A bipartisan deal to improve veterans' health care would authorize at least $17 billion to fix the health program, scandalized by long patient wait times and falsified records covering up delays.
Republican Cong. Jeff Miller and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, and their staffs, worked through the weekend to finalize the plan, in time for consideration before Congress leaves for its August break. At a news conference on Monday, Miller said the blueprint also begins a conversation about the future of the VA.
“Sen. Sanders and I differ about certain things,” said Miller, “but one thing we do agree about is that the veterans of this country deserve the best-quality health care that they can get in a timely fashion. The VA is not sacred; the veteran is.”
Miller chairs the House Veterans Affairs Committee; Sanders is chairman of the Senate’s counterpart.
“Funding for veterans’ needs must be considered a cost of war, and appropriated as emergency spending,” Sanders said. “Planes and guns and tanks are a cost of war. So is taking care of the men and women who use those weapons and who fight our battles.”
The agreement includes $10 billion in emergency spending to make it easier for veterans who can't get prompt appointments with VA doctors to obtain outside care; $5 billion to hire doctors, nurses and other medical staff; and about $1.5 billion dollars to lease 27 new clinics across the country. Vets living 40 miles or more from a VA facility would be allowed to get health care from a non-VA source.
The number of veterans who can get outside care would be restricted to those who are enrolled as of August 1st. Miller doesn’t believe opening up non-VA clinics for use will lead to an exodus of veterans from the system.
“But we don’t know until we start this program, to see how veterans are actually going to act” said Miller. “This first year is going to give us a good benchmark with which to be able to set the future of this program.”
The plan also contains the expansion of a scholarship program for veterans to include surviving spouses of those who die in the line of duty, and qualify all veterans for in-state college tuition. Sen. Bernie Sanders says it also grants the VA secretary authority to immediately fire senior executives, while providing employees with streamlined appeal rights.
The deal requires a vote by a conference committee of House and Senate negotiators, and votes in the full House and Senate. Miller was asked how he would win over opponents of new spending -- many of them with Tea Party support.
“I came from a sales background before I came to Congress,” said Miller amid chuckles. “And I think I can do an adequate job. There will be an educational process that will have to take place. Obviously, some of our members will need a little more educating than others.”
Meanwhile, the Senate is expected to vote this week to confirm former Procter & Gamble CEO Robert McDonald as the new VA secretary, replacing Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson, who would become McDonald’s second-in-command.
