Ellinghuysen said privatizing the system would make care more expensive and overwhelm private providers.

“If all VA services are privatized or contracted out ... that’s going to put an enormous burden on our current health care system,” she said.

“There are not enough doctors and nurses out there now. If we have these veterans go out in the private sector, everyone is going to have to wait, not only the veterans, but the non-veterans as well.”

A vocal critic of the VA dismissed the rally as self-serving. Ryan Honl, a former Tomah VA employee who helped expose reckless prescription drug practices at the facility, wrote on his Facebook page that the rally was “a blatant example of a self-serving government special interest more interested in scaring veterans to remain shackled to a choiceless system.”

Honl favors a system of expanded choice.

“In realty what this means is that public-sector unions are scared to death that veterans would have the right to be a customer that can decide for themselves what is best for their health care and where to take their lives and their benefits,” Honl wrote.