Trump picks David Shulkin for secretary of Veterans Affairs
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced his choice of David Shulkin to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Shulkin is the current undersecretary for health at the VA and has been in that post since July 2015.
"I'll tell you about David: He's fantastic, he's fantastic," Trump said. "He will do a truly great job. One of the commitments I made is that we're going to straighten out the whole situation for our veterans.
"Our veterans have been treated horribly, they're waiting in line for 15, 16, 17 days, cases where they go in and they have a minor early stage form of cancer, they can't see a doctor. By the time they get to a doctor, they're terminal," Trump said. "It's not going to happen, it's not going to happen."
During his tenure, Shulkin told USA TODAY recently that he had cut the number of veterans waiting for urgent care from 57,000 to 600. At the same time, he spearheaded an effort to provide same-day care at all 167 VA medical centers across the country by the end of last year. It’s unclear whether he reached that goal.
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Shulkin is a physician who previously ran hospitals in New Jersey and New York and was named among the 100 most influential people in American health care by Modem Healthcare.
Trump promised during the presidential campaign to overhaul the VA so that veterans wouldn’t have to wait for care and could choose to get care outside the VA if they wanted. Currently, they can do that if they can’t get a VA appointment within 30 days or within 40 miles of their homes.
Shulkin has said in interviews that he favors a hybrid model, where the VA provides care that it specializes in, such as treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and loss of limbs, for example. And he said the VA should consider discontinuing other services that the private sector may better provide, such as obstetrics and gynecology.
Shulkin is blunt about the challenges facing the VA. He has said the agency has had trouble attracting talent from outside the VA, at one point, saying simply, "I need help."
Trump, who made the announcement about Shulkin during Wednesday's long-awaited news conference, said his team is going to be vetting people to join him at the VA to help overhaul the agency. He said leaders from respected hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic have agreed to help.
"We're going to straighten out the VA," Trump said. "I've been promising that for a long time, and it's something I feel very very strongly (about)."
He said he and his team interviewed "at least 100 people, some good, some not so good," before settling on Shulkin. Among the candidates were former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown.
"We think this selection will be something that will — with time, with time— straighten it out, and straighten it out for good because our veterans have been treated very unfairly," he said.
In a statement, Shulkin said he was honored to be chosen and said Trump's commitment to caring for veterans is "unquestionable."
"(H)e is eager to support the best practices for care and provide our Veterans Affairs’ teams with the resources they need to improve health outcomes," he said. "We are both eager to begin reforming the areas in our Veterans Affairs system that need critical attention, and do it in a swift, thoughtful and responsible way.”
