WASHINGTON – For most Americans, Veterans Day is Nov. 11. But that shouldn’t be the case for those who work at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars
VFW Executive Director Robert E. Wallace says that the lack of commitment among some VA workers to the idea that every workday for them should be devoted to doing right by former service members is skewing the quality of service today’s veterans are getting.
“Every day should be Veterans Day in the Department of Veterans Affairs,” said Wallace. “There’s two kinds of people: those that can work under those conditions, and those who can’t. The problems that came with the VA is that people forgot who they were treating.
He addressed problems within the Veterans Affairs health system and briefed reporters on emerging solutions to these issues during an Oct. 2 talk in Washington. The talk was held as part of “Covering the Military, Veterans and Homeland Security: Tomorrow’s Trends and Issues,” the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative’s 2014 conference.
Wallace said he had been surprised by the extent of the VA corruption uncovered by reporters in stories about VA hospital patients visit records being falsified to cover up the long wait times and lack of care.
“Even the House Veterans Affairs Committee and the Senate had no idea that it was as bad as it ended up being,” he said.
In response, he said, the VFW undertook a town-hall meeting campaign (comprised of VA center visits and phone and digital Q&As) from May to August. He said that about 1,600 veterans responded, and about 60 percent of responses were negative. He also observed that phone and digital Q&A’s elicited more open responses than face-to-face interviews due to fear of VA backlash.
Former VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki, who resigned after the problems were revealed, “will go down in history for his thoughtfulness and his perseverance in trying to solve the backlog problem,” Wallace said, and called him “an honorable man” and “a good soldier.”
He credited new VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald for volunteering for the position.
According to Wallace, the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 is a promising answer to the VA’s woes.
“It sets up a $10 billion Veteran’s Choice Fund to expand availability for non-VA care to any veteran 40 miles from a VA facility or who will not be seen within 30 days,” said Wallace, though he noted that there are numerous stipulations attached to the choices that largely give the VA control over veterans’ decisions.
And while it may sound revolutionary, Wallace said this face of the legislation isn’t truly new.
Wallace said the VA has been empowered to let vets buy health care from the outside since 1996, but “they haven’t used it enough.”
A major downside of this aspect of the bill, Wallace says, though, is a false sense of coverage.
While all 9 million veterans eligible for VA health care will receive a veteran’s choice card that is required to gain out-of-network health coverage, only those who live more than 40 miles away from a VA facility or have had a 30-day delay in care will actually be able to use the cares to go to out-of-network doctors.
According to Wallace, only 700,000 vetterans qualify.. However, two other aspects of the law – the provision of funding to update VA medical facilities and the empowerment of the VA secretary to directly and immediately fire or demote certain classes of VA employees for the sake of maintaining institutional accountability – help.
A new program called PC3, which Wallace explained as patient-centered community care that the VA has extended to cover both primary and specialty care, also will help improve vets’ government-provided health care.
Wallace was careful to note that, despite the recent firestorm, the VA still has advantages in some aspects of veterans’ medical care, such as with prosthetics, post-traumatic stress disorder treatment and hearing aids.
