Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Vets Lose
When Big Pharma and Defense [sic] Corporations Rake in the Big War Bucks
August 25, 2016
A friend of
mine, a Vietnam vet, told me about a veteran of the Iraq War who, when some
civilian said, “Thank you for your service,” replied: “I didn’t serve, I was
used.” That got me thinking about the many ways today’s veterans are used,
conned, and exploited by big gamers right here at home.
Near the
end of his invaluable book cataloguing the long, slow disaster of America’s War for the Greater Middle
East [3], historian Andrew Bacevich writes:
“Some
individuals and institutions actually benefit from an armed conflict that drags
on and on. Those benefits are immediate and tangible. They come in the form of
profits, jobs, and campaign contributions. For the military-industrial complex
and its beneficiaries, perpetual war is not necessarily bad news.”
Bacevich is
certainly right about war profiteers, but I believe we haven’t yet fully wrapped
our minds around what that truly means. This is what we have yet to take in:
today, the U.S. is the most unequal [4] country
in the developed world, and the wealth of the plutocrats on top is now so great
that, when they invest it in politics, it’s likely that no elected government
can stop them or the lucrative wars and “free markets” they exploit.
Among the
prime movers in our corporatized politics are undoubtedly the two billionaire
Koch brothers, Charles and David, and their cozy network of secret donors. It’s
hard to grasp how rich they really are: they rank [5] fifth
(David) and sixth (Charles) onBusiness Insider’slist of the 50 richest
people in the world, but if you pool their wealth they become by far the single
richest “individual” on the planet. And they have pals. For decades now they’ve
hosted top-secret gatherings [6] of
their richest collaborators that sometimes also feature [7] dignitaries like
Clarence Thomas or the late Antonin Scalia, two of the Supreme Court Justices
who gave them the Citizens United decision, suffocating
American democracy in plutocratic dollars. That select donor group
had reportedly planned to spend at least $889 million on this year’s elections
and related political projects, but recent reports [8] note
a scaling back and redirection of resources.
While the
contest between Trump and Clinton fills the media, the big money is evidently
going to be aimed at selected states and municipalities to aid right-wing
governors, Senate candidates, congressional representatives, and in some
cities, ominously enough, school board candidates [9]. The Koch
brothers need not openly support [10] the embarrassing Trump [11], for
they’ve already proved that, by controlling Congress, they can
significantly control [12] the
president, as they have already done in the Obama era.
Yet for all
their influence, the Koch name means nothing, pollsters report [13], to more
than half of the U.S. population. In fact, the brothers Koch largely stayed
under the radar until recent years when their roles as polluters, campaigners
against the environment, and funders of a new politics came into view. Thanks
to Robert Greenwald’s film Koch Brothers Exposed [14] and
Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the
Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right [15], we now
know a lot more about them, but not enough.
They’ve
always been ready to profit off America’s wars. Despite their extreme
neo-libertarian goal of demonizing and demolishing government, they
reportedly didn’t hesitate [16] to
pocket about $170 million as contractors for George W. Bush’s wars. They sold
fuel (oil istheir principal business) to the Defense Department, and after they
bought Georgia Pacific, maker of paper products, they supplied that military
essential: toilet paper [17].
But that
was small potatoes compared to what happened when soldiers came home from the
wars and fell victim to the profiteering of corporate America. Dig in to the
scams exploiting veterans, and once again you’ll run into the Koch brothers.
Pain
Relief: With Thanks from Big Pharma
It’s no
secret that the VA wasn’t ready for the endless, explosive post-9/11 wars. Its
hospitals were already full of old vets from earlier wars when suddenly there
arrived young men and women with wounds, both physical and mental, the doctors
had never seen before. The VA enlarged its hospitals, recruited new staff, and
tried to catch up, but it’s been running behind ever since.
It’s no
wonder veterans’ organizations keep after it (as well they should), demanding
more funding and better service. But they have to be careful what they focus
on. If they leave it at that and overlook what’s really going on—often in plain
sight, however disguised in patriotic verbiage—they can wind up being marched
down a road they didn’t choose that leads to a place they don’t want to be.
