A two-minute hate for "privatization" and "Kochs"

This Politico coverage of the sacking of VA secretary Shulkin is bizarre.  I must be so far in the conservative echo chamber that I'd lost sight of how even moderately leftist people view the dangers of allowing vets to go outside the nonfunctional VA system to get actual care from actual private doctors.  To Politico, apparently, this is "privatizing VA benefits while leaving taxpayers with the bill."  If the point is to provide vets with benefits, I'm at a loss to see what's wrong with using taxpayer funds to pay private doctors.  Isn't that what Medicare does, or theoretically does?  Usually we see complaints about the juxtaposition of "privatizing" with "taxpayer" funds when it's a pseudo-investment, as in infrastructure, and the upside is on the private side while the downside is left to the taxpayers.