Following up on a story we’ve been following, it was just four years ago when Mitt Romney chose to float a provocative idea on Veterans’ Day. “Sometimes you wonder,” the Republican asked, “would there be some way to introduce some private sector competition” into veterans’ care?
A spokesperson for Veterans of Foreign Wars very quickly made clear the VFW “doesn’t support privatization of veterans’ health care,” and Romney backpedaled soon after, saying he was just kicking around a hypothetical scenario he didn’t intend to pursue.
Donald Trump says the Department of Veterans Affairs’ health-care system is badly broken, and this week his campaign released some guidelines that would steer changes he would implement if he wins the presidency.
While short on details, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee would likely push VA health care toward privatization and might move for it to become more of an insurance provider like Medicare rather than an integrated hospital system, said Sam Clovis, Mr. Trump’s chief policy adviser, in an interview.
Clovis told the newspaper, “We want quality care top to bottom. If that means we have some form of privatization or some form of Medicare, we don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Veterans, however, tend to have a very different opinion on the matter.
Read more:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/privatizing-va-care-the-table-republicans-2016