{"id":73022,"date":"2017-06-26T09:57:20","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T13:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=73022"},"modified":"2017-06-26T09:57:20","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T13:57:20","slug":"va-choice-running-out-of-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=73022","title":{"rendered":"VA Choice running out of money"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Veterans’ Affairs Department secretary warned Congress that the Veterans’ Choice program may run out of money in mid-August. The new program which was implemented to relieve some of the pressures on the VA healthcare a few years ago after the scandal-ridden agency was caught flat-footed in their pursuit of fulfilling their obligations across the country. A few weeks after the Veterans’ Choice program was instituted, the Obama Administration declared that it was unsuccessful and began dismantling it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So Secretary Shulkin is forced to shake a tin cup<\/a> at Congress to secure funding for the program, which was only meant to be stop-gap while the VA retooled it’s healthcare system;<\/p>\n

Shulkin, however, blamed the lack of funding on unanticipated demand for the program and suggested that the 2018 budget request might need to be adjusted.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn financial projections, we have to do better,\u201d he told the committee. \u201cWe do not want to see veterans impacted at all by our inability to manage budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moran joined three other senators June 21 in writing a letter to the VA supporting emergency funds to cover the Choice shortfall, but admonishing the department for its past missteps:<\/p>\n

Unless Congress appropriates emergency funding to continue the Veterans Choice Program, hundreds of thousands of veterans who now rely on the Choice Card will be sent back to a VA that cannot effectively manage or coordinate their care. We cannot send our veterans back to the pre-scandal days in which veterans were subjected to unacceptable wait-times.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m using Veterans’ Choice for the first time next month for some outpatient things and I’m hating it. Civilian doctors and their staffs are such primadonnas. I don’t know what the hold up is, but the appointment in July was scheduled in March – real convenient and a time saver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Veterans’ Affairs Department secretary warned Congress that the Veterans’ Choice program may run out of … VA Choice running out of 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-73022","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\/73022","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=73022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73022\/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=73022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}