what has trump done to help our veterans

In his last days in office, President Donald Trump fabricated several speeches highlighting the achievements of his presidency. Trump gave a terminal speech at Joint Base Andrews after leaving the White House for the final time Wednesday morning prior to the inauguration.

The Claim

During a taped farewell address Tuesday, Trump boasted his accomplishments in wellness intendance and claimed credit for the passage of the VA Choice Act.

"We passed VA Pick, VA Accountability, Right to Try, and landmark criminal justice reform," Trump said.

On Wednesday, he added, "Nosotros took intendance of the vets, 91 percent approval rating. They've never had that before the vets accept given us the VA. The vets accept given u.s. an approval rating like information technology has never been before. Nosotros took care of our vets and our beautiful vets, they were very badly treated earlier we came along. And equally y'all know, we become them dandy service and we choice upward the bill and they can get out and they can run into a doctor if they have to wait long periods of time."

The Facts

The VA Option Human action, or the Veterans Access to Care through Choice, Accountability and Transparency Act, was passed in 2014 nether President Barack Obama.

Co-ordinate to The Colina, the bipartisan bill expanded the number of options veterans have for receiving care and granted the United states of america Secretary of Veteran Affairs more power to fire executives. It included "choice cards" for veterans to see non-VA providers if they could not get appointments with the bureau inside xxx days or live more than than 40 miles from a clinic and added about $500 million for hiring additional nurses and doctors. Senators Bernie Sanders and John McCain were the primary architects of the legislation.

The bill came afterwards the major VA scandal in which VA staff had been instructed to falsify their waiting lists to cover up lone look times for basic intendance. The effect was particularly prevalent at the VA medical heart in Phoenix, where veterans waited 115 days on average for an initial primary care appointment, according to an interim independent study past the VA's inspector general at the fourth dimension.

In June 2018, Trump signed the Mission Act, which fabricated it easier for veterans to seek individual care. This was an update of the VA Pick Act and consolidated the existing health care programs nether the Veteran Diplomacy Department into one key program. This measure expanded the eligibility requirements for private intendance based on certain criteria so that veterans are able to seek a not-VA doc if their VA wait is xx days, if they live xxx minutes away from the nearest VA facility or if "a veteran and the veteran's referring clinician hold that furnishing care or services in the community would be in the best medical involvement of the veteran," according to the New York Times.

According to estimates from the Congressional Upkeep Office, an additional 640,000 veterans each twelvemonth will seek care exterior the VA organisation, and the legislation requires VA to negotiate a contract for veterans to seek care at individual walk-in clinics.

In his farewell address, Trump again refers to passing "VA Choice." Trump did authorize an extension of Choice, and then its replacement, the VA Mission Act. But as nosotros've discussed for years, Choice itself was passed under the Obama admin.
— Abbie Bennett (@AbbieRBennett) January xix, 2021

Trump repeatedly has claimed credit for passing the VA Pick Human action. Co-ordinate to the Washington Post, Trump has mentioned some version of his VA Choice Act mistruth more than 156 times.

While speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in 2018, Trump conflated the act passed under Obama and the Mission Human action expansion.

"We passed Veterans Pick, the biggest affair ever, the biggest matter. That'southward got to be the biggest improvement you can have. Then at present, if you tin can't become treatment that y'all need in a timely manner—people used to look two weeks, three weeks, eight weeks, they couldn't get to a doctor—you will accept the right to see a private doctor immediately and nosotros will pay for it," he said.

More recently, Trump began to distinguish the ii pieces of legislation in a way that disparaged Obama'south version and bolstered his update.

"For more than 45 years, they were trying to get Choice," Trump said in a video posted on his personal Twitter account. "Obama gave y'all a weak version that didn't piece of work. It was a joke. I gave yous the Mission Deed, which is phenomenal, and it's worked out fantastically well."

Even so, Trump returned to taking credit for the Pick Act shortly earlier the 2020 presidential election.

"And for our great veterans, we passed VA Choice and VA Accountability," Trump said at an event in Erie, Pennsylvania.

His printing secretarial assistant, Kayleigh McEnany, also cited false statistics about when the update was signed.

"Later on finding in 2015 that equally many as 307,000 veterans could have died waiting for care on Obama and Biden's picket, another 2017 VA Inspector General report institute that President Obama created 'several barriers' to veterans receiving outside intendance," McEnany wrote in a statement. "President Trump stock-still Obama'south cleaved VA and offered actual, permanent choice to millions of veterans."

The Ruling

Imitation.

Trump falsely took credit for passing the VA Choice Act several times during his term in office. The Selection Act was passed under Obama. Trump passed an update and expansion of that pecker known as the Mission Deed in 2018.