{"id":11691,"date":"2015-02-19T00:12:25","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T00:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=11691"},"modified":"2015-02-20T18:40:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T18:40:45","slug":"obama-already-renigs-on-promise-to-americas-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=11691","title":{"rendered":"Obama Already Reneges On Promise To America’s Veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama Betrayal: Effort to Snatch $10 Billion From Veterans<\/strong><\/h2>\n

By Betsy McCaughey
\nNEWSMAX<\/p>\n

\"Veterans-Choice-Program\"<\/a><\/p>\n

President Obama and the Veterans Administration bureaucracy are already sabotaging the VA reform law passed in August. The ink is barely dry on the 8.6 million “Choice Cards” that supposedly allow vets to see a doctor outside the delay-plagued system.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s budget tries to snatch the $10 billion allocated for the Choice program and allow it to be spent however VA top administrators want. It\u2019s a sickening betrayal.<\/p>\n

Even worse, VA secretary Robert McDonald is telling federal lawmakers that this underhanded move will better serve “VA system priorities.” That\u2019s the problem. He\u2019s more interested in protecting “the system” than vets. It\u2019s all about bureaucratic turf and union jobs.<\/p>\n

With a straight face, McDonald says it has ” nothing to do with us trying to gut the Choice Card or anything like that; it was about flexibility.” Flexibility for VA bureaucrats, not for ailing vets who need it. Removing the funding definitely will gut the program because the law says the Choice program expires whenever funding runs out.<\/p>\n

At a Feb. 2 press briefing, VA administrators facetiously claimed that sick vets don’t want to see outside physicians, and that use of the Choice Cards was “much lower” than they had expected. That\u2019s a whopper. When asked, they couldn\u2019t provide any specifics.<\/p>\n

Pete Hegseth, CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, can. He reports that vets get the runaround when they call the VA for permission to use the Choice Card. “The VA is making a concerted attempt to undermine anything that looks like choice.”<\/p>\n

Vets get told they don\u2019t meet the requirement for living 40 miles or more from a VA facility, or they haven\u2019t endured an unacceptably long wait for care, or their care isn\u2019t medically necessary.<\/p>\n

VA administrators are lying to Congress when they say vets don\u2019t want choice. A Tarrance Group poll the first week of February found that 88 percent of vets polled said it is “extremely” or “very important” to increase their healthcare choices.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another whopper: The president\u2019s budget parrots the VA\u2019s claim that the money allocated for Choice is urgently needed to “support essential investments in VA system priorities.”<\/p>\n

How urgent are those priorities? At their press briefing, the VA brass couldn\u2019t name any.<\/p>\n

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Jeff Miller, R. Fla., dismisses the notion that the Choice money is needed elsewhere, pointing out that the VA has “left hundreds of millions in healthcare funding unspent since 2010 while thousands of vets languished on waiting lists.” Not to mention that the president\u2019s new budget proposal increases VA funding by another 7.5 percent.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not about money,” says Hegseth. “The VA wants to perpetuate its dysfunctional system” by keeping vets from choosing to go elsewhere for care.<\/p>\n

The shenanigans against the Choice program are one sign that little progress has been made at the VA since the celebrated enactment of the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014. Politicians took their bows, and then the VA administrators got busy dismantling the reforms before they could succeed.<\/p>\n

Too bad lives are at stake. On Feb. 12, President Obama signed a suicide prevention bill, named for Clay Hunt, a Marine who had served in Iraq and later killed himself. It passed Congress unanimously. Too bad no lawmakers asked whether it has any chance of succeeding.<\/p>\n

The answer is, probably not. The law says VA suicide prevention programs will get outside evaluations. So what? The VA has been inspected ad nauseum by the General Accountability Office, Inspectors General, and other auditors. The reports pile up, unread, and the VA\u2019s dysfunction lives on.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the GAO \u2014 unimpressed with the reform promises of the new VA secretary \u2014 just named the entire Veterans Administration a “high risk” program.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s needed is a system that puts vets in the driver\u2019s seat, allowing them to take their medical care funding wherever they choose. On Feb. 26, a bipartisan task force assembled by Concerned Veterans for America will unveil such a plan. It\u2019s already attracting support of powerful lawmakers, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R. Calif., and Miller. But with the VA leadership and unions lined up against them, they have their work cut out for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama Betrayal: Effort to Snatch $10 Billion From Veterans By Betsy McCaughey NEWSMAX President Obama and the Veterans Administration bureaucracy are already sabotaging the VA reform law passed in August. The ink is barely dry on the 8.6 million “Choice … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}