Privatizing vets’ care

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs may soon cost around $200 billion a year, according to the department’s forecast for 2019. Republicans complain that this cost is putting a tremendous strain on the federal budget, which is out of control.

Last year President Trump signed a bill to extend the temporary Veterans Choice program, which gives health cards to veterans who can go to private doctors instead of VA hospitals. This card is good at clinics that take Medicaid. This sometimes takes veterans away from VA hospitals and sends them to nurse practitioners who probably are not experts in military medicine. Incidentally, this program has run out of money and is waiting for Congress to renew funding. Although veterans should have both the card and the hospitals, this likely will not happen, and veterans will focus upon their special hospitals a while longer, but not too long.

Former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin told the New York Times: “They [the White House] saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed.” Trump obviously fired Shulkin with hopes of replacing him with a secretary who would promote privatization.

It seems eventually Trump and his Republicans will succeed in replacing VA hospitals with private care. If Democrats cannot stop them, veterans certainly will not.

GENE MASON

Jacksonville