Forum to Save the VA with Nancy Pelosi
Yesterday, I spoke about my new book at a wonderful forum in San Francisco on “The Threats to Veterans Healthcare” with Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi. The session was sponsored by the Veterans Healthcare Action Campaign. Other speakers included Michael Blecker of Swords to Plowshares, veteran Edgar Escobar, and Major General Mike Myatt. Over two hundred people came to learn more about how they can participate in the fight against VHA privatization–as patients, VHA staff members, and as union activists. In fact, so many came that the room was over-flowing. In the comment period, veterans spoke out from the floor with amazing stories about the importance of VHA care. To learn more about these issues, please order my new book The Battle for Veterans’ Healthcare and check out the website of Fighting for Veterans’ Healthcare, where you will find an excellent analysis of how Choice may dismantle the VA. For U.S. Representative Pelosi’s remarks and more on our panel, click here and to see the video of the event, here.
First, THANK YOU for being an advocate for what I and my fellow Veterans have experienced at V.A Healthcare centers, especially my many tests, etc., at the San Francisco V.A. that preceded my initial R-CHOP chemotherapy there for Agent Orange-caused ‘follicular lymphoma’ in early 2011. The whole staff is proficient and respectful, just as they are at the other Bay Area/NorCal V.A. facilities where I have received overall Healthcare since early 2009 (over 300 appointments and counting). Veterans have a unique range of Healthcare needs that the V.A. serves appropriately; and having so many fellow Veterans as those Healthcare providers makes for a level of understanding with us Veteran patients is one of the most important reasons, among many, that makes the V.A. system so great– and why it should NOT be privatized.
Thank you again, ma’am.
>Patrick Dwyer, Vietnam Veteran
Thank you so much for this.