Bobby Miller recently reported on the legislative agenda for the veterans’ advocacy group Mission Roll Call. Personally, as a grudging beneficiary of the VA’s besieged community-care program — a private-provider alternative for areas with high patient loads relative to VA facilities’ capacities — I reckon there has to be a better way.
Mission Roll Call is headed by Cole Lyle, a Marine who served in Afghanistan. Miller writes:
Lyle says Congress should ensure veterans receive comprehensive health care as quickly as possible by strengthening the Mission Act. Passed in the wake of the VA wait-time scandal, the 2014 law expanded the range of treatment options available to veterans seeking medical treatment. Lyle says that “there is more Congress can do to expand the universe of choice available to veterans.” According to the legislation, veterans who live farther than a 30-minute drive from a VA medical facility or generally wait more than 20 days for most health care appointments are eligible for private care. But many veterans who live within a 30-minute drive of a VA facility, or are typically treated within the time frame established by the department, receive sub-par or inadequate care. Lyle thinks Congress should extend access to private medical treatment to many more veterans. This is a straightforward and potentially bipartisan, free-market solution, and yet, with the exception of Tennessee Republican senator Marsha Blackburn, no members of Congress have so far chosen to champion the issue.
Community care entered the Biden administration’s crosshairs last year because the program had a whiff of “privatizing the VA” about it. What Lyle and Senator Blackburn offer is a reestablishment of a community-care-like service. The senator’s bill, S. 3603, the Veterans Health Care Freedom Act, has the same shortfalls as the program I’m enrolled in. Namely, the act expects the VA to preside over a program that limits the administration’s power while asking it to develop efficient processes that it can’t manage for itself.
Under the heading “Coordination of Care,” the bill states:
(3) SYSTEMS.—The Secretary shall establish systems as the Secretary determines appropriate to ensure that a primary care provider can effectively coordinate the hospital care, medical services, and extended care services furnished to a veteran under the pilot program.
Such an arrangement asks the secretary of the VA to establish a system for a program that disempowers his position while also juggling the demands of the traditional VA infrastructure — an institution that is the poster child for inefficiency. A better solution would be to create a health savings account that builds during a serviceman’s enlistment that he can then tap into upon separation or retirement. Like the savings benefits of the pension-turned-IRA Blended Retirement Savings (BRS) effort that occurred during my enlistment, an incremental move away from socialized military medicine would be for the best — for the taxpayer and the serviceman both. You trusted us with million-dollar machines; please trust us to see after our health.