Pete Hegseth’s War on Warriors

Much media coverage of Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Secretary of Defense has focused, understandably, on controversial things he has said or done, along with his complete lack of administrative experience relevant to running a federal government department with a $920 billion budget and a workforce of three million. But anyone in charge of the Pentagon also gets to oversee the Military Health System (MHS), which provides either private health insurance coverage or direct care for over 9.5 million service members, military retirees, and their families. As Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted in a recent DOD National Defense Strategy report, the MHS mission is to ensure that active duty personnel and their dependents are well-served by a skilled cadre of “medical personnel in uniform,” who number nearly 170,000.In a new analysis for The Washington Monthly, VHPI Senior Policy Analyst Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early dig into Hegseth's long and troubling record of advocacy for VA privatization, and show how, if confirmed, he will halt the Pentagon's ongoing and laudatory efforts to end its own failed experiment with healthcare privatization. Read their piece here.