Page 21 - Va System News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> james: one of president trump's most frequent and powerful promises during the campaign was to improve the lives of our veterans and especially the medical care they receive through the va system. ground zero in the battle, the subject of many headlines, is the va health system in phoenix. >> three years after dozens of veteran's death were blamed in part on a lack of care at the phoenix va, the facility ranks as one of the worst in the country. the person hired to turn things around struggled to say where things stand. in your mind, 1 to 10, what do you think the status of the facility as ...

The va system to private insurance companies or hospitals, whatever you want to call it, privatization or more choices, whatever you want to call it, is that, a, a lot of people, as you know, who are in the va system are happy with the va system. >> yes. >> not everybody but a greet deal according to the polling. >> the majority are, yes. >> and also that the doctors in the va system know veterans issues much better than a private doctor. and all this research being done that would not be done in the private world if it weren't for the va hospital research into post traumatic stress, research ...

Seems like a great idea but is it workable? >> yeah, in theory it's something that would -- with plenty of support give health care options. we don't know how it would be implemented specifically, what form it would take, i do think there would be about basically opening up the va system which has been kind of a closed system all of these years allowing veterans to use that system, giving them the option to use other physicians, what impact would that have on the va system that's been set up, certainly the va system has had immense problems in recent years and there's plenty of impetus in wash...

Years to help manage these issues. here's the thing, is that in the next 15 years, you're probably going to have 8 million fewer veterans in the united states because of world war ii, korean, and vietnam era. that going to lead to a large number of veterans leaving the va system unfortunately as a result of just natural life cycles. so you are going to have a much smaller patient pool for the va anyways. you have patients leaving the system. so what do you have to do? you have to reform the system and get it ready for the veteran population of future and with a much more dispersed and less den...

Members of congress get their healthcare as well as for families from the va system until they clean it up, you know, it's not that all of america is hearing that because they're hearing what donald trump said. >> you know that fox news has spent a lot of time criticizing donald trump's comments and when we do so, we hear it from his followers no doubt. does his popularity have anything to do with just the generaliz generalized culture. >> people are so mad. i can understand a lot of it. they feel like this government is completely oblivious to protecting them. they go through metal detectors ...