Betsy's Stands Up for Veterans

 A Pledge to Our Veterans

I’m asking everyone to join me in a pledge to tell our representatives that only when our veterans have accessible and quality healthcare will their service be honored. Our soldiers fight bravely for this country and it’s up to us, through our vote and through our words, to fight for them by holding our elected officials accountable for reforming the Veterans Administration in three ways:

1. Making healthcare more accessible to veterans. The Veterans Administration has some of our nation’s best doctors, but there simply are not enough of them to treat those that require care. The average patient to doctor ratio at these facilities is 650 to 1, and veterans are being forced to wait six to twelve months before receiving treatment.
2. Returning strong and experienced veteran leadership to the Veterans Administration. Only leadership with strong management skills will be able to get one of this nation’s largest bureaucracies headed in the right direction.
3. Reducing the backlog of over 600,000 veterans currently waiting for approval of disability benefits claims. Disabled veterans shouldn’t have to wait six months to receive the benefits they have earned and so desperately need.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PLEDGE & GET UPDATES ON HOW WE CAN ALL HELP OUR VETERANS

Our current system is failing our veterans, and until we begin holding our elected officials responsible for ensuring that our veterans have access to quality health care, so are we.

Betsy Markey
Congressional Candidate

The Plan

A Sacred Trust

Betsy believes that America has a sacred trust with our veterans. She is committed to creating a 21st Century Department of Veterans' Affairs that provides the care and benefits our nation's veterans deserve.

• Allow All Veterans Back into the VA: One of Betsy’s first priorities will be reversing the 2003 ban on enrolling modest-income veterans, which has denied care to a million veterans.
• Strengthen VA Care: Betsy will help make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible. This includes improving care for polytrauma vision impairment, prosthetics, spinal cord injury, aging, and women's health.
• Combat Homelessness among Our Nation's Veterans: Betsy will work to establish a national "zero tolerance" policy for veterans falling into homelessness by expanding proven programs and launching innovative services to prevent veterans from falling into homelessness.
• Fight Veterans Employment Discrimination: Betsy will help crack down on employers who commit job discrimination against guardsmen and reservists.

Help for Returning Service Members

Betsy is dedicated to improving the quality of health care for veterans, rebuilding the VA's broken benefits system, and combating homelessness among veterans.

• Ensure a Seamless Transition: Betsy will encourage coordination between the military and the VA to provide a seamless transition from active duty to civilian life.
• Fully Fund VA Medical Care: Betsy is committed to funding the VA so it has all the resources it needs to serve the veterans who need it, when they need it. Betsy will work to establish a world-class VA Planning Division to avoid future budget shortfalls.
• Fix the Benefits Bureaucracy: Betsy believes in hiring additional claims workers, and improving training and accountability so that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently. She will also help to transform the paper benefit claims process to an electronic one to reduce errors and improve timeliness.

Improved Mental Health Treatment

Betsy is committed to improving mental health treatment for troops and veterans suffering from combat-related psychological injuries.

• Improve Mental Health Treatment: Betsy will take action to improve mental health care at every stage of military service. She will work to recruit more health professionals, improve screening, offer more support to families and make PTSD benefits claims fairer.
• Improve Care for Traumatic Brain Injury: Betsy will help establish standards of care for Traumatic Brain Injury, the signature injury of the Iraq war.
• Expand Vet Centers: Betsy wants to expand and strengthen Vet Centers to provide more counseling for vets and their families.