Senators kill sweeping plan to reshape sprawling VA health-care system
By Lisa Rein
Updated June 29, 2022 at 6:01 p.m. EDT|Published June 29, 2022 at 3:27 p.m. EDT
After years of inaction, lawmakers and advocates in 2018 rallied around an ambitious plan to modernize the sprawling, government-run health-care system for veterans, which still treats many patients in hospital wards built before World War II.
A commission, mandated that year by Congress, was tasked with weighing recommendations from the Department of Veterans Affairs for each of its 1,200 hospitals and clinics across the country and holding hearings in affected communities. The southward migration of veterans from the Northeast and Midwest, the shift from costly inpatient to outpatient care and the age of each building would factor into whether facilities would be urged to close, reduce service or shift patients into private care. VA would finally catch up to modern private hospitals, saving billions of dollars from it spends each year to shore up its aging health-care facilities, proponents of the plan argued.
But a long-sought realignment of the country’s largest health care system was killed this week by bipartisan political resistance through a short news release from 12 senators who said they would not approve the nine nominees up for confirmation to establish the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission. And a costly four-year effort to reposition VA in an increasingly competitive health care market fell victim to the principle that, just as all politics is local, so, apparently, is any decision to shift services for a constituency as crucial as veterans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/senators-kill-sweeping-plan-reshape-sprawling-va-health-care-system/
