U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, criticized comments from his GOP opponent endorsing both a private health care option for veterans and treatment of veterans through the military health care system.

Standing on a supporter’s lawn across from the Waco VA Hospital and flanked by several local veterans’ advocates, Edwards called Bill Flores’ remarks from a January primary debate “dangerous” and “radical.”

“I do think, with respect to veterans’ health care, that our veterans would be much better off if they could go into the private health care system and have the government pay for that,” Flores, R-Bryan, said at the event. “You think about it, typically the care in the private citizens’ sector is better than the government sector. The government usually doesn’t do some things very well that involve bureaucracies, so they need to go into the private system.”

U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, thanks retired U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Leonard Montelongo Jr. for his service to the country during a campaign stop near Waco’s VA Hospital.
Jerry Larson/Tribune-Herald

Edwards said Flores “doesn’t understand the pride our veterans have in their VA health care system.”

“He doesn’t understand that our VA hospitals and clinics provide cutting-edge specialty care for vets with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder for blinded vets and for those who have lost their limbs — care that would be undermined by his plan,” Edwards said.

Flores called Edwards’ press conference a purposeful distraction and said he had come to support a private health care choice for those in the VA system after being approached by veterans about it.

“Another day, another baseless attack from 20-year incumbent Edwards to try to distract the voters from a sick economy, high unemployment and huge deficits caused by the Edwards-Pelosi Congress,” Flores said Wednesday afternoon. “Only a career politician like Chet Edwards would think that giving veterans options is a bad thing.”

Edwards; Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; and a task force of community leaders have been credited with staving off the possible closure or downsizing of the Waco VA hospital, which had been under review for 3 1/2 years ending in 2006.

Edwards said offering a private option to veterans “would put at risk the future of the Waco VA hospital” by diluting its patient base.

Flores’ release disputes that offering veterans private care would jeopardize the Waco facility.

“I made the point that several veterans have told me that they would like the choice to be able to enter into the private health care system. I would not close the same Waco VA hospital that we have supported financially — and Congressman Edwards knows it.

“Our military men and women and veterans know that they will always be able to count on me to support them in Congress.”

Calling Edwards “desperate,” Flores also pointed to personal contributions he has made to veterans’ causes, “including (the) Wounded Warriors programs and the Waco VA hospital,” and he asserted his belief in the nation’s commitment to care for veterans.

Bill Mahon, an Army veteran who headed the task force to save the Waco VA hospital, was among those joining Edwards at the press conference.

He said a private option or putting veterans in the military health care system would impact the VA system as well as local facilities.

“Giving the option to vets to go to both military hospitals and to the private sector would end the VA health care system as we know it,” Mahon said.

Joe Violante, legislative director for Disabled American Veterans, said his group has opposed past legislative efforts to give a federally funded private health care option to veterans. He pointed specifically to a measure pushed by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, in 2007.

“It may seem appealing to some to be able to go to Doc Jones in the community rather than taking a trip to the nearest VA hospital, but we believe the quality we get in the VA system is better,” Violante said. “And the specialty care the VA has developed over these decades, you just can’t find elsewhere.”

At the time Craig introduced his legislation, he defended the quality of care at the VA but said those veterans who aren’t satisfied with their coverage should have “a ticket out.”

The bill and the debate over it came on the heels of reports of neglect at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Though the facility is run by the Army, not the VA, the scandal spotlighted the issue of health care for soldiers and was referenced in an editorial Craig wrote about his bill.

Violante said veterans’ health care prior to 1998 was a hodgepodge system in which those in the system could get treated for certain conditions but not others and did not receive preventive care. However, he said that has changed.

“To say today that veterans aren’t receiving good-quality health care from the VA is totally wrong,” Violante said.

As far as putting veterans into the military health care system, Violante argued that Department of Defense officials have said in the past that caring for veterans would be a drain on their system.

Katherine Henson, a former DAV state commander, was more blunt in responding to Flores. “Who is Mr. Flores to tell veterans where we should go?” she said.

“I think a lot of veterans will want to tell Mr. Flores where to go,” she added, “and it’s not to Congress.”

Edwards’ Wednesday event comes a few days before the kickoff of his “Vets for Chet” tour, during which Edwards will have a week’s worth of stops with veterans and high-ranking former military and Department of Veterans Affairs officials.

The congressman chairs the appropriations subcommittee responsible for billions in military construction as well as VA spending.

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

757-5707