ICYMI: Sen. Cruz: My Objective in Expanding Choice is to Improve the VA and the Quality of Care for Veterans

McKINNEY, Texas – Last night, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) participated in the first of a series of ‘Defend & Reform’ town halls with Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) in McKinney. There, along with CVA Director of Policy Dan Caldwell, Sen. Cruz discussed his efforts on behalf of veterans with attendees. 

The town hall in its entirety may be viewed here.

One question Sen. Cruz received from an audience member was regarding veteran’s choice in their health care provider.

“First off Ted, I’d like to salute you for your service to America and to the vets and to Texas. My concern is about the veterans hospitals. My dad was a World War II vet. He’d go up here to Bonham, he lived in Sherman. He’d go up here to Bonham and sit for about three or four hours. They would put him on a bus, ship him to Dallas and he’d stay there the rest of the day. Ride a bus back to Bonham and he’d come home to do something he could do at his local hospital. Just general everyday service. He could go to any doctor and do. You talk about the big bureaucracy of the VA. Why do we have to have all these VA hospitals if we can do what you’ve started where veterans can go anywhere they want to go? They’ll have their card, show the card, get your service done and you’re done. You won’t need all the VA hospitals. Now I’m not saying you got to close them down, which wouldn’t hurt, but why not use some of those VA hospitals for our disabled vets and our homeless vets? There are hospitals that will be empty they would have some place to go to that’s got cafeterias and everything. Let’s take care of our vets in some of those hospitals we don’t need.”

Sen. Cruz responded, “Thank you for his service. Your question stands for veterans all throughout, and let me say what you’re describing is crazy. It doesn’t make any sense. Who would set up a system like that? It’s not reasonable, it’s not rational, it’s not logical. And I think the cure for it – you know basic Economics 101: government monopolies are inefficient in providing a good or service. If you want to improve that good or service, you create competition. That’s the most effective way is to have competition. And so my objective in expanding choice is to improve the VA, and improve the quality of care for veterans and it’s the sort of thing – the existing Choice program its very narrowly circumscribed so for example, as you all know you have a 40 mile radius rule that limits the number of people you can access it. I don’t think that makes any sense at all particularly because the 40 mile rule, you might have a VA facility within 40 miles but it can’t perform the service you need so it doesn’t do any good if you need a bypass and you got a dental clinic nearby. That doesn’t exactly fit. And so the power of choice is nobody understands your health care needs better, and cares more about you and your family than you do. And you know I’m reminded of actually one of my favorite exchanges with former Texas senator Phil Gramm who’s my favorite former senator. He was at a Senate hearing and there was this liberal witness testifying and Senator Gramm said, ‘You know nobody loves my kids more than I do,’ and this young earnest liberal he interjected ‘Well with all respect Senator, that’s not true. I care about your kids every bit as much as you do’ and Phil leaned forward with a twinkle in his eye, he said ‘Really? What are their names?’”

Sen. Cruz continued, “You’re in the best position to make the decision about where to get the best health care and my guess is look if veterans had that choice, we have some wonderful VA hospitals, we have some incredible professionals that work in them and it may well be that a lot of veterans choose to keep going to the VA, particularly for service related injuries. If you’re dealing with things that there’s a specialty at the VA – there’s a lot of expertise, a lot of veterans may say you know what I want to keep going there, they know how to provide the service I need. But there may be other areas – you know it may be if you need a podiatrist, it might be that the best expertise in podiatry is not at the VA. That you might choose to go to some other doctor instead, and you might see the VA’s specializing more and specializing where veterans are demanding care. You guys, the veterans would be making the determination what care do you want from what facility and it wouldn’t be a Washington mandate dictating what happens in every facility. It would be the veterans deciding. The more we can move towards choice, full robust choice where you have the ability to go and pick where to get your care, the better care you’re going to get and the better the VA is going to get because they’ll know the only way they can keep you as a patient is to provide better service than the competition. You know if you had a private hospital that was telling people okay we’re going to stick you on a waiting list for weeks or months and not give you the service the private hospital would shut down. The VA has veterans’ captive right now because too many can’t choose an alternative. Introducing competition is designed to improve the quality of the whole system.”

Sen. Cruz is scheduled to appear in two more ‘Defend & Reform’ town halls in Austin tonight at 6:00 p.m. CT at the Renaissance Austin Hotel, and in Houston on Saturday at 12:00 p.m. CT at the Sheraton Brook Hollow Hotel.

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