When asked whether she has any new ideas to solve issues at the VA on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show Friday, Clinton sidestepped the question and accused Republicans of “berating” the federal agency.
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In case you missed it over the weekend, Hillary Clinton made the incredible statement that the problems inside Veteran’s Affairs hospitals around the country, which have left 300,000 veterans dead waiting for care, aren’t as “widespread” as those damn Republicans have made them seem.
The former first lady blamed Republicans for using the issue as part of an “ideological agenda” and said they want the VA to “fail”. “If you look at not only VA health care, but the backlog on disability determinations, there’s something not working within the bureaucracy”, Clinton said.
While Clinton acknowledged the “scandal” that has struck the VA in recent years, she said it has “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be”.
Veterans groups also lashed out.
The VA scandal erupted in April 2014 when employees at the Phoenix veterans hospital blew the whistle on risky delays in patient appointments, phony wait-time data and corrupt management practices.
Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Florida, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, piled on as well, CNN reports.
And Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative veterans group that has called for the VA to begin offering subsidized private insurance to veterans, among other reforms, condemned Clinton’s remarks as out-of-touch with veterans’ needs. “Anyone who would claim the opposite simply isn’t paying attention”.
“Hillary Clinton has shown that just like the Obama administration, of which she was a part, she will minimize the deep-rooted problems within the Department of Veterans Affairs and engage in partisan attacks against those who propose real and fundamental reform”, Concerned Veterans for America CEO Pete Hegseth in a statement Saturday.
“Because if they exist to support a veteran, then the benefits should follow the veteran”. And in many cases, if not most, the veteran is going to say, ‘I love the VA. I love the way they take care of me. “I’d like to take her by the urology clinic where 45 veterans were not getting the care they deserved with stage 4 cancer”. But, she argued, the problem goes deeper than slow wait times.
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“So that’s why it’s important that there be choices involved in this”, he said.
