Veterans’ health care is “horrible, horrible, and unfair” according to Donald Trump. But how true is that? Pretty untrue, judging by the numerous studies the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) health care system performs better than private systems in quality, safety, and effectiveness of treatment.

The VA runs the largest health care system in the US, and the only one that’s publicly funded from top to bottom, with not only its own insurance program but its own doctors and hospitals as well. And despite having an older, poorer, and sicker clientele than the general population, the VA is both the most cost-effective health system in the country and boasts the nation’s highest rates of patient satisfaction. Its continuing success is a stinging rebuke to the neoliberal axiom that private corporations and capitalist markets can deliver everything society needs, better and more efficiently than tax-funded social programs can.

It comes as no surprise, then, that free market crusaders like the Koch brothers have set out to convince the public that the VA is actually a disaster. They and other billionaires and hard right-wingers want the Trump administration to do to veteran health care what previous administrations have done to public housing and education: bring it to its knees, then denounce it as a failure, then privatize it.