Some say the Department of Veterans Affairs is still broken three years after the VA wait-time scandal erupted in 2014, while others say the VA has shown dramatic improvement.
One lawmaker is proposing a new way to settle the debate: Ask veterans what they think.
Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., has proposed the Survey Our Servicemembers Act, which would create an annual survey of veterans who actually use the department, or try to use it, to access healthcare.
He proposed the bill after a survey in his district that showed many veterans are still having trouble with the VA. “By making this a nationwide survey, more veterans will have their voices heard, and we can use their feedback to help provide veterans with the care they deserve,” he said.
Some of the results from his local survey were devastating.
“More than 25 percent of respondents had to contact the VA facility between two and five times to schedule their appointment,” Rice’s office said. “Roughly 13 to 18 percent of those who tried making an appointment at a VA medical center were unable to schedule one, depending on the facility.”
Even worse, Rice thinks veterans are more happy with VA care in his district than veterans are in other districts. He represents an area with a high concentration of veterans, which means VA care is at least close at hand for many, and proximity is a key factor in the satisfaction of veterans.
“I suspect that ours is probably one of the better ones,” he told the Washington Examiner when asked about his district. “If you ask veterans across the country, I suspect their opinion of the VA would not be as high.”
If things are worse around the country, as Rice suspects, it’s a sign that the reforms of 2014 didn’t take hold at the VA as much as many hoped they would. That was when news broke of a systemic plan to disguise veterans’ wait times for healthcare.
That scandal led to legislation that allowed veterans to seek outside care and tried to make it easier for the VA to fire corrupt and negligent employees. But few were ever fired, and Congress this year is working on a new bill to fix that problem.
Rice’s survey indicates that ongoing problems are keeping alive the idea of privatizing VA care. Even in Rice’s district, where he thinks people are mostly satisfied, there is widespread use of non-VA care among veterans — 82 percent of those surveyed went outside the VA over the past two years.
That number indicates support for moving away from VA-centered care. While many in Washington oppose that idea, Rice said it’s time to have that discussion.
“These folks have done their duty to the country, and we ought to be able to get them the best care possible,” he said.
Rice added that he’s already working on another bill to take a step in that direction, one that would require the VA to fund access to private care for veterans who don’t want to use the VA system. He said the 2014 legislation that was meant to give veterans the option of using care outside the VA has not been implemented well and that the VA has made it as “hard as possible” to use.
Rice told the Washington Examiner that he became interested in the VA even before the 2014 scandal, when one of his constituents needed help getting a colonoscopy from the VA. Rice said he tried for nearly a year without success, after which his office spent another five or six months trying to get him access to healthcare.
“By the time he got in, he had advanced cancer, and he died,” Rice said.
