Private care not answer for veterans

Now that Dr. David Shulkin is no longer Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the issue of whether its health service for veterans will be moved in the direction of privatization becomes an issue. As a veteran who following retirement has received his care from the Cape Girardeau VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic, I hope VA health care will not be privatized.

Private health care is not necessarily superior to VA health care. For several years before I retired, multiple private health care providers told me that a painful physical problem was arthritis. In fact I had a condition which required surgical repair.

The private health care system is presently stretched for resources particularly in rural communities, and even with the Affordable Care Act, 28 million people still do not have health insurance. The VA treats nine million veterans. Adding them in large numbers to the private system would only add patients to a system which is already short of the personnel needed to treat this country's citizens.

One of the primary purposes of the VA health care system is to make certain that individuals suffering chronic health problems resulting from their military service receive timely and quality health care. What will a private health care provider do in the situation where he or she has a severely disabled veteran who needs care, but the government will not pay them a fee as high as the doctor can receive by treating a patient who is not a veteran?

JOHN PIEPHO, Cape Girardeau