Even before
the post-9/11 vets came home, a phalanx of drug-making corporations led
by Purdue Pharma [18] had
already gone to work on the VA. These Big Pharma corporations (many of
which buy equipment [19] from
Koch Membrane Systems) had developed new pain medications—opioid
narcotics like [20] OxyContin
(Purdue), Vicodin, Percocet, Opana (Endo Pharmaceuticals), Duragesic, and
Nucynta (Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson)—and they spotted a
prospective marketplace. Early in 2001, Purdue developed a plan to spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting [21] the
VA. By the end of that year, this country was at war, and Big Pharma was
looking at a gold mine.
They
recruited doctors, set them up in private “Pain Foundations [22],” and paid
them handsomely to give lectures and interviews, write studies and textbooks,
teach classes in medical schools, and testify before Congress on the importance
of providing our veterans with powerful painkillers. In 2002, the Food and Drug
Administration considered restricting the use of opioids, fearing they might be
addictive. They were talked out of it by experts likeDr. Rollin Gallagher [21] of
the American Academy of Pain Medicine and board member of the American Pain
Foundation, both largely fundedby the drug companies. He spoke against
restricting OxyContin.
By 2008,
congressional legislation had been written—the Veterans’ Mental Health and Other
Care Improvement Act [23]—directing the VA to develop
a plan to evaluate all patients for pain. When the VA objected to Congress
dictating its medical procedures, Big Pharma launched [21] a
“Freedom from Pain” media blitz, enlisting veterans’ organizations to campaign
for the bill and get it passed.
Those
painkillers were also dispatched to the war zones where our troops were
physically breaking down under the weight [24] of
the equipment they carried. By 2010, a third of the Army’s soldiers were
on prescription medications [25]—and nearly
half of them, 76,500, were on prescription opioids—which proved to be highly
addictive, despite the assurance of experts like Rollin Gallagher. In 2007, for
instance, “The American Veterans and Service Members Survival Guide,”
distributed by the American Pain Foundation and edited by Gallagher, offered [21] this
assurance: “[W]hen used for medical purposes and under the guidance of a
skilled health-care provider, the risk of addiction from opioid pain medication
is very low.”
By that
time, here at home, soldiers and vets were dying at astonishing rates [26] from
accidental or deliberate overdoses. Civilian doctors as well had been persuaded
to overprescribe these drugs, so that by 2011 the CDC announced [27] a
national epidemic, affecting more than 12 million Americans. In May 2012, the
Senate Finance Committee finally initiated an investigation [22] into
the perhaps “improper relation” between Big Pharma and the pain foundations.
That investigation is still “ongoing,” which means that no information about it
can yet be revealed to the public.
Meanwhile,
opioid addicts, both veterans and civilians, were discovering that heroin was
a cheaper [28] and
no less effective way to go. Because heroin is often cut with Fentanyl, a more
powerful opioid, however, drug deaths rose dramatically [29].
This
epidemic of death is in the news almost every day now as hard-hit cities and
states sue [30] the
drug makers, but rarely is it traced to its launching pad: the Big Pharma
conspiracy to make big bucks off our country’s wounded soldiers.
It took the
VA far too long to extricate itself from medical policies marketed by Big
Pharma and, in effect, prescribed by Congress. It had made the mistake of
turning to the Pharma-funded pain foundations in 2004 to select [31] its
Deputy National Program Director of Pain Management: the ubiquitous Dr. Gallagher [32].
But when
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency finally laid down new restrictive rules [33] on
opioids in 2014, the VA had to comply. That’s been hard on the thousands
of opioid-dependent vets [34]it had
unwittingly hooked, and it’s becoming harder as Republicans in Congress move to
privatize the VA and send vets out with vouchers to find their own health care.
Cute Cards
Courtesy of the Koch Brothers
To force
the VA to use its drugs, Big Pharma set up dummy foundations and turned
toexisting veterans’ organizations for support. These days, however, the Big
Money people have found a more efficient way to make their weight felt. Now,
when they need the political clout of a veterans’ organization, they help
finance one of their own.
Consider Concerned
Veterans for America [35] (CVA). The group’s
stated mission: “to preserve the freedom and prosperity we and our families
fought and sacrificed to defend.” What patriotic American wouldn’t want to get
behind that?
