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WashingtonCNN —
“Get Pete Hegseth on the phone!”
It was March 2018, and then-President Donald Trump was meeting with his Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary, Dr. David Shulkin, about how to reform veteran health care. But it was Hegseth, then a Fox News personality, whose opinion Trump really wanted.
Hegseth, now Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of defense, had been a vocal and persistent advocate for veterans having unfettered access to private health care, rather than having to go through the VA to keep their benefits. He’s also lobbied for policies that would restrict VA care and believes veterans should ask for fewer government benefits.
“We want to have full choice where veterans can go wherever they want for care,” Hegseth told Trump on speakerphone as Shulkin listened, according to Shulkin’s 2019 memoir.
Trump’s pick to serve as the next VA secretary, Doug Collins, has also expressed support for greater privatization of veteran health care, which advocates characterize as giving veterans greater choice over their doctors. If veterans “want to go back to their own doctors, then so be it,” he told Fox News last month.
For Shulkin, a rare “holdover” from President Barack Obama’s administration to Trump’s, this was “the worst-case scenario” for veteran health care, and one he had repeatedly warned Hegseth against.
“Your version of choice would cost billions more per year, bankrupting the system,” Shulkin recalls telling Hegseth in his memoir. “How can we responsibly pursue this? Unfortunately, he didn’t want to engage at the level of budget and other aspects of day-to-day reality. He seemed to prefer his sound bites on television.”
If confirmed, Hegseth and Collins will have the opportunity to push for a dramatic overhaul of the military and veteran health care system, one that could significantly cut government health benefits for servicemembers and veterans – many of which Hegseth says veterans should not be asking for at all.
Veterans groups “encourage veterans to apply for every government benefit they can ever get after they leave the service,” he told Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” in 2019. “To me, the ethos of service is, I served my country because I love my country and I’m gonna come home and start the next chapter of my life. If I’ve got a chronic condition – mental, physical, otherwise – the government better be there for me, but otherwise I don’t want to be dependent on that.”
CNN has reached out to Hegseth and the Trump transition for comment on this story.
Hegseth told the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast last month that he is not explicitly advocating for privatizing the VA, but rather “to effectively let the dollars follow the veteran” to their preferred doctor.
Critics, though, say the “unfettered choice” narrative is a trojan horse for privatizing and ultimately dismantling the VA system altogether, whose budget was over $300 billion in 2024.
Hegseth told Shawn Ryan that the VA “hates” conversations about more private options “because their budget might get reduced.”
“It’s a typical swampy feedback loop,” he said. He added that when he was being considered for VA secretary in 2016, he heard from huge numbers of veterans who supported his ideas.
But Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot who challenged Sen. Mitch McConnell for his seat in Kentucky in 2020, emphasized in a conversation with CNN that while the debate around privatization of care has been “going on for years,” there hasn’t been a “wide-spread outcry from veterans to privatize the VA.”
“I’m not saying the VA is perfect, it’s certainly not,” McGrath, a Democrat, said. “But I don’t think there’s this huge outcry to privatize it.”
A senior Biden administration official told CNN that within the VA, there are a number of career civil servants “who have dedicated their lives to the health and welfare of the veterans our nation has sent to war repeatedly.” Those civil servants are now deeply worried about “the continued health care and earned benefits of the veterans they serve,” the official added.
WashingtonCNN —
“Get Pete Hegseth on the phone!”
It was March 2018, and then-President Donald Trump was meeting with his Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary, Dr. David Shulkin, about how to reform veteran health care. But it was Hegseth, then a Fox News personality, whose opinion Trump really wanted.
Hegseth, now Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of defense, had been a vocal and persistent advocate for veterans having unfettered access to private health care, rather than having to go through the VA to keep their benefits. He’s also lobbied for policies that would restrict VA care and believes veterans should ask for fewer government benefits.
“We want to have full choice where veterans can go wherever they want for care,” Hegseth told Trump on speakerphone as Shulkin listened, according to Shulkin’s 2019 memoir.
Trump’s pick to serve as the next VA secretary, Doug Collins, has also expressed support for greater privatization of veteran health care, which advocates characterize as giving veterans greater choice over their doctors. If veterans “want to go back to their own doctors, then so be it,” he told Fox News last month.
For Shulkin, a rare “holdover” from President Barack Obama’s administration to Trump’s, this was “the worst-case scenario” for veteran health care, and one he had repeatedly warned Hegseth against.
“Your version of choice would cost billions more per year, bankrupting the system,” Shulkin recalls telling Hegseth in his memoir. “How can we responsibly pursue this? Unfortunately, he didn’t want to engage at the level of budget and other aspects of day-to-day reality. He seemed to prefer his sound bites on television.”
If confirmed, Hegseth and Collins will have the opportunity to push for a dramatic overhaul of the military and veteran health care system, one that could significantly cut government health benefits for servicemembers and veterans – many of which Hegseth says veterans should not be asking for at all.
Veterans groups “encourage veterans to apply for every government benefit they can ever get after they leave the service,” he told Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” in 2019. “To me, the ethos of service is, I served my country because I love my country and I’m gonna come home and start the next chapter of my life. If I’ve got a chronic condition – mental, physical, otherwise – the government better be there for me, but otherwise I don’t want to be dependent on that.”
CNN has reached out to Hegseth and the Trump transition for comment on this story.
‘A typical swampy feedback loop’
The fight by pro-small government conservatives to privatize VA health care is not a new one, particularly as the VA has long been plagued with bureaucratic challenges, resulting in long wait times and sometimes dangerously delayed medical care for veterans.Hegseth told the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast last month that he is not explicitly advocating for privatizing the VA, but rather “to effectively let the dollars follow the veteran” to their preferred doctor.
Critics, though, say the “unfettered choice” narrative is a trojan horse for privatizing and ultimately dismantling the VA system altogether, whose budget was over $300 billion in 2024.
Hegseth told Shawn Ryan that the VA “hates” conversations about more private options “because their budget might get reduced.”
“It’s a typical swampy feedback loop,” he said. He added that when he was being considered for VA secretary in 2016, he heard from huge numbers of veterans who supported his ideas.
But Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot who challenged Sen. Mitch McConnell for his seat in Kentucky in 2020, emphasized in a conversation with CNN that while the debate around privatization of care has been “going on for years,” there hasn’t been a “wide-spread outcry from veterans to privatize the VA.”
“I’m not saying the VA is perfect, it’s certainly not,” McGrath, a Democrat, said. “But I don’t think there’s this huge outcry to privatize it.”
A senior Biden administration official told CNN that within the VA, there are a number of career civil servants “who have dedicated their lives to the health and welfare of the veterans our nation has sent to war repeatedly.” Those civil servants are now deeply worried about “the continued health care and earned benefits of the veterans they serve,” the official added.