The transfer of the nation's treasury to powerful private industry is clipping right along under Individual 1 and his administration. His kleptocracy, propped up by the entire Republican Party, is fulfilling the old Republican dream of stealing it all for the rich—even at the expense of the nation's promises to its veterans.
Instead of adequately funding and overseeing the network of veterans' health facilities, Trump's Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to take billions away from them to give to private healthcare providers. Three guesses where the pressure for this is coming from. Yep, Concerned Veterans for America, which is not so much actually veterans as it is Charles and David Koch, who want to steal everything public that's not nailed down.
They want it to be simpler for veterans to bypass the VA system and go to privately run hospitals, with the government picking up the tab. There is also a proposed system of walk-in clinics that will serve as "a bridge between V.A. emergency rooms and private providers." Veterans would have to make co-pays for treatment at these clinics.
Here's what this plan doesn't come with: a separate source of funding. That means redirecting federal dollars, taxpayer funding, away from the VA system to private providers. That could, in turn, cause the cost for taxpayers to skyrocket. The VA can bargain for drug prices, for example, and keep costs under control. Veterans who have a hard time accessing care through the VA system have a way under current law to get timely care from private providers, so this proposal isn't filling some kind of care vacuum. It's just a means of redistributing public funds to the private sector, to the tune of potentially $100 billion every year, according to a report commissioned by Congress in 2016.