The Conservative Plan to Fix the VA Has Vets Hopping Mad

[Judi Lynn]

The Conservative Plan to Fix the VA Has Vets Hopping Mad

Why is a commission charged with fixing the problems hoping to close down its hospitals?

—By AJ Vicens
| Tue Apr. 5, 2016 6:00 AM EDT

Some members of the commission established by Congress to evaluate the Department of Veterans Health Administration have proposed drastically reducing the size of the VHA by closing its health facilities and transferring the care of the nation's millions of military veterans to the private sector. But in a letter sent to the chair of the Commission on Care, leaders of eight of the country's most prominent veterans' advocacy organizations blasted the proposal.

"We are greatly alarmed by the content of the proposal that was developed and drafted outside the open Commission process by seven of the Commission's fifteen members—without the input or even knowledge of the other Commissioners," they wrote in a letter signed by senior leaders of the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, AMVETS, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

The plan—known as the "Strawman Document"—was floated in March by seven members of the 15-member Commission on Care, an oversight group that was established by Congress in 2014 in the wake of the national scandal surrounding the lengthy wait times for healthcare at VA facilities. The commission is charged with evaluating veterans' access to health care and with offering proposals for how the Veterans Health Administration should be organized over the next 20 years.

The "Strawman" report, which echoes VA privatization efforts that have been backed by the Koch brothers, says "bold transformation" is needed for the VA to address the needs of its enrolled veterans, and that the system is "seriously broken" with "no efficient path to repair it." The plan calls for closing many "obsolete" VA facilities and moving toward a model where veterans can seek taxpayer-funded care at private health care facilities. A process similar to the Base Realignment and Closure system—used by the military since the end of the Cold War to decide which bases to close—would be used to evaluate which VA medical facilities would close. Under the plan, there would be no new facilities or major renovations of the existing VA facilities.

The plan also called for private doctors to be reimbursed at 5 to 10 percent higher than the Medicare rate, so they would have a greater incentive to participate.

The authors wrote that eventually the VA would become a broad-based payer system, "though it will continue to pay for the veteran care provided by the community system."

More:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/veterans-groups-really-dont-idea-privatized-va-system

[SoLeftIAmRight]

1. Conservative? Plan? Fix?

lol

the only plan then have is to destroy - it is the only thing they do well

[shadowmayor]

2. Privatize everything

Let Exxon run our national parks, Bain Capital run our credit unions, MicroSoft run our schools and on and on it goes. Fuck these people. On behalf of myself and my brother and sister veterans I say that these assholes need to be run out of office. And yet, far too many of my veteran friends have been "trained" to vote Republican.