Chris Enget, THE HILL – I recently read an op-ed by Rep. Chris Deluzio warning fellow veterans “our health care is under attack.”
My initial thought was that finally, more members of Congress are seeing the same problems at the VA that I am.”
You can imagine my surprise when I read on to learn Rep. Deluzio believes the attacks are coming from his Republican colleagues and even my own organization, Concerned Veterans for America.
We can agree on the warning — veterans’ health care is indeed under attack. But the call is coming from inside the house. Attacks on veterans’ health care have long been coming from the Department of Veterans Affairs itself.
VA reform went into overdrive nearly 11 years ago when the Phoenix VA scandal broke, alerting the public that VA schedulers were using a secret wait-list system to hide true wait-times for care at VA facilities in order to improve their chances of getting performance bonuses. It turned out that this was common VA practice across the country.
Congress responded with the obvious solution, passing the VA MISSION Act. This gave veterans more choice in where they could use their care benefits.
In theory, we are welcome to stay at the VA if it works for us, but if it doesn’t, we can seek care from community providers. This concept is much like the care benefits we had while in uniform.
The VA has been working to undermine the law every step of the way by misleading people and concealing our community care options, even going as far as to override doctors’ recommendations through a rigorous administrative review process.
The two bills Rep. Deluzio invokes — the Complete the Mission Act and the Veterans Health Care Freedom Act — fix these issues by putting veterans at the center of their own care …
