VA Reforms—More Hurry Up and Wait: Kyndra Miller Rotunda
http://online.wsj.com/articles/kyndra-miller-rotunda-va-reformsmore-hurry-up-and-wait-1413585379?mod=hp_opinion
The Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act doesn’t do enough to fulfill the promise of its name.
On Aug. 7, President Obama signed into law a $16.3 billion bill to “overhaul” the Veterans Affairs health-care system. The Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act was lauded by the White House and Congress as a law that put vets back in the driver’s seat. But that’s just not so.
Supporters claim the new law allows veterans to see private doctors more quickly. Not true. Only in cases where the veteran has waited longer than the “wait time goals” of the VA can that veteran be seen by an outside doctor. What are the wait time goals? It’s hard to say. The law first defines them as 30 days. But one paragraph later the law allows the VA secretary to submit “actual” wait time goals to Congress. If the actual wait time is longer than 30 days, the actual wait time supplants the 30-day “wait time goal.” One wonders how Congress and the White House could high-five over that language.
Even if the vet manages to live through the wait time and see a private doctor, he can only stay with that doctor for 60 days before it’s back to the VA to start all over again. Why bother?
The law allows the VA to punish employees who intentionally manipulate VA wait times by faking medical appointment data. Apparently, the VA needed a special provision to punish employees for fraud and falsifying government records. One wonders why the U.S. Criminal Code wouldn’t do.
The law also creates a “Commission on Care” to examine the quality and accessibility of the VA health-care system. That sounds good. Trouble is, the commission isn’t in any hurry. The VA secretary has a full year just to appoint the members. Quick to enact, slow to act.
The law does have some redeeming qualities. It helps more veterans get treated for sexual trauma, and it allows veterans in rural areas to be treated closer to home. But the law does nothing to curtail lavish employee bonuses or to reduce the VA’s notorious backlog of claims. Under the present system, VA employees are paid generously while wounded veterans wait for their claims to be adjudicated. America’s veterans commonly describe VA processing as “delay, deny and hope you die.”
Congress could have passed a bill with more teeth. HR 4766, sponsored by Rep. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), would have established a similar commission to examine the quality and accessibility of VA care, but with only 15 days to hit the ground running. And the bill would have put VA bonuses on hold until the VA resolved the backlog of veterans’ claims. Congress passed the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act instead. Which provides little real choice and even less accountability.
Ms. Rotunda, a professor of military and international law at Chapman University and a former major in the Army JAG Corps, is the author of “Honor Bound: Inside the Guantanamo Trials” ( Carolina Academic Press, 2008).
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