PASS Joins Union Fight to Protect Veterans’ Care
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- Published: May 23, 2018
A coalition of 17 labor organizations joined forces to send a letter yesterday to the U.S. Senate opposing S.2372, the VA Mission Act. The bill gives the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) sweeping authority to privatize and dismantle large swaths of the VA health care system. PASS signed on to this letter hoping to prevent this harmful legislation from being passed and to protect the health and well-being of the nation’s veterans. PASS is honored to count among its members many men and women who served in the armed forces.
“This bill outsources primary care to the private sector, authorizes the outsourcing of entire service lines, and fails to address the chronic and prolonged issue of understaffing that is currently plaguing the VA,” the coalition wrote. According to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the VA currently has 49,000 open positions that Congress has refused to fill.
“Too much is at stake for veterans, their families and everyone who benefits from the VA’s extraordinary accomplishments to succumb to political pressures to hurriedly pass potentiallly damaging changes with many unknown consequences,” concluded the letter.
PASS is opposed to privatizing the VA health care system and joins the fight to protect the department and the dedicated public servants who take care of our veterans.