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Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) cautioned that he was fully aware that such a move would close down hospitals for veterans. But, Westmoreland argued that taking down the government is worth “the pain” because government programs are like a “gangrene” that “need to be cleaned out”:

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I was unfortunate to cut myself with a chainsaw. I don’t know how many of you have cut yourself with a chainsaw. Chainsaw is not the cleanest instrument if you’re going to cut yourself. [...] He said this is going to sting a little bit and it hurt like crazy. But you know what, if he didn’t clean out that wound, it would have never healed. I would have got gangrene. I would have died from it. And what has happened with this country, we have put bandaids on things that need to be cleaned out. It’s going to take some pain for us to do the things that we need to do to right the ship.

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has talked of a new mission for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and argued that veterans with non-combat medical problems should be given vouchers to receive care at private, for-profit hospitals - in other words, an end to the kind of universal health care the government has guaranteed veterans for generations.

A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that "VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care" and "received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up" than that delivered by other U.S. health care providers.

Paul Sullivan, a Gulf War veteran and executive director of the non-partisan Veterans for Common Sense, says that for McCain, free market ideology is more important than providing care for former soldiers.

"Ideologues like John McCain and George Bush hate the fact that the VA exists," Sullivan said. "They hate the fact that there's a functional example out there of the government providing better care at a lower cost than the private sector," Sullivan said. "The problem that the VA faces now is that the Bush administration failed to hire enough doctors and disability claims adjusters when they chose to go to war with Iraq. If these doctors had been hired, the VA would be an example of the government doing good work. McCain doesn't want the public to see that."

McCain has also never spelled out what he means by a "combat injury", leading many veterans worried they could be left out in the cold. "If I'm driving a Humvee in Iraq and a roadside bomb explodes and I veer off the road and crush my arm and end up losing it and needing a prosthetic, is that a combat wound according to Sen. McCain?" asked retired Air Force Colonel Richard Klass, the president of the Council for a Livable World's VETPAC, which has endorsed Obama.

Official Pentagon policy calls such an incident a non-combat injury. Technically speaking, the only soldiers "wounded" in combat are those hit by direct enemy fire. As of Aug. 5, Department of Defense statistics showed 32,799 U.S. soldiers had been "wounded" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 10,685 had sustained "non-hostile" injuries which required a medical evacuation, while 29,881 were classified as "ill" enough to be airlifted out of the war-zone.

McCain has repeatedly voted against fully funding veterans' health care. In 2005 and 2006, McCain voted against expanding mental health care and readjustment counseling for service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, efforts to expand inpatient and outpatient treatment for injured veterans, and proposals to lower co-payments and enrollment fees veterans must pay to obtain prescription drugs.

McCain's vote also helped defeat a proposal by Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow that would have made veterans' health care an entitlement programme like social security, so that medical care would not become a political football to be argued over in Congress each budget cycle.

Larry Scott, who edits the website VAWatchdog.org. sees McCain's plan as a way to phase out the government's commitment to those who've served. "For every vet who would get a VA card, that would be one less vet using the VA," he wrote in an e-mail to IPS. That "would mean, in a short period of time, a smaller budget, fewer locations...and the eventual dismantling of the best health care system in the country."

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Republicans say it could save the state $18 million, but Michigan House Democrats want to know how and say they're against privatizing the states veterans homes. Dave Hall, appointed by Governor Jennifer Granholm to the state's veterans board, says privatizing veterans homes would diminish the quality of care that veterans deserve.

"I believe the quality of life and care for our veterans would also suffer greatly," said Hall. "And that's why, as far as I'm concerned, I believe in digging in our heels and trying to do everything possible to stop any kind of transfer of veterans homes into the private sector."

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When asked point blank if things like prescription drugs and doctor’s visits should be covered by the VA, Angle callously answered:

“No, not if you’re moving towards a privatized system.” When pressed later in the conversation on specifics, Angle demurred when asked if eliminating VA coverage would simply leave veterans out in the cold, saying that was something the President or other members of Congress could figure out.

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He also had his eyes on Veterans Administration hospitals.

“If you look at how the government runs VA hospitals and Medicare and Medicaid, you can see that the whole system is inefficient,” Scott told theSouth Florida Business Journal the same year. “The things we are doing wrong in health care can be corrected if private business could run national health care administration.”

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The University of Michigan surveys Americans on their satisfaction with various health care systems, they find routinely that veterans rate their experience with V.A. care above the rest of the U.S. health system. The 2008 survey found that 85 percent of veterans were satisfied with their V.A. care compared with 77 percent of people treated in private hospitals. And that`s fairly typical.

A study in "The New England Journal of Medicine" compared veterans` health care to Medicare, which itself is highly regarded. "The New England Journal of Medicine" study found that on 11 measures of quality, veterans facilities proved to be significantly better than Medicare.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance ranks health care plans. Who do they rank number one? They ranked number one is the V.A.

Like Social Security, like Medicare, you want to find out whether or not V.A. care works, go tell the nation`s veterans that you want to take the V.A. away. Go talk to the veterans` organizations. See what they think of privatizing veterans` care and ending the V.A.

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