“We passed Veterans Choice, the biggest thing ever, the biggest thing. That’s got to be the biggest improvement you can have. So now, if you can’t get treatment that you need in a timely manner — people used to wait two weeks, three weeks, eight weeks, they couldn’t get to a doctor — you will have the right to see a private doctor immediately and we will pay for it.”
Trump is confusing an existing program for veterans’ health care with recently enacted reforms, and exaggerating the effect of the changes.
The Veterans Choice Program was created in 2014 — not under Trump — after the scandal of hidden waiting lists at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals. Under the program, veterans who do not live within 40 miles of a department hospital or face wait times of more than 30 days for care could seek private health care funded by the government.
In June, Trump signed a law that reformed and consolidated Veterans Choice and other existing programs into a single Veterans Community Care Program.
The law also revamped and expanded the eligibility requirements for private care based on a combination of factors that include wait times, distance to a department hospital, quality of care or if “a veteran and the veteran’s referring clinician agree that furnishing care or services in the community would be in the best medical interest of the veteran,” according to a congressional summary of the law.
But it will take approximately one year to put the changes into effect, the Veterans Affairs Department and the White House have both estimated. The law provided $5.2 billion in funding to continue the choice program until the new program is operational.
It’s also not entirely true that veterans can see a private doctor “immediately” and the government will “pay for it.”
The Government Accountability Office reported in June that veterans waited 51 days on average to receive care through the Choice Program. (It is not yet possible to estimate wait times for the new program because, again, it will not be operational until 2019.)
Veterans who make department copayments because of income limits still pay them under the Choice Program, and would continue to do so under the Community Care Program.
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