Follow this link below to contact President Obama, and Vice President Biden, before deliberations start at a House-Senate conference committee on June 24, 2014, regarding new Bills to correct VA delays, mismanagement and corruption. Copy the fist five paragraphs under the dividing line below, and paste in the box of The White House, question and comments page. The White House only allows a little over 2,000 characters for questions or requests. These first five paragraphs basically ask The President, to allow Veterans to chose their own care provider. The whole request that you see below has been sent to my own California Congressman and Two California Senators. You can do this also if you wish, by finding your State Representatives and sending them the whole message. whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments ******************* I write to ask that you consider my views as Congress deals with final legislation to reform VA health care. These bills, H.R. 4810, and H.R. 3230, will be resolved in a House-Senate conference committee, scheduled to begin deliberations on June 24, 2014. I disagree that VA is underfunded. The VA already confessed publicly, that they had plenty of funding. The Acting VA Secretary also says that firing people who made poor decisions was CRAP. I also disagree with keeping veterans tied down to a broken, irresponsible, incompetent, inhumane medical care system which will take too long to fix. I believe that all Veterans regardless of wait times and regardless of how far they are from a facility, should be able to chose a private care facility regardless if VA maintains its facilities. No veteran who is eligible for health care services from VA should be forced to wait too long or travel too far to get medical treatment and services he or she earned through service. Therefore, whatever else Congress does to respond to this crisis, please focus first and foremost on ensuring any veteran should be able to chose a private care facility regardless of awaiting care by VA, and they will be treated as well as any civilian with private care. Action should also be taken to protect veterans who are referred to private providers from being billed any excess charges not permitted by law following VA reimbursements for such care. VA budget will withstand the new costs of such a massive contracting-out or solely privatized system/program without supplementary funding, because it will cost VA care facilities less when private companies buy in or when VA contracts out. VA will not need additional or new funding; they should need less. If VA complains that it will be forced to continue making tradeoffs between providing additional access now through purchased care, or expanding internal capacity and VA cannot do both, then VA should hand all care over to private contracts. Also, in passing legislation to expand veterans access to health care, if Congress and VA must rely on budgetary gimmicks, such as unrealistic estimates of operational improvements, efficiencies, collections, carryovers and contingencies, that just gives more reason as to why the system is broken and should be privatized. Government management makes matters too complex and confusing for everyone. This would also assist Service Connected injured veterans with disabilities and/or, physical impairments, and treatable diseases to have a neutral provider for diagnosis, when VAROs request that the Veteran provide new and material medical documentation supportive to their injuries or disability claim, pending decision with VARO claims processing. If undocumented savings used previously by both the Administration and Congress evades accountability, rarely materializes, or causes significant funding shortfalls that have contributed to the crisis Congress is now trying to resolve, then this gives added power to the reason why VA needs to be privatized. Directors in the VA System and Department Managers and anyone else who received bonuses this year should return them. The funds should be used to compensate victims of the VA Health Care System incompetency and massive mistakes made causing death and pain and suffering. VA employees should not receive future bonuses. Those millions of dollars in bonus savings can be applied where there is a need for the Veterans. My final, concern, is that Congress should not be concerned with protecting and preserving the VA health care system, especially for service-connected disabled veterans, who heavily rely on VA health care services. The system has been failing many of them for years and years. Instead, Congress should pass a new law which would instantly allows Veterans a choice of where they would like to receive their primary care and/or, specialized medical treatment including dental and other medical services which are currently covered under their VA medical benefits. In my opinion as a U.S. Citizen, a Disabled Veteran and a Taxpayer, any legislative, regulatory or administrative changes designed to respond to the VA health access crisis, whether temporary or permanent, must protect, preserve and strengthen the Veterans right to choice of providers, in the similar way CHAMPVA does with Veterans dependents. Veterans earned VA care by serving, and Congress should not turn its back on veterans. Private Hospitals, Clinics, Mental Health and various Specialists, provide vital, life-saving services to the quality of life of all citizens. Veterans should be allowed equal rights to health services. Congress should respect the Veterans sacrifice by ensuring the Veterans choice. Thank you.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 05:19:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015