The problem
that concerns the group right now is the “divide” between civilians and
soldiers, which exists, its leaders claim, because responsibility for veterans
has been “pushed to the highest levels of government.” That has left veterans
isolated from their own communities, which should be taking care of them.
Concerned
Veterans for America proposes (though not quite in so many words) to close that
gap by sacking the VA and giving vets the “freedom” to find their own health
care. The 102-page proposal [36] of
CVA’s Task Force on “Fixing Veterans’ Health Care” would let VA hospitals treat
veterans with “service-connected health needs”—let them, that is, sweat the
hard stuff—while transforming most VA Health Care facilities into an
“independent, non-profit corporation” to be “preserved,” if possible, in
competition “with private providers.”
All other
vets would have the “option to seek private health coverage,” using funds the
VA might have spent on their care, had they chosen it. (How that would be
calculated remains one of many mysteries.)
The venerable [37] VA operates [38] America's
largest health care system, with 168 VA Medical Centers and 1,053 outpatient
clinics, providing care to more than 8.9 million vets each year. Yet under this
plan that lame, undernourished but extraordinary and, in a great many ways,
remarkably successful version of single-payer lifelong socialized medicine for
vets would be a goner, perhaps surviving only in bifurcated form: as an
intensive care unit and an insurance office dispensing funds to free and choosy
vets.
Such plans
should have marked Concerned Veterans for America as a Koch brothers’ creation
even before its front man gave the game away [39] and
lost his job. Like those pain foundation doctors who became self-anointed
opioid experts, veteran Pete Hegseth had made himself an expert on veterans’
affairs, running Concerned Veterans for America and doubling as a talking head [40] on
Fox News. The secretive veterans’ organization now carries on without him,
still working to capture—or perhaps buy—the hearts and minds of Congress.
And here’s
the scary part: they may succeed. Remember that every U.S. administration, from
the Continental Congress on, has regarded the care of veterans as a sacred
trust of government. The notion of privatizing veterans’ care—by giving each
veteran a voucher [41], like some
underprivileged schoolboy—was first suggested only eight years ago by Arizona
Senator John McCain, America’s most famous veteran-cum-politician. Most
veterans’ organizations opposed the idea, citing McCain’s long record [42] of
voting against funding the VA.
Four years ago, Mitt Romney touted the same idea
and got the same response.
That’s
about the time that the Koch brothers, and their donor network, changed their
strategy. They had invested an estimated$400 million [43] in
the 2012 elections and lost the presidency (though not Congress). So they
turned their attention to the states and localities. Somewhere along the way, they
quietly promoted Concerned Veterans for America and who knows what other similar
organizations and think tanks to peddle their cutthroat capitalist ideology and
enshrine it in the law of the land.
Then, in
2014, President Obama signed into law [44] the
Veterans’ Access to Care Through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act.
That bill singled out certain veterans who lived at least 40 miles from a VA
hospital or had to wait 30 days for an appointment and gave them a “choice
card,” entitling them to see a private doctor of their own choosing. Though
John McCain had originally designed the bill, it was by then a bipartisan
effort, officially introduced [45] by
the Democratic senator who chaired the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs:
Bernie Sanders.
Sanders
said that, while it was not the bill he would have written, he thought it was a
step toward cutting wait times. With his sponsorship, the bill passed by a 93-3
vote. And so an idea unthinkable only two years earlier—the partial
privatization of veteran’s health care—became law.
How could that
have happened? At the VA, there was certainly need for improvement. Its health
care system had been consistently underfunded and wait times for appointments
were notoriously long [46]. Then,
early in 2014, personnel at the Phoenix VA in McCain’s home state of Arizona
were caught [47] falsifying
records to hide the wait-time problem. When that scandal hit the news [48], Concerned
Veterans for America was quick to exploit [49] the
situation and lead a mass protest. Three weeks later, as heads rolled at the
VA, Senator McCain called [48] a
town hall meeting to announce his new bill, with its “hallmark Choice Card.”
His website notes that it “received praise... from veterans’ advocacy
organizations such as Concerned Veterans for America.”
