in the va system that things are improving and they should get in and register with the va? i saw your segment with tammy. i m glad the clay hunt act passed. but it really only addresses those veterans that are already in the va. as you said 22 veterans take their live every day, and 17 of them have never sought va care because they don t know about it. while i was at va we created an expensive, taxpayer-funded ad campaign with theed a ed aed a ed aed a ed aed a ed aed a the ad council that cost $4 million. it hasn t been run yet. it s time to run it and bring more veterans in. how about your overall assessment of secretary mcdonald in his role? i think he s come in and brought a lot of energy. he says call me bob. it s a much different culture. i know he s given out his cell phone number. this is a 330,000-person organization. it s a big beast. i think he s the right type of leader to come in with a lot of
my district office this week and asked them for the compliments and concerns about their va care. the bottom line i walked away with, veterans need choice in their health care and they need to control that choice. does that include when they re waiting at the va and it s going to be a long wait, they can get something that can let them hop across the street or to another hospital and get the care they need? that s right. you mentioned getting a piece of paper. they shouldn t have to wait to get a piece of paper. right now the law allows them to go outside the va system. but the va has to approve it. i say we put a choice card in every veteran s hands and say, you choose what you want for health care. go to the va if you want, but if you want to go outside of the system, go outside of the system. congressman, what s the delay in the reconciliation? the sticking issue i m told is the firing issue and how far we go. it sounds incredible to me, but
happen. and clearly he couldn t do that on his own. it has to been acted by congress if they were going to get rid of the va but it would put republicans on defense who have been clamoring about his executive orders, they hate them. and the would welcome this. everybody would. they would get by that and forget about how a lot of people i ve been mentioning these vouchers, a great deal on my shows and one thing that comes up, be careful what you wish for you could complicate the system and those with vouchers are getting the primo service, those getting the traditional va care are getting the lousy service. it s all about the health care of the veterans. that s the bottom line. so what we re dealing with here is do whatever needs to be done to get them cared for. stop the waste. stop the wait. deal with the backlog and then deal with the problem on a more macro level.
of it subcontracted out to private contractors. that s very troubling. that s always the dog whistle right there. one of the reasons i wanted to do this and really talk about the true cost of war is part of what strax me is we talk about how much it costs to send men and women to war but they never calculate or think about when those young men and women come back, and are in their 20s and will need care for many, many years, what does that cost? that s never factored in to or discuss. you re saying long-term thinking wasn t deployed when we invade iraq? i m just putting it out there. we re still paying for the iraq war. we had eight years of this george bush presidency where we had a credit card with no spending limits. now the bill has arrived in your mailbox and it is called astart. people who cheered this war in the first place have a lot of nerve complaining and blaming some guy who showed up
whistle-blower, sais say the differences between trained investigators from the department of justice whose job it is to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse lying to them could trigger criminal penalties. office workers who ask a few coll questions and clinic staff members who may be afraid to speak the truth. it is not surprising when you consider what a sprawling system it is. it is important to remember that when veterans can access the va in a timely manner they are generally satisfied with the care. their satisfaction rate is usually above that for private hospitals. problem is within the system. the not is not the system. as we go through this process of identifying the different hospitals where these irregularities occur, i m a little troubled by already hearing some people like kevin mccarthy making a great edict on the whole system. seeming to suggest we should slim down the v system or parts