Trump seems to have gotten away from targeting veterans' earned benefits, for now

- When I searched recent news for “Mar-a-Lago Trio” just now, the most recent thing there was from February, when a House committee started investigating. Whether that means that Trump really has ditched those despicable greedheads (though certainly no more despicable than himself), I don’t know.

- However, an effort at some privatization is continuing. It’s a gray area, of course - it’s hard to argue that an elderly veteran who lives six or eight hours from the nearest VA facility shouldn’t be able to go to a closer clinic or hospital, instead. But the expansion of that needs to be carefully monitored for abuse by profiteers, and additional efforts at privatization need to be crushed, and I don’t know that either will happen. Not as long as Republicans are in charge, anyway.

- A recent poll shows that a majority of veterans agree with a majority of Americans that US involvement in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria hasn't been worth it. How questions are worded means everything in polling like this, and for a majority of veterans to admit, even anonymously to a pollster, that sacrifices made by fellow military personnel, including those who were killed, weren’t worth it, is very notable.

Another step toward Trump VA privatization

Plans by despicable, asshole greedheads to privatize the Veterans Administration, and then strip it to the bone for profit, certainly predate the Traitor Trump “presidency.” But Trump is all for it, and tying those efforts to the most loathed and despised president at least since the invention of polling seems to me entirely justified political rhetoric.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration proposed new rules, known as access standards, to automatically make veterans eligible for private care. Instead of 30 days, it’s 20 days for primary care or 28 days for specialty care. Instead of 40 miles, it’s a 30-minute drive for primary care or a 60-minute drive for specialty care...

“Today’s announcement hastily rolling out new access standards places core VA services and vital research programs at risk by shifting money towards care outside VA,” House veterans committee chairman Mark Takano said in a statement on Wednesday, vowing to hold a hearing. “Today’s announcement places VA on a pathway to privatization and leads Congress to assume the worst.” - ProPublica

VA privatization trial run hasn't worked well

ProPublica has been consistently breaking the most important news about what the a-hole kleptocrats are trying to do to Veterans Administration healthcare.

Here’s what has actually happened in the four years since the government began sending more veterans to private care: longer waits for appointments and, a new analysis of VA claims data by ProPublica and PolitiFact shows, higher costs for taxpayers...

The winners have been two private companies hired to run the program, which began under the Obama administration and is poised to grow significantly under Trump. ProPublica and PolitiFact obtained VA data showing how much the agency has paid in medical claims and administrative fees for the Choice program. Since 2014, the two companies have been paid nearly $2 billion for overhead, including profit. That’s about 24 percent of the companies’ total program expenses — a rate that would exceed the federal cap that governs how much most insurance plans can spend on administration in the private sector. - ProPublica

Trumpers plan more VA privatization

Overtly, it's being claimed that the Veterans Administration, especially its health care system, won’t be privatized. The reality is that back-door crap is already underway.

Last June, President Donald Trump signed a landmark law on veterans’ health care after months of tense negotiations. At the ceremony in the Rose Garden, Trump said the bill would deliver on his campaign promise to let veterans see private doctors instead of using the Department of Veterans Affairs’ government-run health service: “I’m going to sign legislation that will make veterans’ choice permanent,” he said.

Standing behind him, the leaders of major veterans groups looked around uncomfortably. What Trump called “choice” these veterans groups called “privatization,” and they’d been warning for years that it would cost taxpayers more money and deliver worse care for veterans. The veterans groups had endorsed the bill, but Trump’s description of it was not what they thought they were there to support.

The moment left no doubt that the Trump administration is determined to use the new law to expand the private sector’s role in veterans’ health care. The administration is working on a plan to shift millions more veterans to private doctors and is aiming to unveil the proposal during Trump’s State of Union address in January, according to four people briefed on the proposal. - ProPublica