That bill
also called for a “commission on care” to explore the possibilities of
“transforming” veterans’ health care. Most vets still haven’t heard of this
commission and its charge to change their lives, but many of those who did
learn of it were worried by the terminology. After all, many vets already had a
choice through Medicare or private insurance, and most chose the vet-centered treatment
of the VA. They complained only that it took too long to get an appointment.
They wanted more VA care, not less—and they wanted it faster.
In any
case, those choice cards already handed out have reportedly [50] only
slowed down the process of getting treatment, while the freedom to search for a
private doctor has turned out [51] to be
anything but popular. Nevertheless, the commission on care [52]—15 people
chosen by President Obama and the leaders of the House and Senate—worked for 10
months to produce a laundry list of “fixes” for the VA and one controversial
recommendation. They called for the VA “across the United States” to establish
“high-performing, integrated community health care networks, to be known as the
VHA Care System.”
In other
words, instead of funding added staff and speeded-up service, the commission
recommended the creation of an entirely new, more expensive, and untried
system. Then there was the fine print: as in the plan of Concerned Veterans of
America, there would be tightened qualifications, out-of-pocket costs, and
exclusions. In other words, the commission was proposing a fragmented,
complicated, and iffy system, funded in part on the backs of veterans, and
“transformative” in ways ominously different from anything vets had been
promised in the past.
Commissioner
Michael Blecker, executive director of the San Francisco-based veterans’
service organization Swords to Plowshares, refused [53] to sign off on the
report. Although he approved of the VA fixes, he saw in that recommendation for
“community networks” the privatizer's big boot in the door. Yet while Blecker
thought the recommendation would serve the private sector and not the vet,
another non-signer took the opposite view. Darin Selnick, senior veterans'
affairs advisor for Concerned Veterans for America and executive director of
CVA's Fixing Veterans Health Care Taskforce, complained [54] that
the commission had focused too much on “fixing the existing VA” rather than
“boldly transforming” veterans’ health care into a menu of “multiple
private-sector choice options.” The lines were clearly drawn.
Then, last
April, Senator McCain made an end run around the commission, a dash that could
only thrill the leaders of Concerned Veterans for America and their backers.
Noting that his choice card legislation was due to expire, McCain, together
with seven other Republican senators (including Ted Cruz), introduced new
legislation: the Care Veterans Deserve Act of 2016 [55]. It’s a
bill designed to “enhance choice and flexibility in veterans’ health care” by
making the problematic choicecard“permanently and universally” available to all
disabled and other unspecified veterans. You can see where the notion came from
and where it’s going. By May 2016, when Fox News featured [56] a
joint statement by Senator McCain and Pete Hegseth, late of Concerned Veterans
for America, trumpeting the VA Choice Card Program as “the most significant VA
reform in decades,” you could also see where this might end.
As real
veterans’ organizations wise up to what’s going on, they will undoubtedly stand
against the false “freedom” of a Koch brothers-style “transformation” of the VA
system. The rest of us should stand with them. The plutocrats who corrupted
veterans’ health care and now want to shut it down, and the plutocrats who
profit from this country’s endless wars are one and the same. And they have
bigger plans for us all.
Ann
Jones, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of Kabul in Winter, among
other books, and most recently They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded
Return From America’s Wars -- The Untold Story [57], a
Dispatch Books project (Haymarket, 2013).
