Vets groups, lawmakers lukewarm on VA budget proposal
By Heath Druzin
Stars and Stripes
Published: February 3, 2015
WASHINGTON — Veterans groups and lawmakers had mixed reactions to the White House’s Veterans Affairs budget, which proposes a steep rise in the department’s funding but which diverts money from a program aimed at giving VA patients more flexibility to seek private care.
The president’s budget would increase discretionary funds for the VA by nearly 8 percent, money aimed at hiring more doctors, increasing money for construction, and giving veterans improved health care options. It also calls for an advance appropriation of $63.3 billion for 2017 medical care, which is a 5.5 percent increase over 2016.
Much of the budget is similar to this year’s Independent Budget, an annual VA budget mock-up put together by several veterans service organizations.
“It is a very positive sign that the VA is recommending real increases in funding for medical care for both FY 2016 and for FY 2017,” Al Kovach, president of Paralyzed Veterans of America, said in a released statement. “However, it is imperative that Congress work with the administration to address the shortfall in medical care funding.”
The budget now gets referred to House and Senate committees and the Congressional Budget Office for review and will likely slowly wind its way through congress into spring.
The VA has been under heavy scrutiny amid a national health care scandal that cost former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki his job and led to a push to overhaul the department, the second largest in the federal government.
One provision that has already proved controversial is a proposal to divert money from the Veterans Choice Act, a program allowing patients in the VA system to use private hospitals. VA officials have said fewer veterans than expected have used their choice cards to seek care outside of the VA system, meaning the act is currently overfunded, though the department has not provided data to show this.
“This budget action would have the effect of denying many veterans the choice to access private health care, thereby forcing them to stay in a VA health care system that has failed, for too long, to provide care in a timely manner — sometimes with deadly consequences,” Concerned Veterans of America CEO Pete Hegseth said in a statement.
Other veterans groups have so far taken a more measured approach. Louis Celli, the American Legion’s director of veterans affairs and rehabilitation, said his group generally supports the proposals and the increase in funding. The timing of diverting the Veterans Choice Act money concerns him, though.
“We’re very pleased with the desire to increase physicians and access,” he said. “For the VA to try to reprogram (funds) now, we think is a little premature.”
House Committee on Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., blasted the plan to divert veterans choice plan money, while his counterpart on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., took a more wait-and-see approach.
“On the one hand, you could read it as taking money from veterans choice and moving it to some other parts of veterans health care, which might diminish the capability of veterans choice being able to be operational and in place or you could look at it as giving the secretary flexibility to meet the demands of the veterans without diminishing veterans choice,” he said at a VA press conference Tuesday. “If it’s the latter, that’s great, if it’s the former, we’ve got big problems.”
Speaking at the same press conference, VA Secretary Bob McDonald said the proposal to divert money was his idea, and that he was surprised at the outcry.
“What I was asking for in that legislation or that approach was to have flexibility,” he said. “If we don’t get as many veterans going outside (the VA system) and they’re coming in, I don’t want to be short money (for VA care).”
http://www.stripes.com/news/vets-groups-lawmakers-lukewarm-on-va-budget-proposal-1.327512
