BACKGROUND: The utilization of cancer preventive care services including mammography, colonoscopy and pap smears in the United States remains low, despite their established success in reducing cancer deaths. Due to the harmful exposures during their service years veterans may have more negative health outcomes compared to nonveterans. The rising costs of cancer treatment and a focus on quality treatment require the public to understand how VA resources are being used and if they are providing high quality and effective care to our nations’ Veterans. OBJECTIVES: To understand the difference in the utilization of preventive services (specifically mammography, colonoscopy and pap smears) in the US between veterans and non veterans. Veterans have reported reasons for declining preventive services like previous negative results, no time to get tested, no risk factors, getting testing not being a priority, uninterested in knowing, and already infected. This paper assesses the difference in the utilization of preventive services with data from the Household Component (HC) of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) from 2011. METHODS: We attempted to understand the differences in utilization of cancer related preventative services between veterans and non-veterans in 2011 using regression analyses. RESULTS: For both colonoscopy and mammography cancer preventive services, veterans are less likely to have had a mammogram in the past year controlling for a wide range of socio-demographic variables. There is no significant difference in women veterans and women non-veterans and their utilization of pap smears  in the 2011 data. CONCLUSIONS: Despite documented evidence in early cancer detection, take up rates for mammography and colonoscopy among US veterans appears lower than non veterans. Veterans may not be accessing the prevention services available to them in the VA and perhaps awareness and education can increase these rates in the future.