True. But it was a total win for McCain. And a complete compromise of Sanders’ principles that opened the door to the largest expansion of privatization in VA history. It was a massive loss for Sanders and Dems—one that Sanders later tried to spin as a win... https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1299198452581257216

McCain wasn’t the ranking member on the Senate Veterans Affairs Commitee. He wasn’t even ON the committee. The Dems were totally hobbled by Shinseki’s collapse and Obama was getting hammered from all sides in the media on the Phoenix debacle...

I was in the very heated meetings at the White House with Rahm Emanuel and Obama. They tried to dig in—and got steamrolled by the flood of bad press. And Jon Stewart in particular was KILLING them on it: https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/jon-stewart-rips-obama--many-more-over-reported-va-wait-time-cover-ups-141415718.html ...

Sanders kept apologizing for @DeptVetAffairs—and was asleep at the wheel as Chair. I asked a Republican Senator why it was McCain in the meetings with Sanders and not Ranking Member Burr. He told me they sent in McCain, because they knew Sanders was afraid of him. And they’d win.

The Koch bros, Concerned Veterans of America and @PeteHegseth fought for this for years. Crushing Sanders and getting “Choice” done was (and still is) their most significant victory ever in a decades-long quest to expand privatization at @DeptVetAffairs: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/koch-fueled-plot-destroy-va/

It’s why now, all these years later, Trump continues to try to claim it as a win for Rs. But it was no win for Sanders, the Dems or Obama. And probably not for vets either. As of 2019, only 50% of vets surveyed by @IAVA thought it was “good” or better: https://iava.org/survey2019 

In the end, it was one of the biggest wins in history for conservative privatizers. Symbolically, politically & in overall total $ moved out of goverment & into the private sector. That concludes my @DeptVetAffairs “choice” history lesson. Read old @LeoShane articles for more.