{"id":61110,"date":"2015-07-31T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61110"},"modified":"2015-07-30T21:46:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T01:46:00","slug":"congress-allows-the-va-to-dip-into-vet-choice-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61110","title":{"rendered":"Congress allows the VA to dip into Vet Choice money"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs threatened to start closing medical facilities if Congress wouldn’t allow them to take money out of the Veterans’ Choice Program, you know, that program that is less than a year old and was supposed to relieve pressure from an over-booked healthcare system. So, Congress folded<\/a> like Kmart lawnchairs.<\/p>\n

“While I was disappointed to see the VA use scare tactics and threaten to close hospitals as a way to shift away blame for their poor management, I was more than proud to cast my vote today to solve this issue,” said Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who sits on the Senate veterans committee.<\/p>\n

VA Secretary Robert McDonald told Congress in hearings over the past month that the number of appointments at medical centers increased substantially after the agency moved to fix the scandal over manipulated wait times for patients to see their doctors.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

“Without this legislation, the VA could run out of money by September,” said Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga. “Costs have exploded by more than 10 percent in the last year as a result of higher demand, while the budget increased by only 2.8 percent.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, the Veterans’ Choice Program was just a slush fund. The Veterans’ Choice Program hadn’t been fully implemented, there was no introduction to the program from the VA to veterans, before the White House was complaining that the program wasn’t working. They’ve been trying to raid the funds since Spring. And the rubber stamp Congress is more than willing to bend to whatever the White House wants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs threatened to start closing medical facilities if Congress wouldn’t allow them … Congress allows the VA to dip into Vet Choice money<\/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-61110","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\/61110","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=61110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61110\/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=61110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}