Lakhota
Diamond Member
By Michael McAuliff
WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney floated an eyebrow-raising suggestion on Veterans Day: privatize veterans' health care.
Speaking with a dozen vets in an occasionally emotional roundtable discussion in South Carolina Friday, the GOP presidential contender sympathized with the service members' difficulties obtaining treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which one vet described as "adversarial."
Romney, who has already proposed privatizing Medicare, suggested that maybe giving wounded warriors an outside option would force VA health bureaucrats to be a little more responsive.
"When you work in the private sector and you have a competitor, you know if I don't treat this customer right, they're going to leave me and go somewhere else, so I'd better treat them right," Romney said. "Whereas if you're the government, they know there's nowhere else you guys can go. You're stuck.
More: Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized