Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined steps to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs today, casting herself as a protector against proposals to privatize the sprawling health care system for those who have served in the military.
In a pre-Veterans Day event in New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential candidate said she would seek to improve veterans' health care, modernize veterans' benefits system and address an unwieldy bureaucracy.
Her plan for veterans would seek fundamental changes to veterans' health care to ensure access to high quality health care in a timely fashion and address the backlog in claims. She said within the first 30 days of taking office she would convene the defense secretary and VA secretary for regular meetings and there would be "zero tolerance" for abuses and delays within the system.
Clinton was forced to backtrack last month after she said in an interview with MSNBC that the veterans' health care scandal was not "as widespread" as suggested, and accused Republicans of politicizing the agency.
