VA Hospitals Are the U.S. Safety Net. Covid-19 Exposed the Holes

The Department of Veterans Affairs is supposed to provide a safety net for the U.S. medical system in times of crisis.

Yet its hospitals have treated just 135 civilians afflicted with Covid-19, according to numbers released this week, even as coronavirus infections have pushed tens of thousands of Americans into the nation’s hospitals.

The limited response stems in part from efforts to rein in the VA’s medical services, after a series of political battles over whether to privatize elements of the nation’s largest hospital network. In the early months of his term, President Donald Trump assigned an unconventional group to ...