Veterans
Dr. Kelli Ward believes our country’s veterans deserve the very best healthcare America has to offer.
Dr. Ward’s husband, Michael, served prestigiously as a Colonel in the Arizona Air National Guard for 33 years, eventually retiring as the State Air Surgeon for Arizona. During his service to our nation, Michael voluntarily deployed to both Iraq and Turkey in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. As a military wife, Dr. Ward felt firsthand the worry and concern for a military member who was deployed overseas, in harm’s way.
Sadly, after surviving the dangers of the battlefield, many of our veterans return home to a country that does not fully appreciate the magnitude of their service. Worse, the healthcare they receive upon their return too often fails to live up to the standard that they were promised.
The Veterans Administration, the nation’s largest integrated health system, is a single-payer health system, owned, run, and financed by the federal government. Reforming the VA is the first step to ensuring our veterans receive the level of care they deserve.
The VA is responsible for providing healthcare to wounded warriors directly through its own government-run network of hospitals, clinics, and doctors. Unfortunately, while many VA nurses and doctors are working admirably to care for our veterans, the never-ending backlog in processing claims has caused many veterans to lose confidence in the VA.
It’s important to remember that many veterans have special healthcare needs that are often better served by medical facilities and doctors in their communities, many of which have no VA facility. One solution to this problem is offering America’s veterans a choice to seek timely healthcare from the private healthcare sector if they determine that the VA is taking too long to provide essential healthcare. The full and complete interests of veterans will be best served by a system of choice and market competition.
Dr. Ward believes in providing any veteran who feels the VA is making them wait too long for covered care with the ability to take their Veterans ID card to a private doctor or facility to get the care they require, without waiting for a bureaucrat’s permission. The VA would then cover the cost of the doctor’s bill. This freedom of choice would immediately create competition for the VA by providing healthcare for eligible veterans.
Additionally, the VA must continue eliminating the red tape and extra layers of bureaucracy that has led years of mismanagement at the agency.
We've already seen incredible gains at the VA under President Trump's leadership.
Take, for instance, the VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, which tracks and publishes wait times at every VA hospital, drastically increasing mental health services across the country and developing a way to electronically transfer veterans’ medical records from the Department of Defense to the VA to simplify their transition from service to civilian life. This is a great improvement – but President Trump understands that more work remains.
Dr. Ward is committed to ensuring that veterans have more choice, better healthcare, and shorter wait times. As a senator, she will be at the forefront of the fight to improve healthcare for every American veteran. We must deliver on the promises that we've made to our veterans.
Sources:
http://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/reforming-veterans-health-care-now-and-the-future
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-24/trump-s-quiet-progress-on-veterans-affairs
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-06-23/trump-signs-historic-bill-to-transform-va
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/27/trumps-breakthrough-for-veterans.html