Editorial: Turning veterans' care into a private profit center?

At issue is how much further should the nation go in allowing veterans to get taxpayer-funded health care from private doctors and hospitals. Access to private providers, particularly in rural areas, is a useful idea. But draining money from the current system to pay for it is like draining money from public schools to pay for private school vouchers: It helps the few at the expense of the many.

But Trump is for it. “We are going to make sure every veteran in America has the choice to seek care at the Veterans Administration or to seek private medical care paid for by our government,” he pledged in 2016.

America’s largest veterans’ organizations, including the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, oppose further privatization efforts. They want the current system fixed first, and they’re right.

A trial program called Veterans Choice was enacted in 2014. Vets who are geographically isolated, or who face long wait times or need an unavailable specialist, can get help from private providers.

Congressional Republicans have proposed a Veterans Choice 2.0. It would make veterans hospitals part of an integrated system of private and military hospitals. They would serve any vet with critical health needs, regardless of where the patient lives.

Shulkin supported the idea but wanted the needs of the current system met first. Conservative free-marketeers, including the Koch Network-funded Concerned Veterans for America, believed he was not sufficiently enthusiastic.

Trump spoke to Shulkin early on March 28 but left it to Chief of Staff John Kelly to fire him. Trump later tweeted that Shulkin’s replacement would be the White House physician, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, who has almost zero management experience and will now manage 360,000 employees.

Shulkin fired back in The New York Times, saying privatization was “aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans.”

It wouldn’t be the first time profiteers have maneuvered to exploit veterans. Consider that for-profit universities troll for veterans education dollars, then do a generally poor job of educating them.

The needs are urgent in the post-Iraq/Afghanistan era, including 45,000 clinical vacancies, 1,500 of them for mental health specialists. The RAND Corp. reports that veterans can have multiple physical and mental needs that private providers rarely see.

America has 18.8 million veterans, about half of whom are enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration program. Its patients are more likely to be satisfied with their care than those in community settings, and studies have shown that outsourcing care is unlikely to improve outcomes.

The parts of veterans care that are broken, and there are a lot of them, should be fixed. More privatization won’t do it.