{"id":60855,"date":"2015-07-14T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T16:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=60855"},"modified":"2015-07-14T11:48:49","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T15:48:49","slug":"va-want-to-close-hospitals-raid-vet-choice-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=60855","title":{"rendered":"VA wants to close hospitals, raid Vet Choice funds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something else that won’t surprise you; the VA wants to close some hospitals and raid Veterans Choice Program funds to close a $2.5 billion shortfall in the budget this year, well, unless Congress can send them some money-love, according to the Associated Press<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The VA said it wants authority to use up to $3 billion from the new Veterans Choice program to close the budget gap, with as much as $500 million going to treat hepatitis C. A single pill for the liver-wasting viral infection can cost up to $1,000.<\/p>\n

The Choice program, the centerpiece of a VA overhaul approved last year, makes it easier for veterans to receive federally paid medical care from local doctors. Congress approved $10 billion over three years for the Choice program as it responded to a scandal over long waits for veterans seeking medical care and falsified records to cover up the delays.<\/p>\n

Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson told Congress that VA health care sites experienced a 10.5 percent increase in workload for the one-year period since the scandal erupted in April 2014.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s kind of funny (funny queer, not funny ha-ha) how, no matter how much money Congress throws at the VA, they always seem to run out. Unless there’s a training conference in Hawaii – there’s always money for that. I’m sure there are some funds laying around that was supposed to tell vets about the Choice program that they never got around to spending, because I get to field questions about it nearly every day.<\/p>\n

According to The Hill<\/a>, they’re already saving money because a third of veterans on waiting lists are already dead, so they’ve got that going for them;<\/p>\n

A review of veteran death records provided to the Huffington Post found that, as of April, 847,822 veterans were awaiting healthcare and that of those, 238,647 were already deceased.<\/p>\n

The report was handed over by Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA’s Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta<\/p>\n

He also sent copies to the House and Senate VA panels and to the White House.<\/p>\n

A VA spokeswoman told Huffington Post that the department can\u2019t subtract dead applicants from the list and that some may never have completed an application but remain on the back log.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See? They’re saving money as fast as they can. If only veterans would die faster for them.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Richard and Bobo for the links.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something else that won’t surprise you; the VA wants to close some hospitals and raid Veterans … VA wants to close hospitals, raid Vet Choice funds<\/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-60855","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\/60855","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=60855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60855\/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=60855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}