When you make a promise, you’re supposed to keep it. There may occasionally be times when circumstances arise that make it impossible for you to keep a promise but you should still stand ready to make good, as best you can, on that promise. It is a matter of honor and a testament to character that you follow through with your word and honor your commitments. This is something that you should have learned as a child. Sadly, it seems, that this is a lesson that many of our elected officials and many others in our governmental bureaucracies have either forgotten or never learned in the first place.
There are many bureaucracies that our government has established that fall short of serving the people of our nation. In fact some like the IRS, the EPA or the BLM seem to have forgotten altogether that they are supposed to serve the people, not act as a means for our central government to grab power not authorized by the Constitution. Like many things our government has done they were created with the “best of intentions” but as their “extra-constitutional” powers grow our personal liberty disappears. One of our bureaucracies, the Department of Veterans Affairs, while not growing it’s power is committing an atrocity just as unforgivable; failing to keep the promise made to the many American citizens who answered the call to serve in our military during times of war or “police actions”.
This is not the first time the VA has been called out for their failures to serve the brave men and women who are today American Combat Veterans. Just last September the outrage of 307,000 veterans having died while waiting for the Department of Veterans Affairs to process their healthcare applications, 867,000 veterans having their healthcare applications listed as pending, and poor data management prompted VA employees to arbitrarily delete 10,000 records from the database after marking them as complete, even if they were still unfinished and in need of resolution, was made public. The response to this historic debacle was to replace the head of the VA and then, under duress, implement a free choice program which would allow veterans to seek out and receive private medical care if “the VA is unable to provide the care needed within a month of being requested, or if there is not a VA facility reasonably close to their homes.”
This program, called The Choice Card program, was one of the common sense solutions offered up to solve the problem of the veteran backlog waiting on much needed treatment. It was actually passed by congress in 2014 when word was first getting out about the backlog, before the reports of exactly how bad things had gotten at the VA were made public. And now the program is in danger of being ended. Not because of expenses or inefficiency but because the VA hasn’t been paying the non-VA doctors and hospitals who have rendered service to the veterans who could not get care at the VA.
It’s not hard to understand why non-VA doctors and hospitals might want to shy away from taking Choice Card patients if they are not going to get paid. So it’s also not surprising that there is a growing number of non-VA doctors who are no longer taking Choice Card cases. The problem is that once again our veterans are not getting the healthcare they need. The central government, through the VA, has an obligation to pay these health care providers per the program’s creation and by not doing so they are once again failing to keep the promise to take care of our vets. But why they are choosing to not pay the Choice Card invoices is mind-blowing.
First of all, the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union which represents most of the VA’s workers was opposed to the program from the beginning. Why you might ask, well why do labor unions ever oppose anything… it will cost them money. In this case, the AFGE thought the move to have non-VA workers treating veterans would reduce the growth of their membership rolls. Without the Choice Card program the VA would have had no choice but to add more employees which would in turn would mean more membership thereby increasing the membership dues. So as far as the AFGE is concerned, the veterans be damned they want money and could not care less if anyone is getting the care they need.
Second, the VA wanted you, me, and more important to them congress to believe that it was in fact the Choice Card program that was the cause of the VA’s image issues and not the wait-time scandal. Yes, that’s right folks, they refused to pay the service providers and then acted like the program was failing due to the service providers taking steps to get paid. Both the AFGE and the VA tried using the failure to process payments to justify ending the program. The AFGE leadership told members to contact and demand Congress end veterans using private healthcare providers, saying that Choice Card “has already led to veterans being hounded by bill collectors” and “VA staff being forced to spend hours on the phone with insurance companies and for-profit providers.” And the VA Under Secretary For Health, David Shulkin said in a March 10th Senate hearing, “The problem, our reputation has been hurt incredibly, and you’re hearing it from the veterans, because the Choice program hasn’t worked.“
By March 14 the VA decided to come clean, my guess is that someone was going to blow the whistle on them, and released a new statement. The “VA acknowledges that delayed payments and inappropriately billed claims are unacceptable and have caused stress for veterans and providers alike, there should be no bureaucratic burden that stands in the way of veterans getting care.” Now, once again, we are offered empty-sounding apologies and we are told that they, the VA, are working to fix the problems so that the veterans will receive the care they need. Many vets, however, feel that this has happened by design in an attempt to force veterans back to the VA in order to justify the existence of VA. Our veterans have already paid the price. Promises were made and should be kept. If our federal government can find billions of dollars to help illegal invaders and foreign governments that hate America, then there are no excuses for not taking care of those to whom we owe so much. And since when is a government employee’s job more important than the lives of the veterans they are supposed to be serving?
