Fought for America? Bush Still Won’t Give You Health Care

That debt is still unpaid. According to a new report by Harvard Medical School researchers, published last week in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Public Health, millions of veterans and their family members have not been getting the medical care they need.

People assume that veterans automatically get health care from Veterans Affairs (VA). They don’t. Despite their military service, the Bush Administration requires most veterans to pay additional money for insurance in order to get care. But many veterans don’t earn enough money to be able to buy health insurance. At the same time, they aren’t poor enough under Bush Administration guidelines to get VA care or to qualify for Medicaid. Abandoned, these veterans struggle alone to find health care. In the insurance marketplace, our veterans remain in harms way — their service, and our debt, forgotten.