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With less than 1% of americans serving in the military, i think we owe those that serve a great deal of gratitude and reflect on the memory of those who have given their lives for our country. >> you have a big job. have things changed? are you seeing change? >> i'm optimistic. i am a doctor. i like to put things in clinical terms. we are monitoring things closely. i am optimistic we are beginning to deal with the issues that have plagued the va system for decades. >> have you seen wait times change? >> we have. we're seeing an improvement. our job is not done but we have same-day services for...

Take a look, can we do it better so we can shift resources, and not take them away, to other veterans. >> is the system overloaded with noncombat veterans? >> right now, we are providing care to every combat veteran after they leave the service, but the majority of our veterans that we serve are in older age groups, particularly the vietnam veterans, average age, 60 or 70 years old. the older they get, they need more health care services group we are dealing with an older veteran population. >> it's been two years since congress passed a major bill to reform the va system. did it work? >> i th...

>> do you know how many people you fired? stick i don't keep track of the number. i make sure that when i find the situation where somebody has deviated from our values that they no longer are in the va system. >> what is the biggest problem. if you were to boil it down, what's the biggest problem? the biggest problem is the va has failed to modernize when the rest of health care has been actively changing and evolving. we are hard at work making those decisions. the president's budget that was given to us allows us the resources to invest and making the va system we are proud of. >> taking a ...

Medicare. alder america generally like it. that's not where the va is having government on hospitals. >> harris: it doesn't cover everything. >> dagen: it's broke. there's a $50 trillion hole in it because the government hasn't told elderly folks, you can't have that. they're going to have bureaucrats deciding when people die and how long they get to live. that's what ultimately will happen. >> harris: to get back to the original point about the emotions, when you talk about some thing emotional, you don't hear democrats talking about the broken va system. that happened on obama's watch. >> me...

Especially from the office. do you feel like they have done that before to you. regardless of what they did before what they're doing now. we've an obligation to this country when we say put the country first. i said look at flint michigan. we can talk about all of that great things because we can only speak about what he's done. i'm not totally against the president. i'm a 20 year retired air force member. i was elated to hear about him signing a bill that we cannot get healthcare outside of the va system. i was elated about that. >> it sounds like you're willing to give them a chance but you...