- Shulkin, for his part, blamed his ouster on “the ambitions of people who want to put VA health care in the hands of the private sector,” something he opposes, lamenting that a political power struggle over his department made it tougher to do the work of running and improving the VA.
“They saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed,” Shulkin wrote in his New York Times op-ed, published shortly after midnight on Thursday. “As I prepare to leave government, I am struck by a recurring thought: It should not be this hard to serve your country.”
Link to the NPR interview.
The excessive spending charge struck me as bullshit, because (a) that's literally what all of Trump's guys do, and (b) he's Trump's lone Obama holdover. Given that Trump has figured out that the people don't like expensive trips on taxpayer money (because again, all his guys do that), he decided that would be a good way to fire a guy he doesn't like. Trump has a way of yelling that his enemies are doing the exact thing that he's actually doing, so to me this seems really fishy.