Today in our new kleptocracy, Donald Trump looks to sell off the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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.
The one plan the anonymous official would own up to is a plan to allow veterans to "opt out" of V.A. hospitals and instead go somewhere else. We don't know what the other plans might be. We'll either find out or we won't. (Let's all pause to savor Trump calling out to reporters to discuss his V.A. "ideas," then directing those reporters to an aide to give the "ideas," upon which the aide gives only one "idea" and refuses to be quoted by name even about that one. Smooth moves all around, fellas.)
They've got good reason to keep their "ideas" close to their chest, mind you. Even an opt-out plan is likely to be blazingly controversial, since it's essentially a partial privatization; the government would take money out of the V.A. system and give it to private hospitals instead, which would make necessary reforms and refurbishments in the V.A. system even more difficult while saving the government itself no actual money. For this reason it's been fiercely opposed by veterans' groups; they're no more likely to support it this time around, since it's even more clearly intended to be a path toward further for-profit privatization.
The alternative is to genuinely reform the V.A., which has been a painfully long and slow process already. But Trump doesn't know how to do that, and it's almost certain that nobody he's hired knows how to do it. Selling government services off in little bits, though? Every Republican knows how to do that. It's what the party was made for.