Donald Trump confirmed yesterday that his veterans health plan is a joke [View all]

[DonViejo]

Updated by Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Dec 29, 2016, 10:20am EST


One of Donald Trump’s major themes on the 2016 campaign trail was the need to improve the health care offerings afforded to America’s veterans. We’re going to “take care of our veterans like they have never been taken care of before” was a fairly typical stump speech line, though he sometimes shortened it to simply a brief promise to “take care of our vets.”

This was typically laced with references to the spring 2014 VA scandal and devoid of references to the bipartisan reform legislation that passed in the wake of the scandal. Trump didn’t particularly have a policy critique of the Obama administration and never so much as mentioned any of Hillary Clinton’s policy ideas on the issue — the pitch he was making was, broadly, that Democrats didn’t respect or care about veterans as much as he did.

Wednesday he held meetings at his Florida estate with private sector health care leaders to discuss ways to improve things, and then, as described by the New York Times’s Michael Shear, briefed the press on his thinking:

Mr. Trump met with several executives of private hospital systems at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Wednesday. After the meeting, Mr. Trump called out to reporters, saying he wanted to describe his ideas for changes to the Department of Veterans Affairs, but then quickly directed one of his senior aides to describe the proposals under consideration.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, provided no details about how the plans would work, how much they would cost, or the possibility of unintended consequences from privatizing part of the V.A.’s sprawling medical system.

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http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/29/14112394/donald-trump-veterans-health