Long before becoming secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Doug Collins’s intention to steer veterans and their health care dollars away from VA medical facilities and into private hands was well established. During his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, Collins was a staunch ally of the Koch-backed Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), a group whose ideological North Star is privatizing VA services. He embraced three key bills the organization championed that laid the groundwork for outsourcing care for large numbers of VA patients and weakening protections for VA employees.
During his January confirmation hearing, Collins tried his best to shroud his objectives, lulling skeptical committee members with reassuring-sounding platitudes, such as “there’ll always be a VA for the veteran.” He has continued to spread these unconvincing assertions as VA secretary in interviews, press releases, Twitter videos, and congressional hearings, while, at the same time, swiftly advancing proposals to deeply cut VA resources and personnel and redirect the so-called “savings” toward expanded outsourcing to private-sector care.
His approach has become more combative, marked by disparaging comments directed at reporters, VA employees, and officials responsible for overseeing his agenda. During one recent exchange with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Collins lashed out, “You’re not being truthful. I’m not going to let you get away with that.” Yet Collins’s stance calls to mind Shakespeare’s famous observation in Hamlet that “The lady doth protest too much.” It is often the case, after all, that those who most vehemently attack others’ credibility are themselves concealing the truth.
Collins’s privatization campaign rests on four misleading narratives.
First is his pledge that “we’re not cutting VA health care providers.” Collins has repeatedly assured stakeholders that, despite his plan to eliminate between 30,000 and 80,000 department positions this year, the number of providers furnishing direct health care won’t decline one bit.
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