[59]
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ann-jones-1
[2] http://www.tomdispatch.com/
[3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553393936/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[4] http://inequality.org/unequal/
[5] http://www.businessinsider.com/50-richest-people-on-earth-2016-1/#49-tie-aliko-dangote-1
[6] https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-behind-koch-brothers-secret-billionaire-summit/
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/us/politics/20koch.html
[8] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435418/koch-brothers-campaign-activity-slows
[9] https://meamatters.com/2015/12/04/will-the-koch-brothers-target-your-school-board-next/
[10] http://prospect.org/article/make-no-mistake-koch-brothers-are-helping-donald-trump
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/us/politics/republican-democratic-voters-poll.html
[12] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/republicans-legislation-obama-dccc-event-106481
[13] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/koch-brothers-poll-104993
[14] http://www.bravenewfilms.org/koch
[15] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385535597/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[16] http://exiledonline.com/anti-war-libertarians-charles-and-david-koch-love-profiteering-off-americas-war-machine/
[17] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/defense-spending-sequester-toilet-paper-military
[18] http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
[19] http://www.kochmembrane.com/Industrial-Life-Sciences/Pharmaceutical-Intermediates.aspx
[20] http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/UCM348818.pdf
[21] http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local-military/critics-say-firms-spurred-painkiller-prescriptions/nSPNL/
[22] https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-panel-investigates-drug-company-ties-to-pain-groups
[23] https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/2162
[24] http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/weight-of-war-gear-that-protects-troops-also-injures-them/
[25] http://www.statesman.com/news/news/prescription-drug-abuse-overdoses-haunt-veterans/nSPLW/
[26] http://www.drugfree.org/news-service/va-opiate-overdose-rate-almost-double-the-national-average-report/
[27] http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1101_flu_pain_killer_overdose.html
[28] http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/01/18/rising-use-opioid-painkillers-and-efforts-curb-them-may-lead.html
[29] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/concerns-grow-fentanyl-fuels-rise-opioid-overdose-deaths/
[30] http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-pa-drug-company-lawsuit-resolution-20160617-story.html
[31] http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october302013/senate-painkillers-ms.php
[32] https://iprcc.nih.gov/National_Pain_Strategy/Professional_Education_and_Training_Members.htm#RollinMacGallagherMDMPH
[33] http://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/new-dea-rules-place-more-restrictions-on-popular-painkillers/article_8431e5e4-8d15-53b7-88cd-a346a42929b2.html
[34] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/veterans-struggle-to-renew-their-prescriptions-amid-new-opioid-rules/2015/02/18/4d42d63a-acb3-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html
[35] http://cv4a.org/
[36] http://cv4a.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Fixing-Veterans-Healthcare.pdf
[37] http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/08/veterans-care-should-not-be-profit-making-enterprise/130948/?oref=d_brief_nl
[38] http://www.va.gov/health/aboutVHA.asp
[39] http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/01/26/ceo-vets-group-backed-by-koch-brothers-resigns-campaign-heats-up.html
[40] http://www.foxnews.com/person/h/pete-hegseth.html
[41] http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/08/politics-us-mccains-plan-to-privatise-veterans-health-care/
[42] http://www.politicalaffairs.net/28-votes-mccain-s-record-against-veterans/
[43] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/01/12353/koch-network-raised-400-million-2012
[44] https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/08/07/president-obama-signs-bill-give-va-resources-it-needs
[45] http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-veterans-access-to-care-through-choice-accountability-and-transparency-act-of-2014
[46] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/23/robert-mcdonald-veterans-affairs-secretary-likens-/
[47] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/22/va-brass-knew-of-false-data-for-2-years-/11224899/
[48] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/21/veterans-healthcare-scandal-shinseki-timeline/9373227/
[49] https://www.thenation.com/article/how-koch-network-exploited-veterans-affairs-crisis/
[50] http://www.npr.org/2016/06/06/480604249/for-doctors-and-patients-veterans-choice-often-means-long-waits
[51] https://www.yahoo.com/news/vas-choice-program-health-care-off-slow-start-081210315.html?ref=gs
[52] https://commissiononcare.sites.usa.gov/
[53] http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/07/prweb13535231.htm
[54] http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/COC-Commissioners-Report-Dissent-063016-1.pdf
[55] http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2016/4/senators-mccain-ayotte-cornyn-cruz-ernst-flake-graham-tillis-introduce-the-care-veterans-deserve-act
[56] http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/27/sen-john-mccain-pete-hegseth-its-time-for-real-reform-our-veterans-deserve.html
[57] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[58] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Vets Lose When Big Pharma and Defense Corporations Rake in the Big War Bucks
[59] http://www.alternet.org/
[60] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
