Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized

[Raymond]

Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized

Remarks Romney made in the 2008 campaign, when he defended his five
sons' decisions not to enlist in the military by saying they were
serving their country by helping to get him elected.

Department Of Veterans Affairs ,
WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney floated an eyebrow-raising suggestion on
Veterans Day: privatize veterans' health care.

Speaking with a dozen vets in an occasionally emotional roundtable
discussion in South Carolina Friday, the GOP presidential contender
sympathized with the service members' difficulties obtaining treatment
from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which one vet described as
"adversarial."

Romney, who has already proposed privatizing Medicare, suggested that
maybe giving wounded warriors an outside option would force VA health
bureaucrats to be a little more responsive.

"When you work in the private sector and you have a competitor, you
know if I don't treat this customer right, they're going to leave me
and go somewhere else, so I'd better treat them right," Romney said.
"Whereas if you're the government, they know there's nowhere else you
guys can go. You're stuck.

Sometimes you wonder if there would be some way to introduce some
private-sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say,
you know, that each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to
them, and then they can choose whether they want to go in the
government system or in a private system with the money that follows
them," said Romney. "Like what happens with schools in Florida, where
people have a voucher that goes with them. Who knows?"

Though Romney was equivocal about the idea, the Democrat-aligned
Protect Your Care was quick to pounce on the suggestion, which could
have the effect of diverting cash from the VA.

"It is well-known that Romney wants to take away seniors' Medicare and
turn it into a privatized voucher system, but it is unfathomable that
on Veterans Day he would even hint at privatizing their VA health
care," said Protect Your Care spokesman Eddie Vale. "Although I guess
that is the kind of thing they should expect from someone who in the
past said his sons also served their country by campaigning for him."

Vale was referring to remarks Romney made in the 2008 campaign, when
he defended his five sons' decisions not to enlist in the military by
saying they were serving their country by helping to get him elected.

The idea of health care vouchers didn't impress one Marine veteran in
the discussion, according to Talking Points Memo.

Auston Thompson, a veteran of the Iraq War and former Marine, told TPM
after the session that though the idea of the plan was sound to his
fiscally conservative ear, the implementation would likely lead to
problems.
"Eventually it would become too much of a nuisance," Thompson said. He
doubted a voucher system would cover the benefits like the existing VA
system does. "Private health care is already so expensive, you'd need
some kind of health care reform to make it work."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/11/mitt-romney-veterans-health-care-privatization_n_1089061.html