For 160 years, Lincoln's vision has inspired VA healthcare workers to honor his promise by serving those who served.
We are those healthcare workers: active and retired VA clinicians writing on personal time without use of government resources; faculty at VA affiliated medical schools; care providers across the nation who trained at VA and remain committed to its mission. We have offered our veterans lifesaving therapies and groundbreaking research; removed their cancers and repaired their hearts; seen them through crises and comforted them as they lay dying.
We are also veterans who receive care at the VA, caregivers who support them, and public servants whose work complements the other services VA provides to the nation: health education, research, and public health emergency response.
We write to raise urgent concerns about proposed policies which, in addition to ones already enacted, will undermine VA’s healthcare system, overwhelm VA’s budget, and negatively affect the lives of all veterans. We have witnessed these ongoing harms and can provide evidence and testimony of their impacts.