{"id":58376,"date":"2015-02-22T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=58376"},"modified":"2015-02-21T17:58:35","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T22:58:35","slug":"defunding-va-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=58376","title":{"rendered":"Defunding VA Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year Congress and the White House made a big deal about passing a huge overhaul bill for the Veterans’ Affairs Department after the department suffered from some of the worst healthcare shortfalls in their history. A key part of that bill was the Veterans’ Choice Program which allowed covered veterans to seek private treatment when the VA system was clogged. Now, a few months later, the White House wants to take money out of the program because of the non-participation of Veterans in the program, according to the Associated Press<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Only 27,000 veterans have made appointments for private medical care since the VA started mailing out “Choice Cards” in November, the VA said in a report to Congress this month. The number is so small, compared to the 8.6 million cards that have been mailed out, that VA Secretary Robert McDonald wants authority to redirect some of the $10 billion Congress allocated for the program to boost care for veterans at the VA’s 970 hospitals and clinics.<\/p>\n

Republicans and Democrats insist the problem is the department and that it needs to do a better job promoting the choice program. They also want to change a quirk in the law that makes it hard for some veterans in rural areas to prove they live at least 40 miles from a VA health site.<\/p>\n

The government measures the distance as the crow flies, rather than by driving miles, leaving thousands of veterans ineligible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, here’s another thing. I got my Choice card just two weeks ago, now I don’t need it, I’m about 15 miles from a VA clinic. I know at least one another of you guys got it at about the same time, because she emailed me some questions about the card on the same day that I got mine, and she lives across the country from me. How can they suddenly withdraw money from a program because of non-participation when some of us only found out about it a few days ago? <\/p>\n

And, oh, by the way, when Obamacare launched and registration for that program was anemic, I don’t remember the White House asking Congress to withdraw funds from the program – just a few months after it became law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year Congress and the White House made a big deal about passing a huge overhaul … Defunding VA Choice<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}