When President Trump took office the VA was undergoing an effort to reform how healthcare was provided to the veterans served. In an effort to provide as much room possible for the reform effort to show improvement President Trump retained Obama’s selected VA change-agent David Shulkin. However, a year later with little progress, and a VA Secretary embroiled in personal spending controversies, and President Trump’s had enough.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Wednesday in the wake of a bruising ethics scandal and a mounting rebellion within the agency.

[…] Trump is nominating Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson to succeed Shulkin, a former Obama administration official and the first non-veteran ever to head the VA. Jackson has served since 2013 as the Physician to the President, and gained a national profile earlier this year for holding a sweeping press conference on the president’s health.

Trump has selected Robert Wilkie, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, to serve as the acting head of the VA. It is government’s second largest department, responsible for 9 million military veterans in more than 1,700 government-run health facilities. The selection of Wilkie bypasses VA Deputy Secretary Tom Bowman, who has come under criticism for being too moderate to push Trump’s agenda of fixing veterans’ care.  (read more)