Left-Leaning Voice: Trump Is Right About VA Reform

President Trump may be wrong on many things, but he is absolutely correct about reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs. Here’s why.

Since the 2000s, there have been notable, ongoing scandals surrounding the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide. One of the Trump administration’s biggest focuses, and one of the issues for which the administration has followed through on its promises, is VA reform. At rallies, it has been a consistent point of discussion for President Trump, to which his supporters have responded very positively.

At a rally in Nevada a few months ago, upon signing a bill to shorten the amount of time that veterans wait for decisions on requests for their disability payments and electing a new VA Secretary, Trump proudly proclaimed, “Now you [veterans] have a true reformer in [VA] Secretary David Shulkin. He’s done an incredible job. We are publishing wait times online for every VA facility so you know what the wait is.”

Republicans have depicted the VA as an agency with many terrible problems and have long campaigned on reform. Are they right? Could the VA really be in as terrible shape as they claim? To answer this question, let’s take a look at some specific experiences veterans have had with the VA:

In 2009, CBS News published a report revealing that, according to VA officials, “16 patients exposed to contaminated equipment at its medical facilities [had] tested positive for viral infections, including hepatitis.” Sites in Tennessee, Miami, and Georgia failed to properly clean their equipment in between different patients’ treatments. This instilled fear in many patients, such as veteran Gary Simpson, sixty-five, who received a colonoscopy at a clinic in 2007 but continued to live in fear after being told by a nurse that it could take up to seven years for a disease to appear.