Battle over veterans’ health care comes down to VA Choice

Kevin Miller is a U.S. Marine Corps Iraq combat veteran who came home with a wide range of chronic health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and injuries to his neck, spine and shoulders. Thanks to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ model of integrated care, Miller can coordinate and receive all his care at the VA hospital in San Francisco.

There he can see specialists for his physical injuries, as well as mental health practitioners who understand the unique experience of veterans. If we send veterans like Miller to private doctors for their specialty care, however, then their care would be fragmented and medical appointments scattered at facilities miles apart.

Yet that is what the federal government tried to do, setting off a battle for health care for weary warriors to wage with policymakers and a well-funded special interest over the VA and its future.

To address problems of long wait times at Veterans Health Administration hospitals, in 2014 Congress established the Veterans Choice Program, which provides private health care options for eligible veterans at government expense.

In their war against the VA, our nation’s only truly universal health care system, special interest groups such as Concerned Veterans of America backed by the Koch brothers led the federal government to adopt VA Choice. In their larger efforts to attack all government-funded programs and services, the Koch brothers led a misinformation campaign claiming the VA system — one of the largest government agencies with 320,000 public employees — is broken.

Advocates, however, had long warned that private-sector options increase the cost of veterans’ health care. Now this has proven true: President Trump had to sign emergency legislation in August to provide a $2.1 billion bailout to keep the VA Choice program from shutting down.

Because health care dollars follow the veteran, the migration of dollars out of the system affected the operating budgets at the VA facility programs. VA medical and regional directors wrote in an internal VA memo that the costs of outsourcing veterans’ care to the private sector has been a “major driver, in budget shortfalls for Veterans Health Administration facilities across the country.”

When Congress announced its latest plan in mid-October, I feared it would aim to continue draining VA resources and privatizing the system over time. However, I was pleased that only if the VA finds that it is in the veteran’s clinical best interest to seek outside medical care then the veteran can do so at the VA’s expense.

This provision is acceptable because it assures stability for VA facilities and timely access to needed care.

There are dozens of studies that have definitively proven that VA care is equal to or better than private-sector options for veterans. VA patients tend to be older and sicker than veterans not enrolled in the VA system. Or, they are younger, poorer and lack access to health care from other sources.

I don’t know a single veteran who would choose private care over VA care if they knew it could reduce access to VA care for their fellow veterans who need it most.

The VA is a system worth saving. If we continue to divert precious taxpayer dollars to private care, we risk dismantling a veteran-centered health care system designed for their special needs.

House and Senate veterans committees are drafting legislation due for action this week to determine how much the VA outsources care. The Koch brothers and their network are pushing for a multimillion-dollar campaign to include loopholes in the legislation that will move us closer to dismantling the VA.

Write your members of Congress and urge them to keep the Koch network out of our VA.