To your correspondent who decries our veterans’ health care system as socialized medicine (“Do veterans deserve socialist health care?” July 30), I can only say that as a military widow, I feel very well served by the present combination of Medicare and Tricare for Life for us older ones—“the best insurance in the country,” two medical people said to me about my own situation.
My current experience is that of an old person, but my husband received care under the VA from the time he retired in 1969 until his death in 2000, and I hate to think of the time and worry if we’d had to be shopping for private, profit-driven care on top of all the constant pain he suffered.
If the Veterans Administration is dismantled, as your correspondent seems to advocate, and veterans “have the freedom to choose a health-care plan with a premium they and their families can afford,” do they go free-enterprise all the way and receive no government benefits at all? Would he tell the wounded, the crippled and ill, the aging and their families, “We have to draw a line against socialized health care”?
As the 92-year-old widow of an Air Force career man, I know my grievously ill husband thought, with so many others of his generation, that when he went into service in the 1940s he was entering into a contract with his government: He’d put on a uniform and give the productive years of his life to his country, regardless of danger, long separations from his family, often living in what can only be described as substandard housing, station changes and TDYs on short notice, and a rate of pay below what he could have earned in the private sector. In return, he was guaranteed medical care for life as part of his retired-pay package.
My husband retired on 50 percent disability in 1969, swiftly reclassified as 100 percent. His retirement years were physically painful, but they were eased by the fact that he was being cared for and that he was leaving me with the assurance of adequate medical care as needed.
I don’t know just what your correspondent is advocating, and I hope I don’t live to find out.
This article appears in Aug 13-20, 2009.