[2] http://www.tomdispatch.com/
[3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553393936/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[4] http://inequality.org/unequal/
[5] http://www.businessinsider.com/50-richest-people-on-earth-2016-1/#49-tie-aliko-dangote-1
[6] https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-behind-koch-brothers-secret-billionaire-summit/
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/us/politics/20koch.html
[8] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435418/koch-brothers-campaign-activity-slows
[9] https://meamatters.com/2015/12/04/will-the-koch-brothers-target-your-school-board-next/
[10] http://prospect.org/article/make-no-mistake-koch-brothers-are-helping-donald-trump
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/us/politics/republican-democratic-voters-poll.html
[12] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/republicans-legislation-obama-dccc-event-106481
[13] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/koch-brothers-poll-104993
[14] http://www.bravenewfilms.org/koch
[15] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385535597/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[16] http://exiledonline.com/anti-war-libertarians-charles-and-david-koch-love-profiteering-off-americas-war-machine/
[17] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/defense-spending-sequester-toilet-paper-military
[18] http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
[19] http://www.kochmembrane.com/Industrial-Life-Sciences/Pharmaceutical-Intermediates.aspx
[20] http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/UCM348818.pdf
[21] http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local-military/critics-say-firms-spurred-painkiller-prescriptions/nSPNL/
[22] https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-panel-investigates-drug-company-ties-to-pain-groups
[23] https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/2162
[24] http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/weight-of-war-gear-that-protects-troops-also-injures-them/
[25] http://www.statesman.com/news/news/prescription-drug-abuse-overdoses-haunt-veterans/nSPLW/
[26] http://www.drugfree.org/news-service/va-opiate-overdose-rate-almost-double-the-national-average-report/
[27] http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1101_flu_pain_killer_overdose.html
[28] http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/01/18/rising-use-opioid-painkillers-and-efforts-curb-them-may-lead.html
[29] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/concerns-grow-fentanyl-fuels-rise-opioid-overdose-deaths/
[30] http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-pa-drug-company-lawsuit-resolution-20160617-story.html
[31] http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october302013/senate-painkillers-ms.php
[32] https://iprcc.nih.gov/National_Pain_Strategy/Professional_Education_and_Training_Members.htm#RollinMacGallagherMDMPH
[33] http://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/new-dea-rules-place-more-restrictions-on-popular-painkillers/article_8431e5e4-8d15-53b7-88cd-a346a42929b2.html
[34] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/veterans-struggle-to-renew-their-prescriptions-amid-new-opioid-rules/2015/02/18/4d42d63a-acb3-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html
[35] http://cv4a.org/
[36] http://cv4a.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Fixing-Veterans-Healthcare.pdf
[37] http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/08/veterans-care-should-not-be-profit-making-enterprise/130948/?oref=d_brief_nl
[38] http://www.va.gov/health/aboutVHA.asp
[39] http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/01/26/ceo-vets-group-backed-by-koch-brothers-resigns-campaign-heats-up.html
[40] http://www.foxnews.com/person/h/pete-hegseth.html
[41] http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/08/politics-us-mccains-plan-to-privatise-veterans-health-care/
[42] http://www.politicalaffairs.net/28-votes-mccain-s-record-against-veterans/
[43] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/01/12353/koch-network-raised-400-million-2012
[44] https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/08/07/president-obama-signs-bill-give-va-resources-it-needs
[45] http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-veterans-access-to-care-through-choice-accountability-and-transparency-act-of-2014
[46] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/23/robert-mcdonald-veterans-affairs-secretary-likens-/
[47] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/22/va-brass-knew-of-false-data-for-2-years-/11224899/
[48] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/21/veterans-healthcare-scandal-shinseki-timeline/9373227/
[49] https://www.thenation.com/article/how-koch-network-exploited-veterans-affairs-crisis/
[50] http://www.npr.org/2016/06/06/480604249/for-doctors-and-patients-veterans-choice-often-means-long-waits
[51] https://www.yahoo.com/news/vas-choice-program-health-care-off-slow-start-081210315.html?ref=gs
[52] https://commissiononcare.sites.usa.gov/
[53] http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/07/prweb13535231.htm
[54] http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/COC-Commissioners-Report-Dissent-063016-1.pdf
[55] http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2016/4/senators-mccain-ayotte-cornyn-cruz-ernst-flake-graham-tillis-introduce-the-care-veterans-deserve-act
[56] http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/27/sen-john-mccain-pete-hegseth-its-time-for-real-reform-our-veterans-deserve.html
[57] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[58] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Vets Lose When Big Pharma and Defense Corporations Rake in the Big War Bucks
[59] http://www.alternet.org/
[60] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
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