratings of VA mental health services dropped from 71 over their lifetimes to 65 in the past 12 months, the only service with a meaningful decline, according to the survey.
Respondents were also pessimistic about the economy and the nation. Ninety-five percent said the country is on the wrong track, and 73% said their family is worse off than a year ago, the group said.
“Veterans earned their care, and the VA is where they want to receive it,” said Jose Vasquez, an Army veteran and the group’s executive director. “We’re prepared to hold every incoming official to that standard.”
Common Defense said it surveyed members online from Sept. 3 to Oct. 25 through invitations sent to its email list of more than 500,000 veterans, military family members and supporters. The group said the survey is not a random sample and describes respondents, not all veterans. Respondents were 97% veterans, 74% men and 86% white, with a median age of about 71, and results were unweighted with no margin of error reported. When veterans’ responses were weighted to the national veteran population by age, race and ethnicity, 86% agreed the VA should be improved and expanded, the group said.
This report is based on information from Common Defense.
Source: Common Defense
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