Former special forces soldier Matt Pettit served more than a decade in the Australian Army, including tours of Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I've got bad knees, bad back, bad shoulder, bad hearing, all that kind of stuff," Mr Pettit, who relies on weekly physiotherapy to stay mobile, said.
Along with Royal Australian Air Force veteran Anne Taylor, he fears losing access to treatments under the Albanese government's plan to cap veterans' allied healthcare spending at $5000 a year, with higher amounts to require demonstrated clinical need.
"On bad days, it gets to the point where you can't even lift up your kids," Mr Pettit said.
"Then, you're looking at your missus to try and get a toddler into a baby seat or something. It's the small day-to-day things that start to disappear."
Ms Taylor, who was in a military vehicle accident and exposed to harsh chemicals during her service, has scarring of the lungs and occupational asthma, and needs exercise physiology and psychology.
Both veterans say they would easily go over the $5000 cap, due to take effect next July.
They joined dozens of fellow returned servicemen and women in Queanbeyan on Monday with opposition veterans' affairs spokesperson Michael McCormack.
Veterans 'shouldn't have to keep fighting'
Mr McCormack, who has been travelling around Australia on a "veterans' listening tour," said the Coalition planned to ramp up its attacks on the government over the issue, which dominated the last sitting of Parliament.
"The $5000 cap has to go," he told attendees, calling the Labor policy "a dud" and vowing to keep up the pressure until it was defeated.
ACT Liberal Senate candidate Nick Tyrrell said Canberra's more than 15,000 veterans should not have to jump through hoops to get the care they needed.
"We send our sailors, aviators and soldiers overseas to fight," Mr Tyrrell said. "They shouldn't have to keep fighting when they return."
The government maintains that it is increasing support to veterans, pointing to a $170 million boost to allied health spending in the May federal budget.
READ MORE: 'You are failing us': veteran concern over health cap
The $5000 cap is intended to stop "over-servicing" by unscrupulous providers billing the Department of Veterans Affairs for treatments that are not needed.
ACT Independent Senator David Pocock, who along with the Greens and Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie opposes the policy, said the government should "go after shonky operators" and not impose "an arbitrary cap without consultation."
"In introducing this cap, the government is saying that if you sustain an injury and serve this country, then we're only going to pay to fix some of it," Senator Pocock told the Senate last week.
Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh said on Thursday, when pursued by Mr McCormack in parliamentary question time, that DVA was engaging with the veteran community "to ensure that our program delivers continuity of care and access."
"This measure is about increasing access to allied health," Mr Keogh said, saying the government "would always ensure that there was continuity of access" under the cap.
Opposition leader Angus Taylor said on Saturday that a veteran's treatment "should be determined by their health needs and their clinicians, not an arbitrary dollar figure imposed in Canberra.
The coming changes include increasing fees paid to providers, expanding the list of allied health professionals available to veterans and removing the need to return to a GP every 12 visits.
Healthcare is 'not discretionary': RSL Australia
Mr Pettit, who has two young daughters, said the day-to-day impacts of his service were ongoing.
"I've had it where she's run out of school, gone to jump up, and she's she bowled me over, and I couldn't get up, and I had to get help because your back's gone," he said.
But with one physio treatment a week, "the quality of life is amazing."
Others were not so lucky, Mr Pettit said.
"I know guys that [are] on pain meds daily ... If they're cutting back on the physio, they're upping the opioids to cope with it."
He said veterans felt they were being "put out to pasture."
"It's like 'you've done your job. That's all we needed you for.' If you suffered anything during that time, yeah, all well and good."
According to RSL Australia, which opposes the changes, 110,000 Veteran Card holders use allied health services, spending an average $3500 a year with almost a quarter (25,000) spending an average $9700.
The returned and services league says many veterans live with complex, chronic conditions that require regular and ongoing allied health treatment and that this care "is not discretionary".
Ms Taylor agreed, saying that "long term, it will catch up with us" if care was inaccessible.
"I rely on things such as exercise physiology just to maintain the quality of life," she said.
"And when I stop, that's when I start to get more problems and have to then reach out to additional allied health providers to reduce pain and so on."
Mr Pettit said that without physio, his mobility would take a nosedive.
"It's like 'okay, now I need help putting my shoes on because I can't bend over ... Now, I can't carry the kids to the car. The missus has to do it. Put more burden on her.' It starts a snowball effect."
The government will release a discussion paper on the planned changes shortly.