The leader of a veterans group that has developed its own VA reform proposals accused Hillary Clinton of offering no substantive ways to fix veterans’ healthcare and instead resorting to "scare tactics."
Pete Hegseth, CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, told the Washington Free Beacon that Clinton chose to "demonize" her Republican opponents Tuesday when discussing her solutions to fix the Department of Veterans’ Affairs because her plan lacks substance.
"If you can’t engage the ideas, impugn your opponents," Hegseth said Wednesday.
At a campaign event in New Hampshire Tuesday, Clinton rolled out her plan to fix "systemic" problems at the VA. While her proposal recommends the government agency contract with private healthcare providers for some services, Clinton vowed to fight against what she called a "misguided, ideological crusade" on the part of Republicans to "privatize" to VA.
"As we work to improve the VA, I will fight as long and hard as it takes to prevent Republicans from privatizing it as part of a misguided, ideological crusade," The Democratic presidential candidate declared. "I will not put our veterans at the mercy of private insurance companies."
"Privatization is a betrayal, plain and simple, and I’m not going to let it happen," Clinton added.
Her comments were quickly denounced by Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), a veteran and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who called it "shameful" for Clinton to "play partisan politics with the VA crisis" on Tuesday, one day before Veterans Day.
Hegseth said that he agreed with McCain’s criticism of Clinton for politicizing the bipartisan issue.
"It has nothing to do with substance and everything to do with defending the status quo and demonizing opponents," Hegseth stated, adding that he anticipates Clinton’s "scare tactics" on veterans’ healthcare to continue throughout her campaign.
Hegseth further echoed McCain by indicating that Clinton misled her audience when she said Republicans are trying to privatize the VA. In its own reform plan unveiled in February, Concerned Veterans for America proposed giving veterans the choice to seek private care. Hegseth said that Clinton’s statements have specifically targeted his organization’s policy proposals.
"Giving a private option and reforming the [Veterans Health Administration] is much different than privatizing," Hegseth stated.
In her remarks Tuesday, Clinton promised as president to streamline the VA’s electronic health records system, eliminate the claims backlog, and ensure that the VA does more to support the families of veterans. She emphasized the need to boost accountability at the agency but offered no specific solutions to hold employees accountable for misconduct. Clinton also commended Secretary Robert McDonald for "doing a great job" leading the VA.
But Hegseth said that Clinton’s plan to fix the VA only "recycles" policies from the Obama administration and offers "no fundamental restructuring" of the VA’s network of hospitals.
"Her plan doesn’t make clear how she would instill accountability," Hegseth said. "You can’t instill accountability the way the rules are written now."
Darin Selnick, a senior veteran affairs adviser at Concerned Veterans for America who spent eight years at the VA, said on a press call that Clinton’s plan was full of "buzzwords" but demonstrated that her campaign doesn’t understand how VA healthcare works.
"The Clinton plan does not have the veteran come first. The Clinton plan has the VA come first, the bureaucracy," Selnick stated.
Clinton announced that she would release VA policy proposals after she received criticism for minimizing "widespread" problems at the agency’s health systems during an interview with MSNBC.
"There have been a number of surveys of veterans and, overall, veterans who do get treated are satisfied with their treatment," Clinton told Rachel Maddow on Oct. 23. "Nobody would believe that from the coverage that you see with the constant berating of the VA that comes from the Republicans in part in pursuit of this ideological agenda that they have."
Her statements drew ire from McCain, Concerned Veterans for America, and other lawmakers and veterans groups. The Clinton campaign was forced to walk back her statements, insisting that the former secretary of state recognizes the "systemic" issues at the VA and on Tuesday unveiling a 12-page fact sheet outlining her policy proposals.
Weeks before Clinton’s comments, an independent assessment commissioned by the VA found that the Veterans Health Administration faces "crises and leadership and culture" warranting "system-wide reworking." Selnick said Tuesday that Clinton’s policy proposals ignored the assessment, which was mandated by the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act that resulted from the 2014 fake wait list scandal.
"You cannot ignore a 4,000 page assessment that talks about every single problem with the VA," Selnick said.