Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Bush VA Spending Fails To Grow With Health Care Costs
Vets’ health low on Bush’s priority list
By Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.)
Op-Ed, The Hill, 9/17/03
A recent advertisement paid for by 10 of the nation’s veterans service organizations puts it succinctly: “No member of Congress has to wait six months or more for a doctor’s appointment. Why should 130,000 veterans have to wait that long?” Good question.
It is no secret to the nation’s 25 million veterans and their families that the VA health care system is critically underfunded. It should not be news to anyone who follows veterans’ issues that VA health care is threatened by an administration determined to discourage veterans from even approaching the health care system that was established to serve them. Witness the annual ritual of new fees and increased co-payments, new curtailments on eligibility and diminished service availability for veterans seeking long-term care.
This administration is not rising to meet our duty to veterans and is hiding behind budget tricks to obscure the reality of VA’s underfunding and underperformance.
While quick to point out that it requested for fiscal year 2004 a “record” increase for veterans’ health care, the administration is less anxious to draw attention to the fact that the annual percentage increase it requested for veterans’ health care is 5.4 percent — hardly a windfall considering that the consumer price index for medical care was 13 percent during fiscal year 2002. VA officials have testified that it would take a 13 to 14 percent hike in the VA’s health care budget just to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the growth in veteran patients continues to climb – from 2.9 million in fiscal year 1996 to more than 5 million projected in 2003, a 71 percent increase.
In its last three budgets, the administration has “added” dollars to VA health care by claiming it will find management efficiencies — for the fiscal year 2004 budget its estimate was almost $1 billion. One of the unproven tactics it relies upon for savings is outsourcing a number of integral health care services. In its fiscal year 2004 budget, the administration forecast a $3 billion savings over five years through the president’s accelerated outsourcing program. When pressed for details, the Office of Management and Budget described this estimate as a “best case scenario.” Yet in July, President Bush wrote to House Speaker Dennis Hastert asking to transfer up to $75 million from the strapped VA health care budget for competitive sourcing studies. In addition, the administration has indicated that most of VA’s health care workforce is subject to contracting without any rigorous test of cost-effectiveness.
These attempts to privatize threaten to diminish and even dismantle one of the nation’s most precious health care resources.
The administration has sought to more than double the copayments on prescription drugs for some veterans and create access fees for some veterans to even get in the hospital door. More than 100,000 veterans are now forced to wait more than 6 months for a medical care visit and thousands more fail to meet VA’s standard of 30 days for timely access to care. In addition, the administration proposed to eliminate long-term care services for most veterans resulting in the closure of about 5,000 nursing home beds.
Earlier this year, the VA found itself in the “morally irresponsible” position — those are Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi’s words — of not being able to provide care to veterans who sought to enroll in VA care. Because of inadequate resources, VA was forced to stop enrolling so-called “higher income” Priority 8 veterans. Some might believe that this is a gaggle of rich veterans with plenty of options for their health care.
In fact, Priority 8 includes decorated combat veterans, many of whom have incomes that hardly could be considered “high” (some with household incomes as low as $25,000 a year).
In July, the House approved a VA health care appropriation at the level requested by the president — $1.8 billion less than Congress had resolved to spend in its budget resolution. This is a sad commentary, but the House has one last chance to keep the promise Congress made to veterans earlier in the year to fix an OMB budget that puts tax cuts for the wealthy over health care for our sick and disabled warriors. The Senate must approve and the House must agree to a $1.8 billion addition to VA appropriations in the upcoming House-Senate conference.
More is at stake here than a funding battle. At stake are the relationship and the historic promise of a government to its servicemen and women, both current and former. This vividly illustrates why we need a stable and reliable funding stream for veterans’ health care. It is time to make VA health care funding mandatory, rather than subject to the whims of indifferent administrations and the broken promises of elected officials.
It is time to base the annual VA healthcare budget on the number of veterans enrolled in the system — all veterans — with medical inflation factored in. The fix really is that simple, and it is embodied in H.R. 2318, the Assured Funding for Veterans Health Care Act of 2003, which now has 122 co-sponsors.
Annual funding for Medicare, for the Department of Defense TRICARE for Life program, and for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan is mandatory.
Veterans deserve no less. We must keep our word to veterans.
Evans is ranking member on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
By Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.)
