If you believe what the government tells you, the Department of Veterans Affairs exists so that a grateful nation can show its appreciation for those who have risked their lives in the interest of the national defense. However, the reality of VA services could only have you conclude that everyone in the VA is grossly incompetent or that's not its real purpose. There are lots of great, very capable individuals who take significant salary cuts and disadvantages in their careers to work at the VA, so that's not it. Could it be that the VA exists primarily as a pacifier? To make Americans think that veterans are taken care of? To make potential recruits think that they will be taken care of if maimed in war? To be a convenient political football? If it was truly set up for its stated purpose, you wouldn't have twenty two veterans committing suicide every day.
The answer to this problem is quite simple when you face up to the significance of it and can admit to its root cause. Government cannot be trusted with any system of healthcare. Power corrupts and right now the VA is controlled and perverted by those who use it to serve their own power. It's time to put the VA directly into the hands of veterans.
Privatize the VA as a charity owned by the veterans. Close some overseas bases. Liquidate the assets, give it an endowment. Or maybe if the Pentagon cared about veterans as much as its sponsors in the military industrial complex, it could find that six trillion it lost recently. Make the VA exempt from all "drug war" restrictions so veterans are free to research and pursue marijuana and other banned alternative treatments for PTSD. Give every veteran in America one voting share and I guarantee when those resources are in the hands of veterans helping veterans without government in the way, we will finally defeat this shameful epidemic of veteran suicides.
I am the author of FREEDOM!, a book endorsed (I mean banned) by the US Department of “Justice.” You can get a copy here. I’m running for Not-President in 2020 on the platform of the peaceful, orderly, and responsible dissolution of the United States federal government. You can find out more here. I am currently on my #TaxationIsTheft tour! You can find an event near you here. Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me a message with their address.