There are many bureaucracies that our government has established that fall short of serving the people of our nation. In fact some like the IRS, the EPA or the BLM seem to have forgotten altogether that they are supposed to serve the people, not act as a means for our central government to grab power not authorized by the Constitution. Like many things our government has done they were created with the “best of intentions” but as their “extra-constitutional” powers grow our personal liberty disappears. One of our bureaucracies, the Department of Veterans Affairs, while not growing it’s power is committing an atrocity just as unforgivable; failing to keep the promise made to the many American citizens who answered the call to serve in our military during times of war or “police actions”.
This is not the first time the VA has been called out for their failures to serve the brave men and women who are today American Combat Veterans. Just last September the outrage of 307,000 veterans having died while waiting for the Department of Veterans Affairs to process their healthcare applications, 867,000 veterans having their healthcare applications listed as pending, and poor data management prompted VA employees to arbitrarily delete 10,000 records from the database after marking them as complete, even if they were still unfinished and in need of resolution, was made public. The response to this historic debacle was to replace the head of the VA and then, under duress, implement a free choice program which would allow veterans to seek out and receive private medical care if “the VA is unable to provide the care needed within a month of being requested, or if there is not a VA facility reasonably close to their homes.”
This program, called The Choice Card program, was one of the common sense solutions offered up to solve the problem of the veteran backlog waiting on much needed treatment. It was actually passed by congress in 2014 when word was first getting out about the backlog, before the reports of exactly how bad things had gotten at the VA were made public. And now the program is in danger of being ended. Not because of expenses or inefficiency but because the VA hasn’t been paying the non-VA doctors and hospitals who have rendered service to the veterans who could not get care at the VA.
It’s not hard to understand why non-VA doctors and hospitals might want to shy away from taking Choice Card patients if they are not going to get paid. So it’s also not surprising that there is a growing number of non-VA doctors who are no longer taking Choice Card cases. The problem is that once again our veterans are not getting the healthcare they need. The central government, through the VA, has an obligation to pay these health care providers per the program’s creation and by not doing so they are once again failing to keep the promise to take care of our vets. But why they are choosing to not pay the Choice Card invoices is mind-blowing.
First of all, the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union which represents most of the VA’s workers was opposed to the program from the beginning. Why you might ask, well why do labor unions ever oppose anything… it will cost them money. In this case, the AFGE thought the move to have non-VA workers treating veterans would reduce the growth of their membership rolls. Without the Choice Card program the VA would have had no choice but to add more employees which would in turn would mean more membership thereby increasing the membership dues. So as far as the AFGE is concerned, the veterans be damned they want money and could not care less if anyone is getting the care they need.
Second, the VA wanted you, me, and more important to them congress to believe that it was in fact the Choice Card program that was the cause of the VA’s image issues and not the wait-time scandal. Yes, that’s right folks, they refused to pay the service providers and then acted like the program was failing due to the service providers taking steps to get paid. Both the AFGE and the VA tried using the failure to process payments to justify ending the program. The AFGE leadership told members to contact and demand Congress end veterans using private healthcare providers, saying that Choice Card “has already led to veterans being hounded by bill collectors” and “VA staff being forced to spend hours on the phone with insurance companies and for-profit providers.” And the VA Under Secretary For Health, David Shulkin said in a March 10th Senate hearing, “The problem, our reputation has been hurt incredibly, and you’re hearing it from the veterans, because the Choice program hasn’t worked.“
By March 14 the VA decided to come clean, my guess is that someone was going to blow the whistle on them, and released a new statement. The “VA acknowledges that delayed payments and inappropriately billed claims are unacceptable and have caused stress for veterans and providers alike, there should be no bureaucratic burden that stands in the way of veterans getting care.” Now, once again, we are offered empty-sounding apologies and we are told that they, the VA, are working to fix the problems so that the veterans will receive the care they need. Many vets, however, feel that this has happened by design in an attempt to force veterans back to the VA in order to justify the existence of VA. Our veterans have already paid the price. Promises were made and should be kept. If our federal government can find billions of dollars to help illegal invaders and foreign governments that hate America, then there are no excuses for not taking care of those to whom we owe so much. And since when is a government employee’s job more important than the lives of the veterans they are supposed to be serving?
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