{"id":64356,"date":"2016-02-15T10:13:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T15:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=64356"},"modified":"2016-02-15T10:13:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T15:13:44","slug":"congress-looking-at-a-dodva-merger-for-veteran-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=64356","title":{"rendered":"Congress looking at a DoD\/VA merger for veteran health care"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chief Tango sends us link to the <a href=\"http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2016\/02\/15\/congress-may-fix-veterans-affairs-by-merging-with-military\/\">Daily Caller<\/a> which discusses the prospect of a merger of VA and Department of Defense cooperative effort in the merger of resources to treat veterans. The Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago is exactly that kind of facility and it has been functioning since 2010.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The DOD and VA have been authorized to share resources since the 1980s and there are nine smaller jointly operated facilities around the country, but none has ever been as large as Lovell. When a Navy hospital and VA medical center were both dilapidated, then-Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk urged the building of a combined facility. The DOD and VA agreed to the merger in 2002 and it opened in 2010 after a $130 million construction effort.<\/p>\n<p>Congress conceived of it as a pilot program that would report back after five years, with success meaning merging DOD and VA hospitals in other cities would be considered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Honestly, I don&#8217;t have any complaints about the way both the VA and the DoD have treated me. My only problems have come from the administrative aspect &#8211; bean counters suck no matter which agency. I&#8217;m sure the bureaucrats will only take this opportunity to blame each other for the failings of the system. They can&#8217;t even find a way to electronically share medical records, I&#8217;m sure sharing care won&#8217;t work much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chief Tango sends us link to the Daily Caller which discusses the prospect of a merger &hellip; <a title=\"Congress looking at a DoD\/VA merger for veteran health care\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=64356\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Congress looking at a DoD\/VA merger for veteran health care<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64356","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=64356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}