VA Ignores Veteran Suicides in Private Facilities

Veterans die by suicide at a rate 50 percent higher than nonveterans—and nearly two-thirds of those deaths occur among men and women receiving all their health care from private providers in the communities where they live. That is where they are dying, and that, apparently, is where accountability vanishes.

VA Secretary Doug Collins and Republican congressional leaders profess to care deeply about veterans experiencing mental health crises while under the care of these private providers. But another pattern is also obvious: Every time Department of Veterans Affairs officials or Republicans in Congress have had the chance to hold private providers to the VA’s own quality standards for treating at-risk veterans, they’ve chosen not to.

Analyst Russell Lemle unpacks the silent crises unfolding in private veteran facilities—and the human cost behind them. Read more at The American Prospect.