The Senate Republican “health care plan,” like the House Republican plan, would be very damaging to many groups, including veterans.

Some 1.8 million veterans rely on Medicaid for their health insurance. A recent fact sheet (“Cutting Medicaid would hurt veterans’ families” USA, May 2017) demonstrates that under the senate plan an estimated 340,000 vets would lose their Medicaid healthcare, including 8,500 veterans in Michigan.

The “thank yous” that everyone expresses to our service personnel and our veterans are greatly appreciated. But do we really understand what’s happening to our active duty military as the wars wind down and the veterans move to the sidelines?

Between 2001 and 2010, during times of heavy conflict, Congress worked to keep our all-volunteer military force in uniform by offering improved benefits such as reenlistment bonus programs, improved retirement programs, and expanded GI Bill benefits. Starting in 2010, however, Congress began cutting tens of thousands of individuals from the military and making harmful changes to retirement benefits and GI Bill benefits.

Congress also started forgetting how to help veterans who now find themselves out of a job, with no healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) provided an expansion of Medicaid for 340,000 veterans. However, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the new Senate health care bill would drop an estimated 23 million Americans from health care coverage.

The specific cuts to Medicaid would affect seniors in nursing homes, low income working adults, 75 percent of all children below the poverty line, and yes, it will affect veterans.

Next time you say to a veteran, “Thank you for your service,” please also think about whether we as a society have lost our connection to veterans.

Do we really know what happens to them once the war is over, and they come home searching for a job and are in need of medical care? Do we really want to cut $780 billion from Medicaid to give tax cuts to the wealthy?

I’m a veteran and would very much appreciate your efforts to help ensure veterans keep their health care coverage.

Please contact our senators and urge them to vote “no” on the Senate health care bill.

KENNETH PETERSON

Buchanan