Op-Ed, The Hill, 9/17/03
A recent advertisement paid for by 10 of the nation’s veterans service organizations puts it succinctly: “No member of Congress has to wait six months or more for a doctor’s appointment. Why should 130,000 veterans have to wait that long?” Good question.
It is no secret to the nation’s 25 million veterans and their families that the VA health care system is critically underfunded. It should not be news to anyone who follows veterans’ issues that VA health care is threatened by an administration determined to discourage veterans from even approaching the health care system that was established to serve them. Witness the annual ritual of new fees and increased co-payments, new curtailments on eligibility and diminished service availability for veterans seeking long-term care.
This administration is not rising to meet our duty to veterans and is hiding behind budget tricks to obscure the reality of VA’s underfunding and underperformance.
While quick to point out that it requested for fiscal year 2004 a “record” increase for veterans’ health care, the administration is less anxious to draw attention to the fact that the annual percentage increase it requested for veterans’ health care is 5.4 percent — hardly a windfall considering that the consumer price index for medical care was 13 percent during fiscal year 2002. VA officials have testified that it would take a 13 to 14 percent hike in the VA’s health care budget just to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the growth in veteran patients continues to climb – from 2.9 million in fiscal year 1996 to more than 5 million projected in 2003, a 71 percent increase.
In its last three budgets, the administration has “added” dollars to VA health care by claiming it will find management efficiencies — for the fiscal year 2004 budget its estimate was almost $1 billion. One of the unproven tactics it relies upon for savings is outsourcing a number of integral health care services. In its fiscal year 2004 budget, the administration forecast a $3 billion savings over five years through the president’s accelerated outsourcing program. When pressed for details, the Office of Management and Budget described this estimate as a “best case scenario.” Yet in July, President Bush wrote to House Speaker Dennis Hastert asking to transfer up to $75 million from the strapped VA health care budget for competitive sourcing studies. In addition, the administration has indicated that most of VA’s health care workforce is subject to contracting without any rigorous test of cost-effectiveness.
These attempts to privatize threaten to diminish and even dismantle one of the nation’s most precious health care resources.
The administration has sought to more than double the copayments on prescription drugs for some veterans and create access fees for some veterans to even get in the hospital door. More than 100,000 veterans are now forced to wait more than 6 months for a medical care visit and thousands more fail to meet VA’s standard of 30 days for timely access to care. In addition, the administration proposed to eliminate long-term care services for most veterans resulting in the closure of about 5,000 nursing home beds.
Earlier this year, the VA found itself in the “morally irresponsible” position — those are Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi’s words — of not being able to provide care to veterans who sought to enroll in VA care. Because of inadequate resources, VA was forced to stop enrolling so-called “higher income” Priority 8 veterans. Some might believe that this is a gaggle of rich veterans with plenty of options for their health care.
In fact, Priority 8 includes decorated combat veterans, many of whom have incomes that hardly could be considered “high” (some with household incomes as low as $25,000 a year).
In July, the House approved a VA health care appropriation at the level requested by the president — $1.8 billion less than Congress had resolved to spend in its budget resolution. This is a sad commentary, but the House has one last chance to keep the promise Congress made to veterans earlier in the year to fix an OMB budget that puts tax cuts for the wealthy over health care for our sick and disabled warriors. The Senate must approve and the House must agree to a $1.8 billion addition to VA appropriations in the upcoming House-Senate conference.
More is at stake here than a funding battle. At stake are the relationship and the historic promise of a government to its servicemen and women, both current and former. This vividly illustrates why we need a stable and reliable funding stream for veterans’ health care. It is time to make VA health care funding mandatory, rather than subject to the whims of indifferent administrations and the broken promises of elected officials.
It is time to base the annual VA healthcare budget on the number of veterans enrolled in the system — all veterans — with medical inflation factored in. The fix really is that simple, and it is embodied in H.R. 2318, the Assured Funding for Veterans Health Care Act of 2003, which now has 122 co-sponsors.
Annual funding for Medicare, for the Department of Defense TRICARE for Life program, and for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan is mandatory.
Veterans deserve no less. We must keep our word to veterans.
Evans is ranking member on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
All articles in this archive are used under "fair use" as they are important to the national discussion of whether or not the people of this country are being deceived by their government. These articles are used as evidence in that discussion.
