This is the Tom Hartman program.

Trump's Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper,

has been recently criticized for saying that he wants to cut funding for military health

benefits for health care benefits for people who are active serving members of the military and for retired military.

He wanted to cut the health care budget of the Pentagon.

Now keep in mind, the Pentagon just got the largest infusion of cash in history and he wanted to cut that by 2.2 billion

which would definitely hurt 9.5 million active duty personnel,

military retirees, and their dependents.

So why did he want to cut $2.2 billion out of military health care?

Well, because he says those health care losses can be made up with

private insurance. And he says that will eliminate inefficiencies. Because

you know when the government provides health care to people they're not

skimming money off the top they're just providing health care but when private

corporations are providing health care to people they're skimming 10 20

30% off the top putting in their their pocket, sharing it with their investors,

spending money on marketing and advertising and everything else.

And that's more efficient somehow magically. Really?

Trump realized that optically this was bad so he tweeted on Monday quote a proposal by Pentagon officials to slash military

health care by 2.2 billion dollars has been firmly and totally rejected by me

we will do nothing to hurt our great military professionals and heroes as long as I am your president.

Thank you.

But Asper had actually already done this.

...