On Sunday, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin told the Disabled American Veterans conference in Arlington, Virginia that he was thinking about lifting restrictions on veterans who wish to receive private medical care.
The program that already allows certain veterans to receive non-VA care, the Choice Program, was originally instituted in 2014 after it was found that many VA facilities had long waiting times, even to the point that people awaiting care died in some cases. As the law now stands, however, the program allows veterans to receive private care only if they live 40 miles from a VA facility or if they have waited more than 30 days for an appointment. Shulkin proposed doing away with those requirements, as reported by Stars and Stripes.
“We know that this program, even though it was well-intentioned, was extremely complex and bureaucratic, and it was too hard to get the care that you all deserve to get when you need to go into the community,” he said. “So, we want to simplify it. We want to make it easier to use to work better for you, and we’re going to work hard to do that.”
Shulkin called on Congress to first reauthorize the Choice Program, which is currently set to expire this August. Sen. John McCain and Rep. Phil Roe introduced a bill last month that would remove the expiration date.
The new secretary also was careful to allay any concerns from veterans’ groups and Democrats about privatizing medical care for veterans, saying his intent was to create a better system than the one that already exists.
“I mentioned this integration of VA hospitals and community care,” Shulkin said. “We’ve been working hard to get that done. Thirty-one percent of care we deliver now is out in the community. We’re looking to make that so that it’s actually a coordinated, integrated system.”
“This is not privatization,” he asserted. “This is actually: ‘How do we get the veteran the very best care in the VA and the very best care in the private sector and working to build that into an integrated system of care?'”
Additional proposals include introducing legislation that would make it easier to fire negligent VA employees, instituting new suicide prevention programs, upgrading hospital infrastructure, and improving decision times on disability and pension claims, among other ideas.
